"I wish I could see," he grumbled.
"Get out of your own light," said Angelica.
"How can I get out of my own light when there isn"t any light to get out of?"
Angelica put her paint brush in her mouth, and looked up at the window thoughtfully.
"Let"s make it into a song," she said.
"Let"s," said Diavolo, intent upon making blue and yellow into green.
"No light have we, and that we do resent, And, learning, this the weather will relent, Repent! Relent! Ah-men,"
Angelica sang. Diavolo paused with his brush halfway to his mouth, and nodded intelligently.
"Now!" said Angelica, and they repeated the parody together, Angelica making a perfect second to Diavolo"s exquisite treble.
Evadne looked up from her work surprised. Her own voice was contralto, but it would have taken her a week to learn to sing a second from the notes, and she had never dreamt of making one.
"I didn"t know you could sing," she said.
"Oh, yes, we can sing," Angelica answered cheerfully. "We"ve a decided talent for music."
"Angelica can make a song in a moment," said Diavolo. "Let me paint your nose green, Evadne."
"You can paint mine if you like," said Angelica.
"No, I shan"t. I shall paint my own."
"No, you paint mine, and I"ll paint yours," Angelica suggested.
"Well, both together, then," Diavolo answered.
"Honest Injin," Angelica agreed, and they set to work.
Evadne sat with her embroidery in her lap and watched them. Their faces would have to be washed in any case, and they might as well be washed for an acre as for an inch of paint. She never nagged with, "Don"t do this,"
and "Don"t do that" about everything, if their offences could be summed up, and wiped out in some such way all at once.
"We"ll sing you an anthem some day," Angelica presently promised.
"Why not now?" said Evadne.
"The spirit does not move us," Diavolo answered.
"But you may forget," said Evadne.
"We never forget our promises," Angelica protested as proudly as was possible with a green nose.
Nor did they, curiously enough. They made a point of keeping their word, but in their own way, and this one was kept in due course. The time they chose was when a certain Grand Duke was staying in the house. They had quite captivated him, and he expressed a wish to hear them sing.
"Shall we?" said Diavolo,
"We will," said Angelica, "Not because he"s a prince, but because we promised Evadne an anthem, and we might as well do it now," she added with true British independence.
The prince chuckled.
"What shall it be?" said Diavolo, settling himself at the piano. He always played the accompaniments.
"_Papa_, I think," said Angelica.
"What is "_Papa_"?" Lady Adeline asked anxiously.
"Very nice, or you wouldn"t have married him," answered Angelica. "Go on, Diavolo. If you sing flat, I"ll slap you."
"If you"re impertinent, miss, I"ll put you out," Diavolo retorted.
"Go on," said Evadne sharply, fearing a fight.
But to everybody"s intense relief the prince laughed, and then the twins"
distinguished manners appeared in a new and agreeable light.
"_Papa--Papa--Papa_,"--they sang--"_Papa says--that we--that we--that we are little devils! and so we are--we are--we are and ever shall be--world without end_."
"_I am a chip_," Diavolo trilled exquisitely; "_I am a chip_."
"_Thou art a chip--Thou art a chip_," Angelica responded.
"_We are both chips_," they concluded harmoniously--"_chips of the old--old block! And as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!_"
"You sang that last phrase flat you--_pulp!_" cried Angelica.
"I can"t both sing and play," Diavolo protested.
"You"ll say you can"t eat and breathe next," she retorted, giving his hair a tug.
"What did you do that for?" he demanded.
"Just to waken you up," she answered.
"Are they always like this?" the prince asked, much edified.
"This is nothing," groaned Mr. Hamilton-Wells.
"Nothing if it is not genius," the prince suggested gracefully.
"The ineffectual genius of the nineteenth century I fancy, which betrays itself by strange incongruities and contrasts of a violent kind, but is otherwise unproductive," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered to Mr. Frayling incautiously.
Lady Adeline looked up: "I could not help hearing," she said.