r.

"There must be _some_ secret about being married," said Michael one
Saturday afternoon, when the sun blazed down upon the sentries and the
last cigarette had been smoked.

"There _is_," Norton agreed,

"I can't make out about twins," Michael continued, looking critically at
the Macalisters.

Siegfried Macalister, generally known as 'Smack' in distinction to his
brother Hugh always called 'Mac,' felt bound to offer a suggestion.

"There's twenty minutes' difference between us. I heard my mater tell a
visitor, and besides I'm the eldest."

Speculation was temporarily interrupted by a bout between Smack and Mac,
because neither was allowed to claim priority. At the end of an
indecisive round Michael struck in:

"But why are there twins? People don't like twins coming, because in
Ally Sloper there's always a joke about twins."

"I know married people who haven't got any children at all," said Norton
in order still more elaborately to complicate the point at issue.

"Yes, there you are," said Michael. "There's some secret about
marriage."

"There's a book in my mater's room which I believe would tell us,"
hinted Smack.

"There's a good deal in the Bible," Norton observed. "Only it's
difficult to find the places and then you can't tell for certain what
they mean."

Then came a long whispering at the end of which the four boys shook
their heads very wisely and said that they were sure that was it.

"Hullo!" Michael shouted, forgetting the debate. "Young Dicky's
signalling."

"Indians," said Mac.

"Sioux or Apaches?" asked Smack anxiously.

"Neither. It's Arabs. Charge," shouted Norton.

All problems went to the winds in the glories of action, in the clash of
stick on stick, in the rending of cad's collar and cad's belt, and in
the final defeat of the Arabs with the loss of their caravan--a
sugar-box on a pair of elliptical wheels.

In addition to the arduous military life led by Michael at this period,
he was also in common with Smack and Mac and Norton a multiplex
collector. At first the two principal collections were silkworms and
silver-paper. Afterwards came postage stamps and coins and medals and
autographs and birds' eggs and shells and fossils and bones and skins
and butterflies and moths and portraits of famous cricketers. From the
moment the first silkworm was brought home in a perforated cardboard-box
to the moment when by some arrangement of vendible material the first
bicycle was secure