harmers Kitty could make
little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way--rather
ostentatiously, I thought--and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he
found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave
reticence--he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a
public meeting--and made little attempt to bestow upon them the
attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.

There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here,"
said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise,
but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital
importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite
impossible. What he wants is mothering."

And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite
strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life--the
correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs
such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the
domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of
dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of
dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.

In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil
required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always
be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner
of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the
only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members
of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the
world--that of old age.

All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder--he was not of
the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity--but, evidently
struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own
doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he
realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed
to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a
good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he
allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of
his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon
developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable
adjunct--quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one
day on our way do