mes out of
evil"--a remark that they didn't like when they had had time to think
over it.

But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all alone all
day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never left their
side, regarding it as proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for ladies
to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at apparently
producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly acquainted with her
young charges. This she did by imparting to them intimate and meticulous
information about her own life, with the whole of the various uplifts,
as she put it, her psyche had during its unfolding experienced. There
was so much to tell about herself that she never got to inquiring about
the twins. She knew they were orphans, and that this was a good work,
and for the moment had no time for more.

The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they
didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she
didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete
experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr.
Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and
find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her
details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton's thoughts
remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins that he must have thought
a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said
for death.

The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the Clouston-Sacks,
and had never been separated for a single day during the whole of their
married life. This seemed to the twins very strange, and needing a great
deal of explanation. In order to get light thrown on it the first thing
they wanted to find out was how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs.
Bilton was deaf to their inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's
last moments and obsequies--obsequies scheduled by her, she said, with
so tender a regard for his memory that she insisted on a horse-drawn
hearse instead of the more fashionable automobile conveyance, on the
ground that a motor hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first
speed--she washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the
dreadfulness of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps
on catching in everything--chairs, overhanging branches, and passers-by,
inc