"There were once two little girls--twins," began the old doctor, significantly, the day Bep and Fom were vaccinated, after battling desperately against precedence, in the doctor's very office. "Now all twins love each other dearly." The twins looked at him pityingly. To be so old and so ignorant! "Yes, they do," he insisted. "Everybody knows they're fonder of each other than the closest sisters." Bep glanced at Fom and Fom looked at Bep; there was something almost Chinese in the irony of their eyes; they knew just how fond of each other sisters can be! But they politely suppressed their incredulous grins. "Well," resumed the old doctor, realizing how lacking in conviction his comparison might seem to a Madigan, "well, these twins were the exception: they did not love each other." There was an interested movement from Bep. "They hated each other." Fom looked up eagerly; there was something human about such a tale. She felt her respect for Dr. Murchison reviving. "They fought from morning till night. There was never a moment's peace when the two were together. Each was so jealous of the other that she would rather do without, herself, than share with her twin. It was disgraceful." The twins leaned forward, charmed. The doctor looked over his spectacles at them; there was no mistaking the effect he had produced. "Everybody warned them that unless they stopped squabbling, something dreadful would happen to them. But they never believed it till one day--" The twins held their breath. Dr. Murchison went to the library and took out a book. He knew the value of a dramatic pause. "--till one day they waked up in the morning and found that they were--stuck--fast--together--for life! Everything the dark one had she just had to share with her twin. And everywhere she went her lazy blonde sister had to go, too. People made up a terrible name for them. They called them"--he lowered his voice to the apologetic tone one has for not quite proper subjects--"the 'Siamese Twins,' and--if you don't believe me, here's their picture!" With a quick movement he opened the book before them. The twins' faces went gray; in that second they even looked alike, so tense were both with the same emotion. Instinctively they made a swift motion, a dumb prayer for sympathy, toward each other; then as swiftly shuddered apart as though temporary contact might become lifelong bondage. But as the months went by and they remained mercifully unattached (though battling still in their double capacity of Madigans and twins), they almost outgrew their credulity; yet still, on occasions, observed the morning ceremony of self-inspection. In fact, though, nothing held them in peace together except sleep, when nature must have reunited them in dreams; for, no matter in what positions they were relatively when they closed their eyes, morning found their arms about each other, their breath intermingled, their little bodies intercurved like well-packed sardines.