IF Miss Caxton's father had been called on to give a detailed account of Miss Caxton's life, he would have described it as a perpetual round of gaiety. By what process of reasoning he arrived at any such conclusion is known only to himself; but from out the depths of his ignorance this belief had sprung, and it bore fruit in an inclination to curtail any pleasure other than the purely domestic in which Miss Caxton might have desired to indulge.

It was his custom to observe that if one had a good home, that home was decidedly the best place for one, and on occasions when he knew Miss Caxton was desirous of spending an evening out, it was his wont to introduce this statement at the supper table, as the moral to sundry fables.

Likewise he manufactured numerous fictitious conversations supposed to have taken place between himself and others, in which Miss Caxton was held up as a shining example of domesticity; then he would light his cigar and saunter downtown to play at whist until a late hour of the night.

That there was anything incongruous in his conduct or any discrepancy between his words and his acts never occurred to him.

Once, when Miss Caxton ventured to point out this apparent difference in word and deed, he had explained that the noise the children made wore upon his nerves—but he was quite sure that no man loved his home more than he did, and that when Thaddeus, Roderick and Leander, the twin, grew up and attained a decent age, he would greatly enjoy spending an evening now and then with his family. Nothing could have induced him to believe that the noise wore upon Miss Caxton's nerves. He knew very well that women liked that sort of thing immensely.

He was not a man of imaginative temperament, or he might have wondered what he would have done had there been no elder sister to look after the children when Miss Caxton's mother followed the youthful Leander's mate out of this world. If this thought ever gained a place in his mind, he had put it aside with the convincing argument that in supplying the little boys with an elder sister he had placed himself beyond reproach. Miss Caxton was a living proof of that forethought that marked the serious operations of his life; nor was Miss Caxton overlooked in this happy adjustment; she had Thaddeus and Roderick, not to mention the twin—and even half a twin was better than no twin at all.

This satisfactory arrangement had continued for some years, when the advent of The Fool upon the scene disturbed the serenity of the Caxton household. Of course The Fool was not the name bestowed upon him by his sponsors in baptism; it was an appellation conferred by Miss Caxton's indignant parent, and he only made use of it in his daughter's hearing. That any one else should slip in and supplant him in his daughter's affection—while he was away playing whist, filled him with indignation. He also was astonished that his daughter should seem to care for The Fool. Though he seldom saw him, he was aware that most of his unoccupied time was spent in Miss Caxton's society, and he also knew that each night, as he came in at one door The Fool was taking his leave of Miss Caxton at another. But the young man's departure was so nicely timed with reference to the charms of whist that he had never actually set eyes upon him in Miss Caxton's presence.

Never before having come in contact with the inevitable, Miss Caxton's father had a poor opinion of it. He began a vigorous campaign, in which he was uniformly worsted. They had Bunker Hill for breakfast, Miss Caxton triumphantly crossed the Delaware for dinner and Cornwallis surrendered at supper time, and withdrew to play whist, leaving Miss Caxton and The Fool in possession of the field.

Miss Caxton's ability to keep her temper and preserve that equanimity which was her most marked characteristic, gave her undoubted eminence in this species of warfare—for the cloud of battle hung forever over the house. Her calmness exasperated her father more than any words could have done.

Under these trying circumstances a man of less fixed habits would have taken to drink as a means of relief—Miss Caxton's father took to abusing the children. The little boys and the twin began to lead a dog's life, particularly the youthful Leander, who seemed to possess a great though unconscious power of enraging his parent far in excess of all endurance. At dinner and supper, the only meals they took with their father, they were barely permitted to speak in whispers, and then only to make known their wants in the most direct English at their command. This had a repressing tendency on youthful spirit.

How long it would have been possible for this happy state of affairs to have continued there is no telling. Miss Caxton saw fit to firing matters to a crisis. One day, in company with The Fool, she left the paternal roof; at the same time she despatched a communication to her father, requesting his immediate presence at home. When he received the summons it had a mystifying effect upon him, but in obedience to the request, he repaired to the scene of his domestic joys. He had no sooner crossed the threshold than something within him corresponding to intuition made manifest to his mind's eye that all was not right. The little boys were not visible; even Leander's voice was hushed. Most assuredly something was wrong.

But what?

Miss Caxton's father inspected the various rooms comprising his establishment. In his own room he found, conspicuously tucked in one corner of his looking-glass, a neatly folded note, directed to himself in Miss Caxton's familiar hand. This evidently was meant to explain the mystery. He tore it open. He read it. Then he read it over.

That the contents of the note were exercising a powerful and not wholly pacifying influence upon him was easy to be seen. Miss Caxton had eloped with The Fool.

She asked him to look after the children until she should return, which would be as soon as she was married. Miss Caxton's father held the note out toward his angry reflection in the glass:

“Here's gratitude for you! Well, she needn't come back home,—I'm done with her!”

Then, being only a man, he swore; and while he swore he made up his mind to a course of action that he intended should very much astonish Miss Caxton, when that young lady returned as Mrs. Some-body-else.

“Does she think I'll stand this? I see myself forgiving her. If I lay my hands on The Fool he'll spend his honeymoon with broken bones!”

Suddenly he bethought him of the little boys. They no doubt had availed themselves of the absence of all restraining force to do as they pleased. As this flashed through his mind he turned a trifle pale. He rather regretted that he had been so severe with Leander, for supposing—

He ran down-stairs and into the yard, only stopping to glance at the kitchen stove with a vague dread lest Leander had crawled into it and been cremated. On reaching the yard he examined the well, and was greatly relieved to find it empty of everything except water.

Then he espied the little boys with the twin between them perched upon the roof of a convenient coal shed in the rear of the house, whither they had withdrawn, knowing that something unusual was about to happen. The instant his eyes fell upon him his habitual acrimony for the twin asserted itself:

“Come down off of that! Do you want to break your necks?” he gasped. “Come down, I say!”

This the little boys were reluctant to do. They knew their father as an exceedingly irate gentleman. Therefore, when they caught sight of him, it begot no special joy in their hearts. Roderick and Thaddeus started to descend from the roof, while the twin, lifting up his voice, howled forth his dismay.

“Hold on to the twin!” called Miss Caxton's father. “Do you wish him to fall?”

What activity the little boys possessed was dispelled by their father's evident anger. They sat upon the ridge of the roof, motionless and speechless. Their parent inspected the premises.

“How in the name of sense did you get up there?”

A sob from Leander was the only answer. Thaddeus and Roderick maintained a discreet silence.

Miss Caxton's father was a very busy man for the next fifteen minutes. He obtained a long pole and poked the little boys off the roof, one at a time, beginning with the twin; then as they rolled from the shed he ran and caught them. A good deal of physical energy was required in the operation, and when Roderick was dislodged, he being the last, Miss Caxton's parent was hot and exhausted; there was also a baleful gleam in his eyes, suggestive of the wrath to come.

He picked up the twin, whose small lungs seemed to distil shrieks, and followed by the little boys who sulked at his side, entered the house. During the next hour or two he gained a larger experience in the pure joys of domestic life than are usually crowded into so brief a period.

He gave Roderick and Thaddeus their supper—and something else as well—and put them to bed. Then he took Leander in hand, and tried to get his faculties into a condition for sleep.

The twin refused to be comforted; he wanted Miss Caxton, and Miss Caxton only. It was the burden of his woes. His father looked at him. In his glance paternal love seemed to be in abeyance.

“You'd better make up your mind to going to bed without her, for she's put you to sleep for the last time.”

Whereat Leander howled afresh.

“If you don't stop and let me have a moment's quiet, I shall punish you. You hear?”

Leander choked down a sob and was silent.

“There,” said his father approvingly, “I guess we can get along all right. Now, you go to sleep—right off.”

Leander's sobs broke forth again.

“What's the matter now?”

More sobs and a howl.

“I thought I told you to keep still. Why don't you?”

Then he grew persuasive.

“Don't you love your papa?”

The twin looked at him with wide eyes.

“I am appealing to his better self,” reflected Miss Caxton's parent. “The instinct of affection that a child has is a most wonderful thing, a wonderful thing.”

Leander dissolved into tears.

“Hang the brat! What's got into him now?”

Miss Caxton's parent arose and paced the floor. Leander's grief continued unchecked. His father regarded him in amazement; the twin's capacity for sorrow was very astonishing; and his anger merged into something akin to wonder.

“He must be very wet inside,” he thought

He addressed the twin in conciliatory tones.

“See here, Leander, do you think it safe to cry like that?”

But Leander, unheeding him, wept on, in a highly original manner. His father grew uneasy.

“Why doesn't he stop? Hush! There! There! To please papa, who loves you so much. Confound you! How long is this going to last—will it be all night?” he asked himself.

His resentment was weakening. Each sob of the twin lessened the enormity of Miss Caxton's crime. Her father was willing to take her back at any price—and The Fool into the bargain. In desperation he brought the sugar bowl and placed it as an offering of peace at Leander's feet.

“That should stop him,” he muttered.

But it didn't. With a guilty blush he went down upon his knees in a vain effort to seduce the twin in the belief that he was a horse. He was in this interesting position when Miss Caxton opened the door and entered, smiling and serene. The Fool was with her, but he was by no means so serene as he could have wished to be and his smile was not an easy one.

Miss Caxton mastered the situation at a glance. Without a word she possessed herself of the twin's small person.

“I am sorry, papa, that you missed your game of whist, but it won't occur again,” she said, as she walked from the room.

When she returned twenty minutes later, after having put Leander to bed, she found her father peacefully drinking cold tea—“to restore the tone to his nervous system,” as he explained—while he gave The Fool a detailed and truthful account of his adventure with the twin.