e might talk about it;
and that wouldn't do at all," said the Terror.

"But there's nobody else to ask."

"I don't know about that. There's Wiggins' father. He knows a lot of
useful things besides higher mathematics. The only thing is, we must
do it in such a way that he doesn't see we're trying to get anything
out of him."

"Well, I should think we could do that. He's really quite simple,"
said Erebus.

"As long as _you_ understand what I'm driving at," said the Terror.

That evening they prepared eight more kittens for sale at Rowington
market, and carried them into Rowington directly after breakfast next
morning. Ellen told them, with some indignation, that two rival
poultry-sellers had both brought three kittens to sell. The Twins at
once went to inspect them, and came back with the cheering assurance
that those kittens were not a patch on those she was selling. They
were right, for Ellen sold all the eight before a rival sold one; and
the joyful Twins carried home eight more shillings toward the stole.

On the next three afternoons they rode forth with the intention of
coming upon Mr. Carrington by seeming accident; but it was not till the
third afternoon that they came upon him and Wiggins, walking briskly,
about three miles from Little Deeping.

The Twins, as a rule, were wont to shun Mr. Carrington. They had a
great respect for his attainments, but a much greater for his humor.
In Erebus, this respect often took the form of wriggling in his
presence. She did not know what he might say about her next. He was,
therefore, somewhat surprised when they slipped off their bicycles and
joined him. He wondered what they wanted.

Apparently, they were merely in a gregarious mood, yearning for the
society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk
was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants,
except from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the
devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside:
villages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live
undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give it the woods
to itself.

It seemed but a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was
not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he
bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to
the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact that the towns drained the
villages of a