“Ned,” she said, affectionately, “I wish your father could be here to-day to see you before you go east. He’d be so proud of you. How long is it since he has seen you and Elenore?”
“Six years,” said Carrington. “Dear old dad! Not since he sent us over here in Aunt Sarah’s care, six years ago, when mother died. He’s intended to come every year, but there’s always been something at the mine to prevent it. Dad loves the struggle of business, you know.”
“He loves his children, too,” said Mrs. Van Velt, seriously. “It must be lonely for him. And the mine is in such a forlorn little, out-of-the-way place, ’way up there in northern Michigan.”
“The mines situated right in the heart of Manhattan are pretty well worked out,” Ned expostulated, humorously.
“Yellow Dog! Did you ever hear such a ghastly name?” Mrs. Van Velt went on. “Half the people thought your mother was crazy when she married him and went out there to live. They said he was harnessing Psyche to his mine machinery for motive power. And the other half said that when he was tired and wanted sympathy she’d write him a sonnet. Everybody agreed that they would be unhappy. And they were the happiest people I ever knew.”
“They certainly were,” said Carrington, emphatically. “How do you account for it?”
“Modern prophets have a horror of the country,” said Mrs. Van Velt, sententiously, “unless it’s in easy motoring distance of Sherry’s. And they overlooked the vital fact that when you’re making two human beings one, duplicate good qualities are quite as useless as duplicate wedding presents.
“It’s curious,” she continued, “about you twins: that Elenore has all her father’s love of adventure and his executive ability, for all her girlishness; and you have your mother’s talent and her tastes. You couldn’t be more different, and yet you look as much alike as you did when you were tots. I remember the first time your mother brought you east. Your Uncle Dick – well, your Uncle Dick thought rock-and-rye a splendid tonic for other people, but personally he took it without the rock, which he thought might be indigestible – and he looked at you both as you stood there side by side. And he said: ‘Bring on your blue ribbons. I can see two of them.’”
“Why, Mrs. Van Velt, and so early in the day, too!” said a gay voice behind her, a voice so like Carrington’s that it seemed his echo; and Elenore Carrington came forward to kiss the dowager on both cheeks.
As Mrs. Van Velt had said, the resemblance between the twins was remarkable.
They had the same height, the same coloring, the same blue eyes that had a trick of turning violet under emotion; the same delicate arch to the eyebrows; the same wavy line of hair upon the forehead; the same buoyant poise of body. Even a certain quick suppleness of motion belonged to them both; and, stranger still, their hands were wonderfully like.
The artistic impulse that gave to Ned’s a certain femininity in slenderness and taper fingers was curiously balanced by a strain of resourcefulness which lent to Elenore’s well-shaped white palms so strong a resemblance to her twin’s that it was only by putting them side by side and noting that hers were a bit smaller, a shade more femininely modeled, a trifle more delicately cushioned, that they were distinguishable.
The black locks that Carrington permitted to wave back just enough for picturesqueness, with no trace of the bizarre or of unkemptness, gave to his face a boyishness that carried a suggestion of eternal youth.
But Elenore’s dark hair was coiled low in the nape of her neck, and her manner was as feminine as was her distinctly smart and frilly pale blue chiffon frock.
“I’m glad,” Elenore went on, chaffingly, “that Aunt Sarah is safely on her way to the North Cape and cannot hear you describe your shocking condition.”
“Bless you, child,” said Mrs. Van Velt, promptly. “You’re altogether too good-looking. You ought to wear a veil. That’s what young Hastings thinks, I hear. He’s confided in Carol. And anyone who would confide in Carol must be laboring under strong mental excitement. And so your Aunt Sarah has really started for the North Cape! Women as plain as Sarah Moore are always pretending to be absorbed in the beauties of nature, but they are really trying to get their own minds and yours away from such sensitive subjects as snub noses.”
“Where is Carol?” demanded Elenore, laughingly. “Isn’t she coming to say good-by to Ned and me?”
“Carol seems to be putting in a stitch in time with that young sewing machine,” said Mrs. Van Velt, unperturbed. “She’s like her father. He never could bear to see machinery idle.”
Elenore looked up at her smilingly from the place she had taken at the tea table. The samovar was steaming gayly, and the girl’s white hands moved with housewifely deftness as she prepared to make tea. They were firm, capable hands, that it was a pleasure to watch.
The portières swung back with a decided flourish to admit a short, bright-eyed, gray-headed, animated old gentleman, who came forward with the buoyancy of a boy.
“Here I am, cher Edouard,” cried Velantour, gayly. “Mademoiselle, mes hommages, I come exprès to assure you that I shall take the bes’ of care of this brother of yours.”
“Mrs. Van Velt,” said Carrington, putting his hand affectionately on old Velantour’s arm, “I present to you Monsieur Velantour, the master of painting in France.”
“Madame,” said Velantour, courtly in turn, “I presen’ to you Monsieur Edouard Carrington, a nouveau maître of whom America will one day be very proud.
“You have a daughter, madame?” he added, gravely.
“Somewhere,” said Mrs. Van Velt, calmly.
“C’est ça!” said Velantour. “I fall over two young peopl’ in the hall as I enter – young Monsieur Parker and a young lady – and the young lady say: ‘Oh, Monsieur Velantour, will you tell mother I’ll be in in a minute?’ And Monsieur Parker say: ‘So soon as she have finish’ winding the bobbin.’”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Van Velt,” said Carrington, amusedly. “Bobbins is decidedly an eligible.”
“What is that, an eligible?” demanded Velantour, puzzled to know what could justify such calm.
“Well, in America, Monsieur Velantour,” Mrs. Van Velt informed him, “an eligible is an attractive man entirely surrounded by daughters – other people’s daughters.”
“When mother begins to talk about other people’s daughters it’s always time for me to appear,” announced Miss Carol Van Velt, entering gayly.
Bobbins, radiant, was just back of her; and a tall, serious, thoroughbred young fellow followed them.
Carol Van Velt was a remarkably pretty blonde, who looked delightfully ingénue, but was entirely capable of managing most masculinity. She accepted admiration as nonchalantly as she did bonbons, and considered that the sources of supply of both were unlimited. Experience seemed to prove that this theory was correct.
“We saw, anyway, that we were just being used as stepping-stones to higher things,” she went on; “so we thought we might as well come in with Mr. Hastings.”
She sank gracefully down on one end of a large divan, and drew her skirts aside with a gesture that assumed matter-of-factly that Bobbins would occupy the other half of the seat. He justified the conclusion with a promptness which left no doubt that he regarded it as a heaven-sent opportunity.
“Not that we minded being an angels’ ladder,” he asserted, cheerfully, “but I thought from Hastings’ cast of countenance that he might be going to give you a few scenes from ‘Hamlet,’ and I didn’t think it was safe to be sitting behind a curtain when he got to that part about Polonius.”
Velantour regarded them with that awe which a Frenchman must feel for the rollicking frivolity of the American young and