em could throw
stones quicker, straighter and harder than any one of their size and
weight for miles and miles round; and they had thrown some fifty at the
bull-terrier before they had convinced that dense, but irritated,
quadruped that his master's interests did not really demand his
presence in the orchard; and of these some thirty had hit him. Violet
Anastasia Dangerfield, who always took the most favorable view of her
experience, claimed twenty hits out of a possible thirty; Hyacinth
Wolfram Dangerfield, in a very proper spirit, had at once claimed the
same number; and both of them were defending their claims with loud
vehemence, because if you were not loudly vehement, your claim lapsed.

Suddenly Hyacinth Wolfram, as usual, closed the discussion; he said
firmly, "I tell you what: we both hit that dog the same number of
times."

So saying, he swung round the rude calico bag, bulging with booty,
which hung from his shoulders, and took from it two Ribston pippins.

"Perhaps we did," said Anastasia amiably. They went swiftly down the
road, munching in a peaceful silence.

It had been an odd whim of nature to make the Twins so utterly unlike.
No stranger ever took Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, so dark-eyed,
dark-haired, dark-skinned, of so rich a coloring, so changeful and
piquant a face, for the cousin, much less for the twin-sister, of
Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield, so fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed,
on whose firmly chiseled features rested so perpetual, so contrasting a
serenity. But it was a whim of man, of their wicked uncle Sir Maurice
Falconer, that had robbed them of their pretty names. He had named
Violet "Erebus" because, he said,

She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry spheres:

and he had forthwith named Hyacinth the "Terror" because, he said, the
ill-fated Sir John Franklin had made the Terror the eternal companion
of Erebus.

Erebus and the Terror they became. Even their mother never called them
by their proper pretty names save in moments of the severest
displeasure.

"They're good apples," said the Terror presently, as he threw away the
core of his third and took two more from the bag.

"They are," said Erebus in a grateful tone--"worth all the trouble we
had with that dog."

"We'd have cleared him out of the orchard in half the time, if we'd had
our catapults and bullets. It was hard luck being made to promise
never to use catapults again," said t