"Yes, it is," said Angelica, preparing to defend it by shuffling a note-book out of her pocket, and ruffling the leaves over: "Listen to this"--and she read--""A tinge of red in the hair denotes strength and energy of character and good staying power." We don"t want a m.u.f.f for a tutor, do we? There are born m.u.f.fs enough in the family without importing them. And a woman"s reason is always a good one, as men might see if they"d only stop chattering and listen to it."
"It mayn"t be well expressed, but it will bear examination," Mr. Ellis suggested.
"Do you like being a tutor?" Diavolo.
"It depends on whom I have to teach."
"If you"re a good fellow, you"ll have a nice time here--on the whole--I hope, sir," Angelica observed. "But why are you a tutor?"
"To earn my living," Mr. Ellis answered, smiling again.
The children remembered this, and when they were having tea under the shadow of the supposit.i.tious Peace Angel"s wing, after the first occasion on which, when the tutor tried to separate them during a fight at lessons, they had turned simultaneously and attacked him, they made it the text of some recommendations. He expressed a strong objection to having manual labour imposed upon him as well as his other work: but they maintained that if only he had called the affray "a struggle for daily bread" or "a fight for a livelihood," he would quite have enjoyed it; and they further suggested that such diversion must be much more interesting than being a mere commonplace tutor who only taught lessons. They could not understand why a fight was not as much fun for him as for them, and thought him unreasonable when they found he was not to be persuaded to countenance that way of varying the monotony. Not that there was ever much monotony in the neighbourhood of the Heavenly Twins; they managed to introduce variety into everything, and their quickness of action, when both were roused, was phenomenal. One day while at work they saw a sparrow pick up a piece of bread, take it to the roof-tree of an angle of the house visible from the schoolroom window, drop it, and chase it as it fell; and the twins had made a bet as to which would beat, bird or bread, quarrelled because they could not agree as to which had bet on bird and which on bread, and boxed each other"s ears almost before the race was over.
Mr. Ellis, although continually upon his guard, was not by any means always a match for them. Over and over again he found that his caution had been fanned to sleep by flattering attentions, while traps were being laid for him with the most innocent air in the world, as on one occasion when Diavolo betrayed him into a dissertation on the consistency of the Scriptures, and Angelica asked him to kindly show her how to reconcile Prov. viii. 2: "For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not be compared to it," with Eccles. i. 18: "For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
His way with them was admirable, however, and he completely won their hearts. The thing that they respected him for most was the fact that he took in _Punch_ on his own account, and could show you a lot of things in it that you could never have discovered yourself, as Angelica said, and read bits in a way that made them seem ever so much funnier than when _you_ read them; and could tell you who drew the pictures the moment he looked at them--so that "_Punch_ Day" came to be looked forward to by the children as one of the pleasantest events of the week.
Lessons were suspended the moment the paper arrived, if they had been good; but when they were naughty Mr. Ellis put the paper in his pocket, and that was the greatest punishment he could inflict upon them--the only one that ever made them sulk. They would be good for hours in advance to earn the right of having _Punch_ shown to them the moment it came. And it was certainly by means of his intelligent interpretation of it that their tutor managed to cultivate their tastes in many ways, and give them true ideas of art, and the importance of art, at the outset, and also of ethics. He was as careful of Angelica"s physical as of her mental education, being himself strongly imbued by the then new idea that a woman should have the full use of her limbs, lungs, heart, and every other organ and muscle, so that life might be a pleasure to her and not a continual exertion. He had a strong objection to the artificial waist, and impressed the beauty of Tenniel"s cla.s.sical purity of figure upon the children by teaching them to appreciate the contrast it presents to the bulging vulgarities made manifest by Keene; and showed them also that while Du Maurier depicted with admirable artistic interpretation the refined surroundings and attenuated forms of women as they are, Linley Sambourne, that master of lovely line, pointed the moral by drawing women as they should be. There was nothing conventional about the Heavenly Twins, and it was therefore easy to make a good impression upon them in this direction, and, the tutor soon had a practical proof of his success which must have been eminently satisfactory if a trifle embarra.s.sing.
The children were out on the lawn in front of the house one afternoon when a lady arrived to call upon their mother. They were struck by her appearance as she descended from her carriage, and followed her into the drawing room to have a good look at her. She was one of those heroic women who have the constancy to squeeze their figures in beyond the Y shape, which is the commonest deformity, to that of the hourgla.s.s which bulges out more above and below the line of compression.
There were a good many other people in the room, whom the Heavenly Twins saluted politely; and then they sat down opposite to the object of their interest and gazed at her.
"Why are you tied so tight in the middle?" Angelica asked at last in a voice that silenced everybody else in the room. "Doesn"t it hurt? I mean to have a _good_ figure when I grow up, like the Venus de Medici, you know. I can show you a picture of her, if you like. She hasn"t a st.i.tch on her."
"She looks awfully nice, though," said Diavolo, "and Angelica thinks she"d be able to eat more with that kind of figure."
"Yes," Angelica candidly confessed, looking at her victim compa.s.sionately.
"I shouldn"t think, now, that you can eat both pudding and meat, can you?"
"Not to mention dessert!" Diavolo e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with genuine concern.
"Mr. Ellis, will you get those children out of the room, somehow," Lady Adeline whispered to the tutor, who had come in for tea.
"Is it true, do you think," Mr. Ellis began loudly, addressing Mr.
Hamilton-Wells across the room--"Is it true that Dr. Galbraith is going to try some horrible experiments in vivisection this afternoon?"
"What is vivisection?" asked Angelica, diverted.
"Cutting up live animals to find out what makes them go," said the tutor.
In three minutes there wasn"t a vestige of the Heavenly Twins about the place.
CHAPTER XX.
The twins had a code of ethics which differed in some respects from that ordinarily accepted in their state of life. They honoured their mother--they couldn"t help it, as they said themselves, apologetically; but their father they looked upon as fair game for their amus.e.m.e.nt.
"What was that unearthly noise I heard this morning?" Mr. Ellis asked one day.
"Oh, did we wake you, sir?" Diavolo exclaimed. "We didn"t mean to. We were only yowling papa out of bed with our fiddles. He"s idle sometimes, and won"t get up, and it"s so bad for him, you know."
"I wish you could see him scooting down the corridor after us," Angelica observed. "And do you know, he speaks just the same at that time of day in his dressing gown, as he does, in the evening in dress clothes. You"d die if you heard him."
Another habit of the twins was to read any letters they might find lying about.
"It is dishonourable to read other people"s letters," Mr. Ellis admonished them severely when he became aware of this peculiarity.
"It isn"t for us," Angelica answered defiantly. "You might as well say its dishonourable to squint. We"ve always done it, and everybody knows we do it. We warn them not to leave their letters lying about, don"t we, Diavolo?"
"That is because it is greater fun to hunt for them," Diavolo interpreted precisely. When Angelica gave a reason he usually cleared it of all obscurity in this way.
"And how are we to know what goes on in the family if we don"t read the letters?" Angelica demanded.
"What necessity is there for you to know?"
"Every necessity!" she retorted. "Not be interested in one"s own family affairs? Why, we should we wanting in intelligence, and we"re not that, you know! And we should be wanting in affection, too, and every right feeling; and I hope we are not that either, Mr. Ellis, _quite_. But you needn"t be afraid about your own letters. We shan"t touch them."
"No," drawled Diavolo. "Of course that would be a very different thing."
"I am glad you draw the line somewhere," Mr. Ellis observed sarcastically.
He was far from satisfied, however, but he noticed eventually that the dust collected on letters of his own if he left them lying about, and he soon discovered that when his intelligent pupils gave their word they kept it uncompromisingly. It was one of their virtues, and the other was loyalty to each other. Their devotion to their mother hardly counted for a virtue, because they never carried it far enough to make any sacrifice for her sake. But they would have sacrificed their very lives for each other, and would have fought for the right to die until there was very little left of either of them to execute; of such peculiar quality were their affections.
They had gone straight to Fountain Towers by the shortest cut across the fields that afternoon when Mr. Ellis suggested vivisection as a possible occupation for Dr. Galbraith. They never doubted but that they should discover him hard at work, in some underground cellar most likely, to which they would be guided by the cries of his victims, and would be able to conquer his reluctance to allow them to a.s.sist at his experiments, by threats of exposure; and they were considerably chagrined when, having carefully concealed themselves in a thick shrubbery, in order to reconnoitre the house, they came upon him in the garden, innocently occupied in the idle pursuit of pruning rose trees.
He was somewhat startled himself when he suddenly saw their hot red faces, set like two moons in a clump of greenery, peeping out at him with animated eyes.
"Hollo!" he said. "Are you hungry?" The faces disappeared behind the bushes.
"Are we, Angelica?" Diavolo whispered anxiously.
"Of course we are," she retorted.
"I thought we were too angry--disgusted--disappointed--_something_"
he murmured apologetically, but evidently much relieved.
Dr. Galbraith went on with his pruning, and presently the twins appeared walking down the proper approach to the garden hand in hand demurely.
After they had saluted their host politely, they stood and stared at him.
"Well?" he said at last.
"I suppose we are too late?" said Angelica.
"For what?" he asked, without pausing in his occupation.