Poor,
poor Hillsdale!" Agony, jubilant, waved her parasol around her head
wildly. "Come to dinner Friday night," she said, "and we'll work out the
details. That is the last night father is to be home. There's another
guest coming, an artist who has just come to town. Father met him on
the train and is quite taken with him. What do you think of my father?"
she wound up.

"He's very grand looking, but jolly, too," said Sahwah.

"Lots of people are afraid of father," Agony chatted on. "He's Assistant
District Attorney in Philadelphia, you know. He is always gentle with
us, but he can be very stern with people when he wants to. They say that
prisoners always quail before him in the court room and that witnesses
dread to be cross-examined by him. He has a way of piercing people
through with his eyes that makes them lose their nerve and they always
confess. He's been merciless in his prosecution of slackers and draft
evaders and has made himself quite famous. There was an article about
him in one of the Sunday papers recently."

"_Oh!"_ murmured the Winnebagos, quite impressed.

The big grandfather clock on the stairs chimed eleven and the Twins
jumped up hastily. "We've got to go this minute!" exclaimed Agony.
"Grandmother is not at home this morning and I left a kettleful of peas
boiling on the stove. They're probably burned to cinders by this time!"

Evidently the fate of the peas did not weigh very heavily on Agony's
conscience, for she made her adieux leisurely, and paused frequently to
look about her admiringly.

This was the first time she had ever been inside of the historical old
Carver House, although she had seen it many times from the outside.
Uncle Jasper Carver had not been a man of sociable habits, and but few
of the townspeople ever came to see him. Agony and Oh-Pshaw had only
lived in Oakwood for the past four years, having been born in
Philadelphia and spending their early school days there. At the death of
their mother, four years before, they had come to live with their
grandmother in Oakwood.

The Carver house, viewed from the outside, had been a source of much
curiosity and speculation when the twins, in their rambles about Oakwood
in the long warm summer evenings, would walk past and stop to admire the
stately old mansion set in its old-fashioned garden, and many were the
schemes they talked over for gaining admittance and seeing it on the
inside.

And now, out of a clear sky, their beloved fr