CHAPTER I.

THE WRONG TWIN AND THE RIGHT ONE.

"CHILDREN, don't quarrel!" said Mr. Ellis, lifting his eyes from the old manuscript he was examining.

"Be a nice, kind daddy," pleaded Dina, "and tell us a story just for once, won't you? The rain is pouring down; we can't go out; Miss Goodlett hasn't come back yet from town, and if we stay in with no one to look after us, we shall quarrel again. Do, daddy!"

"Yes, dad, please do!" pleaded Gerald.

"Nonsense, children! Can't you see I'm busy? How selfish young folks are, and how tiresome!"

Mr. Ellis spoke crossly, as he too often did, and Dina replied drearily, "Are they? Then I wish we'd been born a hundred years old! You'd have been proud of us then, daddy, and would always have been inviting people to come and see your antique twins."

"Other children's daddies play with them and tell them stories on wet days," said Gerry, in an injured tone, as he drew his sister out of the room. "Oh, Dina, if only mamma were here!"

"Yes, wouldn't it be lovely! But her chest is not well enough for her to come home yet."

"Nurse was talking to cook yesterday," remarked Gerald, "and I overheard what was said. She told her that it was enough to make anyone's lungs bad to live in a damp house, with no end of old bones and parchments and specimens about; and that if mamma was sensible, she'd stay where she was rather than be 'turned into a mummy afore her time.'"

"And what did cookie say?" Dina inquired, with great interest.

"Oh, she said that nothing would please her more than to pile up all dad's most precious treasures in the fireplace under the copper, set them alight, and boil the clothes with them. For then, she said, they'd have been of some use in the world, and 'be cleared away decent afterwards as ashes into the dustbin.'"

Both children laughed at this, then, running to the window, they discovered that the weather had improved.

"Look!" cried Gerald. "It's clearing up. Let's go and sail our boats in the round pond."

So the twins took their boats and were soon in the home field, which belonged to an old farmer near. Some cattle were grazing here, and Gerry said, "You're farther sighted than I am, Dina; look if you can see Farmer Donn's bull anywhere about. Somebody said he wasn't safe now."

"He's nowhere that I can see," replied the little girl; "I think it's all right."

And the children went on to the round pond which was in the centre of the meadow. Here they found that the bank near the water was very muddy and slippery, trodden into puddles too by the feet of the cattle, and Dina began to pull off her shoes and stockings.

"Well, as you're doing that I need not," said Gerald; "I hate making myself in a mess. You can go down the bank just as well by yourself, and launch both the boats, and give me the string of mine while I stay up on the grass."

Geraldine assented to this. She was too well accustomed to her brother's selfishness to take much notice unless he was unkind as well. So now she stepped, with little bare white feet, into the spongy mud, handed Gerald the string of his boat, and presently both children had forgotten everything but their small boats.

Suddenly they heard a shout behind them. "Look out! The bull! The bull!"

They both started and glanced round, and there was Farmer Donn's great black bull rushing towards them across the grass. He had torn up the paling of the smaller field in which he had been shut up, and thus gained an entrance into the home meadow.

Running at full speed after the bull, and brandishing a pitchfork, came Farmer Donn's cattle-man, and while he ran, he shouted, "Run, children! Run! Run for your lives!"

And, knowing that they were running for their lives, away went the twins, like leaves driven by a gale; away, as with winged feet, towards the gate, while thundering after them and gaining at every stride, galloped Nero, Farmer Donn's fierce black bull.

"It's no good!" gasped Gerald after a minute or two of hard running. "I can't keep this up. I'm just done."

Geraldine snatched at his hand. She was both stronger and fleeter than her brother, and her little bare feet trod lightly and swiftly over the wet grass.

"Hold up another minute, Gerry!" she panted. "We'll be at the gate by that time." But as she spoke, she glanced over her shoulder, and shuddered to see that the bull was close behind—almost upon them.

Then a sudden thought flashed into that active little brain. She would save her twin brother, her poor Gerry, and if she died in doing it—well, it did not so very much matter, save to her mother—and she was far away. To everyone else she was a plague, a bother, the wrong twin, while Gerald was the pet of all.

This, that takes a minute in the telling, flashed through the child's mind in a second, and she had made her plan.

Just in front of them was a clump of trees. Geraldine dragged her brother to the far side of this clump, and pushed him down so that he lay with one of the trunks of the trees between him and the bull.

"Lie still, Gerry!" she cried. Then out of the tree clump she dashed, not twenty yards from the bull, and before he could turn in his tracks, began to race back towards Joe Gerson, Farmer Donn's cattle-man.

With a snort of rage, Nero paused for a moment, head erect, tail straight out. Once he glanced towards the clump of trees, then back towards the fluttering pink skirt and twinkling feet of the flying child. Then he made up his mind to follow her, and turning, resumed his mad gallop, never seeing, in his headlong, blind rage, that Joe was waiting for him. And the first thing that he knew was a very painful sensation caused by the prongs of the pitchfork—which brought him suddenly to a full stop and gave him something else to think of besides the little light form he had been chasing like the great cowardly bully that he was.

Joe was quickly joined by some stablemen and haymakers, and when a strong cord had been passed through the ring in the great brute's nose, and was held on either side by a man brandishing a hayfork, Nero felt that he had no further chance of making himself famous, and submitted sullenly to being led home and shut up in an outhouse.