JUST FOR FUN
The twins were in the nursery the next morning, when Jane told them
that their father had gone away at an early hour, on business.
"Thomas will take you to the station," said Jane.
"What dreadful luck!" sighed Gay.
"Perfectly dreadful!" echoed May.
Not that they disliked Thomas. On the contrary, they liked him very
well, but they had anticipated much pleasure in going to the station in
their father's company; to be deprived of this was to have their cup of
sorrow filled to overflowing.
"You must dress yourselves this morning," continued Jane. "Nurse is
busy with your mother and I must take care of baby. I've laid out your
clothes; when you are dressed go right down to breakfast; you've no
time to play. Mary has baked some little muffins for you, and you can
have orange marmalade and raspberry jam, both. Now, make haste." And
busy Jane hurried away.
"Muffins! Does Jane think muffins will make us happy?" cried Gay,
scornfully.
"It was good of Mary to bake them for us," said May, secretly thinking
that hot muffins and marmalade were sovereign aids to happiness, though
she did not dare to say so to Gay.
"Well, let's hurry up," said Gay, darting, with the swiftness of a
swallow, into his room.
May was more deliberate in her movements, or, rather, her method of
making her toilet differed somewhat from her brother's. With May, a
bath was a preliminary operation; with Gay, it came last and could
scarcely be called a bath at all, since he simply dipped his face and
hands in the basin, and ignored the tub altogether, except upon such
occasions as Jane enforced a thorough scrubbing. Family statistics show
this dislike to soap and water to be a chronic ailment among boys from
seven to fourteen years of age, but Gay always explained it by saying
he was "rushed for time."
May was just pattering in from the bath-room when Gay emerged from his
room fully dressed—more fully dressed, in fact, than he had been for a
number of years.
"Why, Gay Walcott, you've got on my clothes!" May cried.
"I know it," replied Gay, piroueting airily around the room. "Jane must
be crazy; she put your clothes in my room."
May ran into her room. "And yours in here," said she. "Come and get
them, and give me mine."
"Try on mine—just for fun," urged Gay. "We'll see if Jane can tell the
difference—which is which."
"There isn't time," objected May, rather faintly.
"There's lots of time," said Gay, who was never "rushed" when there was
a chance for a prank.
When May came out of her room wearing Gay's clothes they stared at each
other an instant, then ran to the mirror and stood before it, side by
side, and stared at their reflections there.
"Oh!" cried May, "I am not sure that I am I!"
"You are not you," Gay answered, "you are I, and I am you. I hear Jane
coming! What do you suppose she'll say?"
"Dear, dear!" cried Jane, bustling into the room. "Don't stand there
looking into the glass. Why won't you hurry? You should have been half
through breakfast by this time. Why, how clean your hands and face are,
Master Gay—and I declare, you've actually brushed your hair!"
Jane looked from one to the other in unfeigned amazement. May giggled,
but neither spoke.
"I'm surprised," Jane began, giving May a reproving glance. "Your sash
isn't straight, Miss May. Turn around."
The sash was somewhat awry, for Gay, unaccustomed to such fripperies,
had tied it under his left shoulder blade. He turned round and Jane
fixed it, then giving his borrowed skirt several twitches, she said:
"Seems to me you don't look quite as well as usual, Miss May. If you
get untidy while your ma's sick she'll feel awful bad. But run along,
now, to breakfast."
The twins exchanged significant glances: Jane had not detected them,
May was about to exonerate herself from the charge of untidiness when
Gay whispered: "Don't tell till we've tried it on Thomas and Mary."
"But——" May commenced.
"Let the goats butt; don't you try it, May!" said frolicsome Gay,
pulling her after him out of the nursery.
In the dining-room Thomas and breakfast awaited them.
"Good morning, Thomas," said the mock May, very glibly.
"Good morning, Miss," responded unsuspicious Thomas. "Good morning,
Master Gay."
"Good morning," replied the mock boy, not less glibly than the other
conspirator.
"How do you think we look, Thomas," Gay continued; "as well as usual?"
"You look fine, Miss, fine," Thomas answered. "As for Master Gay
there, I've never seen him look so neat."
This evidence of Thomas's mystification delighted the twins almost
beyond concealment. They would have betrayed themselves had not Mary,
the cook, appeared upon the scene. She carried two pasteboard boxes and
she gave one to each of the children, saying, "Yer luncheon, dharlin',
for ye'll be afther gettin' hungry on the cars. There's rolls, an' ham,
an' fowl, an' harrd biled eggs, an'——"
"And little cakes!" interrupted May, with a scream of delight.
"Yes,—wid icin'," Mary replied, with a broad smile, for the twins were
her especial pets. "But I niver knew that ye liked cake; I t'ought it
was Miss May what had the swate toot!"
Gay and May smiled appreciatively at Mary's mistake. They were trying
to explain to her that their gastronomical tastes were similar when
nurse sailed majestically into the room.
"Mary," said she, "h'I'll see you h'in the kitchen. Thomas, 'urry hup;
you must go h'in ten minutes. Children, Jane wants you h'in the 'all."
Before coming to America, nurse had been under-nurse-maid in an
aristocratic English family, but from her deportment one would have
supposed her to have been nurse to the Queen's own children. So
majestic, pompous, and domineering was she that no one ventured to
oppose or question her control. Therefore, when she ordered the group
in the dining-room to separate they promptly separated without murmur
or ado!
"They never suspected anything!" chuckled Gay, as he left the room with
May. "We really must try it on mother, then we'll tell."
But Jane's first words when they reached the hall destroyed all hope of
testing the mother.
"You mustn't fuss," Jane began, "you must be good and not make any
trouble, but the doctor says you can't see your ma before you go."
"Why not?" the twins demanded in one voice.
"Because the doctor says if she gets as nervous to-day as she did
yesterday that he won't answer for the consequences. She must be kept
perfectly quiet."
"If it's for mother's good——" Gay began.
"It is for her good," Jane said.
"Then we won't fuss," sighed May.
"That's a good fellow," cried Jane, patting the mock boy's head.
May made up her mouth to tell Jane the truth, when nurse and Thomas
joined them; Thomas, with Ned on his shoulder, and nurse carrying
wraps, hats, and the lunch-boxes.
"Mercy hun h'us!" nurse exclaimed, "you h'ought to be h'off now."
As she spoke she seized the real May, and, before the child could
speak, buttoned her into a jacket and set a tarpaulin sailor on her
head.
The real Gay had his turn next. Nurse shook him into a light ulster and
fastened a straw hat, trimmed with daisies, on his head by an elastic
band which snapped under his chin with a loud noise.
All this time the twins had been struggling to speak. "But, nurse,"
they began, impetuously, for this was carrying the joke too far, "we——"
"You can say good-by to Ned when you come 'ome," said nurse, who
thought they wanted to waste valuable time in farewells. "H'off with
you!"
The real May was a picture of distress, but her more volatile brother
seized her by the hand and whispered: "Never mind; it's only keeping up
the lark; I've got the worst of it, too, in these horrid skirts."