But the moment she left them alone those same heads went up, and set
themselves in a listening attitude.
"_Now_, Diavolo; _quick_!" said Angelica, as soon as the sound
of her mother's departing footsteps had died away.
Diavolo dashed the picture-book to the opposite side of the room, sprang
up, and followed Angelica swiftly but stealthily to the very top of the
house.
When the wedding party assembled in the drawing room the twins were
nowhere to be found, Mr. Hamilton-Wells went peering through his eyeglass
into every corner, removed the glass and looked without it, then dusted
it, and looked once more to make sure, while Lady Adeline grew rigid with
nervous anxiety.
The search had to be abandoned, however; but when the party went down to
the carriages, it was discovered, to everybody's great relief, that the
children had already modestly taken their seats in one of them with their
backs to the horses. Each was carefully covered with an elegant wrap, and
sitting bolt upright, the picture of primness. The wraps were superfluous,
and Mr. Hamilton-Wells was about to remonstrate, but Lady Adeline
exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, _don't_ interfere! It is such a
_trifle_. If you irritate them, goodness knows _what_ will
happen."
But, manlike, he could not let things be.
"Where have you been, you naughty children?" he demanded in his precisest
way. "You have really given a great deal of trouble."
"Well, papa," Angelica retorted hotly, at the top of her voice through the
carriage window for the edification of the crowd, "you said we were to be
good children, and not get into everybody's way, and here we have been
sitting an hour as good as possible, and quite out of the way, and you
aren't satisfied! It's quite unreasonable; isn't it, Diavolo? Papa can't
get on, I believe, _without_ finding fault with us. It's just a bad
habit he's got, and when we give him no excuse he invents one."
Mr. Hamilton-Wells beat a hasty retreat, and the party arrived at the
church without mishap, but when the procession was formed there was a
momentary delay. They were waiting for the bride's page, who descended
with the youngest bridesmaid from the last carriage, and the two came into
the church demurely, hand in hand, "What darlings!" "Aren't they pretty?"
"What a sweet little boy, with his lovely dark curls!" was heard from all
sides; but there was also an audible titter. Lady Adeline turned pale,
Mrs. Frayling's fan dropped. Evadne lost her countenance. The twins had
changed clothes.
There was nothing to be done then, however; so Angelica obtained the
coveted pleasure of acting as page to Evadne, and Diavolo escaped the
trouble of having to hold up her train, and managed besides to have some
fun with a small but amorous boy who was to have been Angelica's pair, and
who, knowing nothing of the fraud which had been perpetrated, insisted on
kissing the fair Diavolo, to that young gentleman's lasting delight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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