Page:Jepson--The terrible twins.djvu/226

occur to either of them that they had been treating a princess with singular firmness. Nor were they at all troubled about the acquisition of the peaches since some curious mental kink prevented them from perceiving that the law of meum and tuum applied to fruit.

Mrs. Dangerfield was presented with only two peaches at tea that afternoon; and she took it that the Twins had ridden into Rowington and bought them for her there. When two more were forth-
coming for her dessert after dinner, she reproached them gently for spending so much of their salary for "overseering" on her. The Twins said noth-
ing. It was only when two more peaches came up on her breakfast tray that she began to suspect that they had come by the ways of warfare and not of trade. Then, having already eaten four of them, it was a little late to inquire and protest. More-
over, if there had been a crime, the Twins had admitted her to a full share in it by letting her eat the fruit of it. Plainly it was once more an oc-
casion for saying nothing.

On the next afternoon Erebus set out with the Terror to Muttle Deeping home wood early enough;