Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and
everybody rushed down to see. It was the twins,
knocking out a classic four-handed piece on the piano
in great style. Rowena was satisfied—satisfied
down to the bottom of her heart.
The young strangers were kept long at the piano.
The villagers were astonished and enchanted with the
magnificence of their performance, and could not bear
to have them stop. All the music that they had
ever heard before seemed spiritless prentice-work
and barren of grace and charm when compared with these
intoxicating floods of melodious sound. They realized
that for once in their lives they were hearing masters.
One of the most striking
differences between a cat and a
lie is that a cat has
only nine lives. —Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s Calendar
The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward
their several homes, chatting with vivacity and all
agreeing that it would be many a long day before Dawson’s
Landing would see the equal of this one again.
The twins had accepted several invitations while the
reception was in progress, and had also volunteered
to play some duets at an amateur entertainment for
the benefit of a local charity. Society was eager
to receive them to its bosom. Judge Driscoll
had the good fortune to secure them for an immediate
drive, and to be the first to display them in public.
They entered his buggy with him and were paraded down
the main street, everybody flocking to the windows
and sidewalks to see.
The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard,
and the jail, and where the richest man lived, and
the Freemasons’ hall, and the Methodist church,
and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist
church was going to be when they got some money to
build it with, and showed them the town hall and the
slaughterhouse, and got out of the independent fire
company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary
fire; then he let them inspect the muskets of the
militia company, and poured out an exhaustless stream
of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed
very well satisfied with the responses he got, for
the twins admired his admiration, and paid him back
the best they could, though they could have done better
if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous
experiences of this sort in various countries had not
already rubbed off a considerable part of the novelty
in it.
The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them
have a good time, and if there was a defect anywhere,
it was not his fault. He told them a good many
humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but
they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns
were of a pretty early vintage, and they had had many
a rejuvenating pull at them before. And he told
them all about his several dignities, and how he had
held this and that and the other place of honor or
profit, and had once been to the legislature, and
was now president of the Society of Freethinkers.
He said the society had been in existence four years,
and already had two members, and was firmly established.
He would call for the brothers in the evening, if
they would like to attend a meeting of it.
