The twins were in the nursery the next morning, when Jane told them that their father had gone away at an early hour, on business.

"Thomas will take you to the station," said Jane.

"What dreadful luck!" sighed Gay.

"Perfectly dreadful!" echoed May.

Not that they disliked Thomas. On the contrary, they liked him very well, but they had anticipated much pleasure in going to the station in their father's company; to be deprived of this was to have their cup of sorrow filled to overflowing.

"You must dress yourselves this morning," continued Jane. "Nurse is busy with your mother and I must take care of baby. I've laid out your clothes; when you are dressed go right down to breakfast; you've no time to play. Mary has baked some little muffins for you, and you can have orange marmalade and raspberry jam, both. Now, make haste." And busy Jane hurried away.

"Muffins! Does Jane think muffins will make us happy?" cried Gay, scornfully.

"It was good of Mary to bake them for us," said May, secretly thinking that hot muffins and marmalade were sovereign aids to happiness, though she did not dare to say so to Gay.

"Well, let's hurry up," said Gay, darting, with the swiftness of a swallow, into his room.

May was more deliberate in her movements, or, rather, her method of making her toilet differed somewhat from her brother's. With May, a bath was a preliminary operation; with Gay, it came last and could scarcely be called a bath at all, since he simply dipped his face and hands in the basin, and ignored the tub altogether, except upon such occasions as Jane enforced a thorough scrubbing. Family statistics show this dislike to soap and water to be a chronic ailment among boys from seven to fourteen years of age, but Gay always explained it by saying he was "rushed for time."

May was just pattering in from the bath-room when Gay emerged from his room fully dressed—more fully dressed, in fact, than he had been for a number of years.

"Why, Gay Walcott, you've got on my clothes!" May cried.

"I know it," replied Gay, piroueting airily around the room. "Jane must be crazy; she put your clothes in my room."

May ran into her room. "And yours in here," said she. "Come and get them, and give me mine."

"Try on mine—just for fun," urged Gay. "We'll see if Jane can tell the difference—which is which."

"There isn't time," objected May, rather faintly.

"There's lots of time," said Gay, who was never "rushed" when there was a chance for a prank.

When May came out of her room wearing Gay's clothes they stared at each other an instant, then ran to the mirror and stood before it, side by side, and stared at their reflections there.

"Oh!" cried May, "I am not sure that I am I!"

"You are not you," Gay answered, "you are I, and I am you. I hear Jane coming! What do you suppose she'll say?"

"Dear, dear!" cried Jane, bustling into the room. "Don't stand there looking into the glass. Why won't you hurry? You should have been half through breakfast by this time. Why, how clean your hands and face are, Master Gay—and I declare, you've actually brushed your hair!"

Jane looked from one to the other in unfeigned amazement. May giggled, but neither spoke.

"I'm surprised," Jane began, giving May a reproving glance. "Your sash isn't straight, Miss May. Turn around."

The sash was somewhat awry, for Gay, unaccustomed to such fripperies, had tied it under his left shoulder blade. He turned round and Jane fixed it, then giving his borrowed skirt several twitches, she said: "Seems to me you don't look quite as well as usual, Miss May. If you get untidy while your ma's sick she'll feel awful bad. But run along, now, to breakfast."

The twins exchanged significant glances: Jane had not detected them, May was about to exonerate herself from the charge of untidiness when Gay whispered: "Don't tell till we've tried it on Thomas and Mary."

"But——" May commenced.

"Let the goats butt; don't you try it, May!" said frolicsome Gay, pulling her after him out of the nursery.

In the dining-room Thomas and breakfast awaited them.

"Good morning, Thomas," said the mock May, very glibly.

"Good morning, Miss," responded unsuspicious Thomas. "Good morning, Master Gay."

"Good morning," replied the mock boy, not less glibly than the other conspirator.

"How do you think we look, Thomas," Gay continued; "as well as usual?"

"You look fine, Miss, fine," Thomas answered. "As for Master Gay there, I've never seen him look so neat."

This evidence of Thomas's mystification delighted the twins almost beyond concealment. They would have betrayed themselves had not Mary, the cook, appeared upon the scene. She carried two pasteboard boxes and she gave one to each of the children, saying, "Yer luncheon, dharlin', for ye'll be afther gettin' hungry on the cars. There's rolls, an' ham, an' fowl, an' harrd biled eggs, an'——"

"And little cakes!" interrupted May, with a scream of delight.

"Yes,—wid icin'," Mary replied, with a broad smile, for the twins were her especial pets. "But I niver knew that ye liked cake; I t'ought it was Miss May what had the swate toot!"

Gay and May smiled appreciatively at Mary's mistake. They were trying to explain to her that their gastronomical tastes were similar when nurse sailed majestically into the room.

"Mary," said she, "h'I'll see you h'in the kitchen. Thomas, 'urry hup; you must go h'in ten minutes. Children, Jane wants you h'in the 'all."

Before coming to America, nurse had been under-nurse-maid in an aristocratic English family, but from her deportment one would have supposed her to have been nurse to the Queen's own children. So majestic, pompous, and domineering was she that no one ventured to oppose or question her control. Therefore, when she ordered the group in the dining-room to separate they promptly separated without murmur or ado!

"They never suspected anything!" chuckled Gay, as he left the room with May. "We really must try it on mother, then we'll tell."

But Jane's first words when they reached the hall destroyed all hope of testing the mother.

"You mustn't fuss," Jane began, "you must be good and not make any trouble, but the doctor says you can't see your ma before you go."

"Why not?" the twins demanded in one voice.

"Because the doctor says if she gets as nervous to-day as she did yesterday that he won't answer for the consequences. She must be kept perfectly quiet."

"If it's for mother's good——" Gay began.

"It is for her good," Jane said.

"Then we won't fuss," sighed May.

"That's a good fellow," cried Jane, patting the mock boy's head.

May made up her mouth to tell Jane the truth, when nurse and Thomas joined them; Thomas, with Ned on his shoulder, and nurse carrying wraps, hats, and the lunch-boxes.

"Mercy hun h'us!" nurse exclaimed, "you h'ought to be h'off now."

As she spoke she seized the real May, and, before the child could speak, buttoned her into a jacket and set a tarpaulin sailor on her head.

The real Gay had his turn next. Nurse shook him into a light ulster and fastened a straw hat, trimmed with daisies, on his head by an elastic band which snapped under his chin with a loud noise.

All this time the twins had been struggling to speak. "But, nurse," they began, impetuously, for this was carrying the joke too far, "we——"

"You can say good-by to Ned when you come 'ome," said nurse, who thought they wanted to waste valuable time in farewells. "H'off with you!"

The real May was a picture of distress, but her more volatile brother seized her by the hand and whispered: "Never mind; it's only keeping up the lark; I've got the worst of it, too, in these horrid skirts."