"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs. Googe's after you finish your supper--you can leave it with the girl and tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to taste it, poor soul!" The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation came into their faces. "We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie. "Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near--I declare, I could understand my six boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having things--but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes to the next.--Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence. "'Coz we got scared--awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath. "Scared most to death," Doosie added solemnly. Both Mrs. Caukins and Aileen saw at once that the children were in earnest. "You look scared!" said Mrs. Caukins with withering scorn; "you've eaten a good supper if you were 'scared' as you say.--What scared you?" The twins looked down into their plates, the generally cleared-up appearance of which seemed fully to warrant their mother's sarcasm. "Luigi told us not to tell," said Dulcie in a low voice. "Luigi told you not to tell!" echoed their mother. "I'd like to know what right Luigi Poggi has to tell my children not to tell their mother anything and everything!" She spoke with waxing excitement; every motherly pin-feather was erect. "He was 'fraid it would scare you," ventured Doosie. "Scare me! He must have a pretty poor opinion of a woman that can raise six boys of her own and then be 'scared' at what two snips of girls can tell her. You'll tell me now, this very minute, what scared you--this all comes of your being away from the house so far and so late--and I won't have it." "We saw a bear--" "A big one--" "He was crawling on all fours--" "Back of the sheepfold wall--" "He scrooched down as if he was nosing for something--" "Just where the trees are so thick you can't see into the woods--"