FOR some time the twins ignored the atmosphere of solemn mystery which pervaded their once so cheerful home. But when it finally reached the limit of their endurance they marched in upon their aunt and Fairy with an admirable admixture of dignity and indignation in their attitude.

"Who's haunted?" inquired Carol abruptly.

"Where's the criminal?" demanded Lark.

"Yes, little twins, talk English and maybe you'll learn something." And for the moment the anxious light in Fairy's eyes gave way to a twinkle. Sad indeed was the day when Fairy could not laugh at the twins.

"Then, in common vernacular, though it is really beneath us, what's up?"

Fairy turned innocently inquiring eyes toward the ceiling. "What indeed?"

"Oh, don't try to be dramatic, Fairy," counseled Lark. "You're too fat for a star-Starr."

The twins beamed at each other approvingly at this, and Fairy smiled. But Carol returned promptly to the charge. "Are Jerry and Prudence having domestic difficulties? There's something going on, and we want to know. Father looks like a fallen Samson, and—"

"A fallen Samson, Carol! Mercy! Where did you get it?"

"Yes, kind of sheepish, and ashamed, and yet hopeful of returning strength. That's art, a simile like that is.—Prudence writes every day, and you hide the letters. And Aunt Grace sneaks around like a convict with her hand under her apron. And you look as heavy-laden as if you were carrying Connie's conscience around with you."

Aunt Grace looked at Fairy, Fairy looked at Aunt Grace. Aunt Grace raised her eyebrows. Fairy hesitated, nodded, smiled. Slowly then Aunt Grace drew one hand from beneath her apron and showed to the eagerly watching twins, a tiny, hand embroidered dress. They stared at it, fascinated, half frightened, and then looked into the serious faces of their aunt and sister.

"I—I don't believe it," whispered Carol. "She's not old enough."

Aunt Grace smiled.

"She's older than mother was," said Fairy.

Lark took the little dress and examined it critically. "The neck's too small," she announced decidedly. "Nothing could wear that."

"We're using this for a pattern," said Fairy, lifting a yellowed, much worn garment from the sewing basket. "I wore this, and so did you and so did Connie,—my lovely child."

Carol rubbed her hand about her throat in a puzzled way. "I can't seem to realize that we ever grew out of that," she said slowly. "Is Prudence all right?"

"Yes, just fine."

The twins looked at each other bashfully. Then, "I'll bet there'll be no living with Jerry after this," said Lark.

"Oh, papa," lisped Carol, in a high-pitched voice supposed to represent the tone of a little child. They both giggled, and blinked hard to crowd back the tears that wouldn't stay choked down. Prudence! And that!

"And see here, twins, Prudence has a crazy notion that she wants to come home for it. She says she'll be scared in a hospital, and Jerry's willing to come here with her. What do you think about it?"

The twins looked doubtful. "They say it ought to be done in a hospital," announced Carol gravely. "Jerry can afford it."

"Yes, he wanted to. But Prudence has set her heart on coming home. She says she'll never feel that Jerry Junior got the proper start if it happens any place else. They'll have a trained nurse."

"Jerry—what?" gasped the twins, after a short silence due to amazement.

"Jerry Junior,—that's what they call it."

"But how on earth do they know?"

"They don't know. But they have to call it something, haven't they? And they want a Jerry Junior. So of course they'll get it. For Prudence is good enough to get whatever she wants."

"Hum, that's no sign," sniffed Carol. "I don't get everything I want, do I?"

The girls laughed, from habit not from genuine interest, at Carol's subtle insinuation.

"Well, shall we have her come?"

"Yes," said Carol, "but you tell Prue she needn't expect me to hold it until it gets too big to wiggle. I call them nasty, treacherous little things. Mrs. Miller made me hold hers, and it squirmed right off my knee. I wanted to spank it."

"And tell Prudence to uphold the parsonage and have a white one," added Lark. "These little Indian effects don't make a hit with me."

"Are you going to tell Connie?"

"I don't think so—yet. Connie's only fourteen."

"You tell her." Carol's voice was emphatic. "There's nothing mysterious about it. Everybody does it. And Connie may have a few suggestions of her own to offer. You tell Prue I'm thinking out a lot of good advice for her, and—"

"You must write her yourselves. She wanted us to tell you long before." Fairy picked up the little embroidered dress and kissed it, but her fond eyes were anxious.

So a few weeks later, weeks crowded full of tumult and anxiety, yes, and laughter, too, Prudence and Jerry came to Mount Mark and settled down to quiet life in the parsonage. The girls kissed Prudence very often, leaped quickly to do her errands, and touched her with nervous fingers. But mostly they sat across the room and regarded her curiously, shyly, quite maternally.

"Carol and Lark Starr," Prudence cried crossly one day, when she intercepted one of these surreptitious glances, "you march right up-stairs and shut yourselves up for thirty minutes. And if you ever sit around and stare at me like a stranger again, I'll spank you both. I'm no outsider. I belong here just as much as ever I did. And I'm still the head of things around here, too!"

The twins obediently marched, and after that Prudence was more like Prudence, and the twins were much more twinnish, so that life was very nearly normal in the old parsonage. Prudence said she couldn't feel quite satisfied because the twins were too old to be punished, but she often scolded them in her gentle teasing way, and the twins enjoyed it more than anything else that happened during those days of quiet.

Then came a night when the four sisters huddled breathlessly in the kitchen, and Aunt Grace and the trained nurse stayed with Prudence behind the closed door of the front room up-stairs. And the doctor went in, too, after he had inflicted a few light-hearted remarks upon the two men in the little library.

After that—silence, an immense hushing silence,—settled down over the parsonage. Jerry and Mr. Starr, alone in the library, where a faint odor of drugs, anesthetics, something that smelled like hospitals lingered, stared away from each other with persistent determination. Now and then Jerry walked across the room, but Mr. Starr stood motionless by the window looking down at the cherry tree beneath him, wondering vaguely how it dared to be so full of snowy blooms!

"Where are the girls?" Jerry asked, picking up a roll of cotton which had been left on the library table, and flinging it from him as though it scorched his fingers.

"I—think I'll go and see," said Mr. Starr, turning heavily.

Jerry hesitated a minute. "I—think I'll go along," he said.

For an instant their eyes met, sympathetically, and did not smile though their lips curved.

Down in the kitchen, meanwhile, Fairy sat somberly beside the table with a pile of darning which she jabbed at viciously with the needle. Lark was perched on the ice chest, but Carol, true to her childish instincts, hunched on the floor with her feet curled beneath her. Connie leaned against the table within reach of Fairy's hand.

"They're awfully slow," she complained once.

Nobody answered. The deadly silence clutched them.

"Oh, talk," Carol blurted out desperately. "You make me sick! It isn't anything to be so awfully scared about. Everybody does it."

A little mumble greeted this, and then, silence again. Whenever it grew too painful, Carol said reproachfully, "Everybody does it." And no one ever answered.

They looked up expectantly when the men entered. It seemed cozier somehow when they were all together in the little kitchen.

"Is she all right?"

"Sure, she's all right," came the bright response from their father. And then silence.

"Oh, you make me sick," cried Carol. "Everybody does it."

"Carol Starr, if you say 'everybody does it' again I'll send you to bed," snapped Fairy. "Don't we know everybody does it? But Prudence isn't everybody."

"Maybe we'd better have a lunch," suggested their father hopefully, knowing the thought of food often aroused his family when all other means had failed. But his suggestion met with dark reproach.

"Father, if you're hungry, take a piece of bread out into the woodshed," begged Connie. "If anybody eats anything before me I shall jump up and down and scream."

Their father smiled faintly and gave it up. After that the silence was unbroken save once when Carol began encouragingly:

"Every—"

"Sure they do," interrupted Fairy uncompromisingly.

And then—the hush.

Long, long after that, when the girls' eyes were heavy, not with want of sleep, but just with unspeakable weariness of spirit,—they heard a step on the stair.

"Come on up, Harmer," the doctor called. And then, "Sure, she's all right. She's fine and dandy,—both of them are."

Jerry was gone in an instant, and Mr. Starr looked after him with inscrutable eyes. "Fathers are—only fathers," he said enigmatically.

"Yes," agreed Carol.

"Yes. In a crisis, the other man goes first."

His daughters turned to him then, tenderly, sympathetically.

"You had your turn, father," Connie consoled him. And felt repaid for the effort when he smiled at her.

"They are both fine, you know," said Carol. "The doctor said so."

"We heard him," Fairy assured her.

"Yes, I said all the time you were all awfully silly about it. I knew it was all right. Everybody does it."

"Jerry Junior," Lark mused. "He's here.—'Aunt Lark, may I have a cooky?'"

A few minutes later the door was carefully shoved open by means of a cautious foot, and Jerry stood before them, holding in his arms a big bundle of delicately tinted flannel.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, beaming at them, his face flushed, his eyes bright, embarrassed, but thoroughly satisfied. Of course, Prudence was the dearest girl in the world, and he adored her, and—but this was different, this was Fatherhood!

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said again in the tender, half-laughing voice that Prudence loved, "let me introduce to you my little daughter, Fairy Harmer."

"Not—not Fairy!" cried Fairy, Senior, tearfully. "Oh, Jerry, I don't believe it. Not Fairy! You are joking."

"Of course it is Fairy," he said. "Look out, Connie, do you want to break part of my daughter off the first thing? Oh, I see. It was just the flannel, was it? Well, you must be careful of the flannel, for when ladies are the size of this one, you can't tell which is flannel and which is foot. Fairy Harmer! Here, grandpa, what do you think of this? And Prudence said to send you right up-stairs, and hurry. And the girls must go to bed immediately or they'll be sick to-morrow. Prudence says so."

"Oh, that's enough. That's Prudence all over! You needn't tell us any more. Here, Fairy Harmer, let us look at you. Hold her down, Jerry. Mercy! Mercy!"

"Isn't she a beauty?" boasted the young father proudly.

"A beauty? A beauty! That!" Carol rubbed her slender fingers over her own velvety cheek. "They talk about the matchless skin of a new-born infant. Thanks. I'd just as lief have my own."

"Oh, she isn't acclimated yet, that's all. Do you think she looks like me?"

"No, Jerry, I don't," said Lark candidly. "I never considered you a dream of loveliness by any means, but in due honesty I must admit that you don't look like that."

"Why, it hasn't any hair!" Connie protested.

"Well, give it time," urged the baby's father. "Be reasonable, Connie. What can you expect in fifteen minutes."

"But they always have a little hair," she insisted.

"No, indeed they don't, Miss Connie," he said flatly. "For if they always did, ours would have. Now, don't try to let on there's anything the matter with her, for there isn't.—Look at her nose, if you don't like her hair.—What do you think of a nose like that now? Just look at it."

"Yes, we're looking at it," was the grim reply.

"And—and chin,—look at her chin. See here, do you mean to say you are making fun of Fairy Harmer? Come on, tootsie, we'll go back up-stairs. They're crazy about us up there."

"Oh, see the cunning little footies," crowed Connie.

"Here, cover 'em up," said Jerry anxiously. "You mustn't let their feet stick out. Prudence says so. It's considered very—er, bad form, I believe."

"Fairy! Honestly, Jerry, is it Fairy? When did you decide?"

"Oh, a long time ago," he said, "years ago, I guess. You see, we always wanted a girl. Prue didn't think she had enough experience with the stronger sex yet, and of course I'm strong for the ladies. But it seems that what you want is what you don't get. So we decided to call her Fairy when she came, and then we wanted a boy, and talked boy, and got the girl! I guess it always works just that way, if you manage it cleverly. Come now, Fairy, you needn't wrinkle up that smudge of a nose at me.—Let go, Connie, it is my daughter's bedtime. There now, there now, baby, was she her daddy's little girl?"

Flushed and laughing, Jerry broke away from the admiring, giggling, nearly tearful girls, and hurried up-stairs with Jerry Junior.

But Fairy stood motionless by the door. "Prudence's baby," she whispered. "Little Fairy Harmer!—Mmmmmmm!"