Mrs. Wimple hurried from the kitchen and reached the living room in time to prevent mayhem. The twins, aged one year, were painfully entangled with one another on the floor. The twin Ronald had conceived the idea that perhaps the twin Dugald's thumb was edible, and was testing five or six of his newly acquired teeth upon it. Childe Dugald had been inspired by his daemon with the notion that one of Childe Ronald's ears might be detachable, and was endeavouring to detach it. The situation was but too evidently distressing to both of them, but neither seemed capable of the mental initiative necessary to end it. Even when little Ronald opened his mouth to scream, little Dugald did not remove the thumb. Mrs. Wimple unscrambled them, wiped their noses, gave them rattles, rubber dolls, and goats to wreak themselves upon, and returned to the kitchen thinking (for she did not lack her humorous gleams) that the situation in the living room bore a certain resemblance to the situation in the kitchen. She and Ferdinand bit and scratched figuratively, but they had not the initiative to break loose from one another. Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, but he stopped when she entered and sang at her: “And _why_ did the maid leave?” “You know why she left, Ferd.” “She left,” chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' clothing viciously with a wooden paddle, “because...” But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he said it, falls naturally into the freer sort of verse: “She left [sang Mr. Wimple] Because her discontent... Her individual discontent, Which is a part of the current general discontent Of all the labouring classes... Was constantly aggravated By your jarring personality, Mrs. Wimple! There is no harmony in this house, Mrs. Wimple; No harmony!” Mrs. Wimple replied in sordid prose: “She left because she was offered more money elsewhere, and we couldn't afford to meet the difference.” Something like a sob vibrated through Mr. Wimple's opulent voice as he rejoined: