moment enter his mind
that if he had met her stiffly in a drawing-room he might easily have
failed to fall in love with her at all. He cudgeled his brains to find
some way of meeting her again and meeting her often. He was to meet
her quite soon without any effort on his part.

It is possible that Mrs. Dangerfield had observed that Sir James had
been smitten by that emotional _coup de foudre_, for she was walking
with a much brisker step and there was a warmer color in her cheeks.

After he had bidden them good-by and had turned back to the Grange, she
said in a really cheerful tone:

"I expect Sir James finds it rather dull at the Grange after the
exciting life he had in Africa."

"Rather!", said the Twins with one quickly assenting voice.

She had not missed Sir James' sentence about the superiority of Erebus'
blackmailing to her fishing. But she knew the Twins far too well to
ask them for an explanation of it before him. None the less it clung
to her mind.

At supper therefore she said: "What did Sir James mean by calling you a
blackmailer, Erebus?"

The Terror knew from her tone that she was resolved to have the
explanation; and he said suavely:

"Oh, it was about the fishing."

"How--about the fishing?" said Mrs. Dangerfield quickly.

"Well, he didn't want to give us leave. In fact he never answered our
letter asking for it," said the Terror.

"And of course we couldn't stand that; and we had to make him," said
Erebus sternly.

"Make him? How did you make him?" said Mrs. Dangerfield.

The Terror told her.

Mrs. Dangerfield looked surprised and annoyed, but much less surprised
and annoyed than the ordinary mother would have looked on learning that
her offspring had blackmailed a complete stranger. She felt chiefly
annoyed by the fact that the complete stranger they had chosen to
blackmail should be Sir James.

"Then you did blackmail him," she said in a tone of dismay.

"He seemed to think that we were--like the Douglases used to," said the
Terror in an amiable tone.

"But surely you knew that blackmailing is very wrong--very wrong,
indeed," said Mrs. Dangerfield.

"Well, he _did_ seem to think so," said the Terror. "But we thought he
was prejudiced; and we didn't take much notice of him."

"And we couldn't possibly let him take no notice of our letter, Mum--it
was such a polite letter--and not take it out of him," said Erebus.

"And it hasn't done any harm, you know. We wanted tho