epting that the ash blonde hair of Hans was cropped still more
closely than that of Ella.

They had light blue glassy eyes, too far apart, thin lips, chalky skins
and perennial colds in the head. They breathed together, smiled and wept
together, rose and sat down together and wiped their noses
together--none too frequently. Never were such 'twinneous' twins as
Hansanella, and it was ridiculous to waste two names on them, for there
was not between them personality enough for one child.

When I requested Ella to be a pony it immediately became a span, for she
never moved without Hans. If the children chose Hans for the
father-bird, Ella intrusively and suffragistically fluttered into the
nest, too, sadly complicating the family arrangements. They seldom
spoke, but sat stolidly beside each other, laying the same patterns with
dogged pertinacity.

One morning a new little boy joined our company. As was often the case
he was shy about sitting down. It would seem as if the spectacle of
forty children working tranquilly together, would convince new
applicants that the benches contained no dynamite, but they always
parted with their dilapidated hats as if they never, in the nature of
things, could hope to see them again, and the very contact of their
persons with the benches evoked an uncontrollable wail, which seemed to
say: "It is all up with us now! Let the portcullis fall!"

The new boy's eye fell on Hansanella and he suddenly smiled broadly.

"Sit mit Owgoost!" he said.

"We haven't any 'August'," I responded, "that is Hans Dorflinger."

"Sit mit Owgoost," he repeated thickly and firmly.

"Is this boy a friend of yours, Hans?" I inquired, and the twins nodded
blandly.

"Is your other name August, Hans?"

This apparently was too complicated a question for the combined mental
activities of the pair, and they lapsed comfortably into their ordinary
state of coma.

The Corporal finally found the boy who originally foisted upon our
Paradise these two dullest human beings that ever drew breath. He
explained that I had entirely misunderstood his remarks. He said that he
heard I had accepted Hansanella Dorflinger, but they had moved with
their parents to Oakland; and as they could not come, he thought it well
to give the coveted places to August and Anna Olsen, whose mother worked
in a box-factory and would be glad to have the children looked after.

"What's the matter mit 'em?" he asked anxiously. "Ain't dey goot?"