Euneece. I do so long to see her. When is she coming back?"

"In a few days more."

"How glad I am! And do tell me--which is she? Your oldest girl or your
youngest?"

"Neither the one nor the other, Selina."

"Oh, my head! my head! This is even worse than the accent on the 'i' and
the final 'e.' Stop! I am cleverer than I thought I was. You mean that
the girls are twins. Are they both so exactly like each other that I
shan't know which is which? What fun!"

When the subject of our ages was unluckily started at Mrs. Staveley's,
I had slipped out of the difficulty easily by assuming the character of
the eldest sister--an example of ready tact which my dear stupid Eunice
doesn't understand. In my father's presence, it is needless to say that
I kept silence, and left it to him. I was sorry to be obliged to
do this. Owing to his sad state of health, he is easily
irritated--especially by inquisitive strangers.

"I must leave you," he answered, without taking the slightest notice of
what Miss Jillgall had said to him. "My work is waiting for me."

She stopped him on his way to the door. "Oh, tell me--can't I help you?"

"Thank you; no."

"Well--but tell me one thing. Am I right about the twins?"

"You are wrong."

Miss Jillgall's demonstrative hands flew up into the air again, and
expressed the climax of astonishment by quivering over her head. "This
is positively maddening," she declared. "What does it mean?"

"Take my advice, cousin. Don't attempt to find out what it means."

He left the room. Miss Jillgall appealed to me. I imitated my father's
wise brevity of expression: "Sorry to disappoint you, Selina; I know no
more about it than you do. Come upstairs."

Every step of the way up to the drawing-room was marked by a protest or
an inquiry. Did I expect her to believe that I couldn't say which of
us was the elder of the two? that I didn't really know what my father's
motive was for this extraordinary mystification? that my sister and I
had submitted to be robbed, as it were, of our own ages, and had not
insisted on discovering which of us had come into the world first? that
our friends had not put an end to this sort of thing by comparing us
personally, and discovering which was the elder sister by investigation
of our faces? To all this I replied: First, that I did certainly expect
her to believe whatever I might say: Secondly, that what she was pleased
to call the "mystification" had begun when we were bot