trance of two small figures,
is carefully closed again, and the two small figures, with a military
salute from the boy, a bob, conscientiously intended for a curtsey, from
the girl, advance a step or two into the room.

"Grandmamma," say the two high-pitched baby voices, speaking so exactly
together that they sound but as one. "Grandmamma, it's '_us_.'"

Still no response. Grandmamma is not indifferent--far from it--but just
at this moment her netting is at a critical stage impossible to
disregard; she _thinks_ to herself "wait a moment, my dears," and is
quite under the impression that she has said it aloud; this is a
mistake, but all the same "my dears" do wait a moment--several moments
indeed, hand-in-hand, uncomplainingly, without indeed the very faintest
notion in their faithful little hearts that there is anything to
complain of--there are _some_ lessons to be learnt from children long
ago, I think,--while Grandmamma tries to secure her knots.

Look at them while they stand there; it is always a good plan to save
time, and we have a minute or two to spare. They are so alike in size
and colour and feature that if it had not been that one was a boy and
the other a girl, there would have been no telling them apart. Before
Duke was put into the first stage of boy-attire--what that exactly was
in those days I confess I am not sure--they never _had_ been told apart
was the fact of the matter, till one day the brilliant idea struck
Grandmamma of decorating little Pamela with a coral necklace. She little
knew what she was about; both babies burst into howling distress, and
were not to be quieted even when the unlucky beads were taken away; no,
indeed, they only cried the more. Grandmamma and Nurse were at their
wits' end, and Grandpapa's superior intelligence had at last to be
appealed to. And not in vain.

"They must _each_ have one," said Grandpapa solemnly. And so it had to
be. In consequence of which fine sense of justice and firm determination
on the part of the babies, they went on "not being told apart" till, as
I said, the day came when Marmaduke's attire began to be cut after a
different fashion, and by degrees he arrived at his present dignity of
nankin suits complete. Such funny suits you would think them
now--funnier even than Pamela's white frock, with its skirt to the
ankles and blue-sashed waist up close under the arm-pits, for even if
she walked in just as I describe her you would only call her "a
Kate