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 no, 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 both born at the same time, but I am six months older than he
is."

"For the land's sake!"

"'Sh! on't wake him up; he wouldn't like my telling this. It has
always been kept secret till now."

"But how in the world can it be? If you were both born at the same time,
how can one of you be older than the other?"

"It is very simple, and I assure you it is true. I was born with a full
crop of hair, he was as bald as an egg for six months. I could walk six
months before he could make a step. I finished teething six months ahead
of him. I began to take solids six months before he left the breast.
I began to talk six months before he could say a word. Last, and
absolutely unassailable proof, the sutures in my skull closed six months
ahead of his. Always just that six months' difference to a day. Was
that accident? Nobody is going to claim that, I'm sure. It was ordained
it was law it had its meaning, and we know what that meaning w