tsy, "but if you've a
mind to say Sodom and Gomorrah, I am with you, Betsy Hale."

"I am agreeable, then, though I do think I was right, and I believe
Parson Maltby would say the same. Well, now, there's another thing.
Suppose one of you wants to borrow the legs a minute from the one that's
got them, could he let him?"

"Yes, but we hardly ever do that. There were disagreeable results,
several times, and so we very seldom ask or grant the privilege,
nowadays, and we never even think of such a thing unless the case is
extremely urgent. Besides, a week's possession at a time seems so little
that we can't bear to spare a minute of it. People who have the use of
their legs all the time never think of what a blessing it is, of course.
It never occurs to them; it's just their natural ordinary condition,
and so it does not excite them at all. But when I wake up, on Sunday
morning, and it's my week and I feel the power all through me, oh, such
a wave of exultation and thanksgiving goes surging over me, and I want
to shout 'I can walk! I can walk!' Madam, do you ever, at your uprising,
want to shout 'I can walk! I can walk!'?"

"No, you poor unfortunate cretur', but I'll never get out of my bed
again without doing it! Laws, to think I've had this unspeakable
blessing all my long life and never had the grace to thank the good Lord
that gave it to me!"

Tears stood in the eyes of both the old ladies and the widow said,
softly:

"Betsy Hale, we have learned something, you and me."

The conversation now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more
to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which
the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins. Aunt
Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related
cases. She said:

"In my opinion it ain't right noW, and never has been right, the way a
twin born a quarter of a minute sooner than the other one gets all the
land and grandeurs and nobilities in the old countries and his brother
has to go bare and be a nobody. Which of you was born first?"

Angelo's head was resting against Luigi's; weariness had overcome him,
and for the past five minutes he had been peacefully sleeping. The old
ladies had dropped their voices to a lulling drone, to help him to steal
the rest his brother wouldn't take him up-stairs to get. Luigi listened
a moment to Angelo's regular breathing, then said in a voice barely
audible:

"We were bot