“It’s no good now, anyhow,” said Romeo.  “We can’t run it until the roads melt and dry up.”

“That’s so,” agreed his twin, despondently.  “Why did she tell us now?  Why couldn’t she wait until we had some chance?”

“I guess we can learn something about it before we try to run it,” he observed, cheerfully.  “If we can get it into the barn, we can take it all apart and see how it’s put together.”

“Oh, Romie!” cried Juliet, with a little skip.  “How perfectly fascinating!  And we’ll read all the automobile literature we can get hold of.  I do so love to be posted!”

Upon the death of their father, several years ago, the twins had promptly ceased to go to school.  The kindly old minister who had been appointed executor of their father’s small estate and guardian of the tumultuous twins had been unable to present any arguments in favour of systematic education which appealed to them even slightly.

“What good is Latin?” asked Romeo, apparently athirst for information.

“Why—­er—­mental discipline, mostly,” the harassed guardian had answered.

“Isn’t there anything we’d like that would discipline our minds?” queried Juliet.

“I fear not,” replied the old man, who lacked the diplomacy necessary to deal with the twins.  Shortly after that he had died with so little warning that he had only time to make out a check in their favour for the balance entrusted to him.  The twins had held high carnival until the money was almost gone.  The bequest from the Australian uncle had reached them just in time, so, with thankful hearts, they celebrated and had done so annually ever since.

Untrammelled by convention and restraint, they thrived like weeds in their ancestral domicile, which was now sadly in need of repair.  Occasionally some daring prank set the neighbourhood by the ears, but, for the most part, the twins behaved very well and attended strictly to their own affairs.  They ate when they were hungry, slept when they were sleepy, and, if they desired to sit up until four in the morning, reading, they did so.  A woman who had a key to the back door came in every morning, at an uncertain hour, to wash the dishes, sweep, dust, and to make the beds if they chanced to be unoccupied.

As Romeo had said, the chimney had blown down and several loose bricks lay upon the roof.  They had a small vegetable garden, fenced in, and an itinerant gardener looked after it, in Summer, but they had no flowers, because they maintained a large herd of stray dogs, mostly mongrels, that would have had no home had it not been for the hospitable twins.  Romeo bought the choicest cuts of beef for them and fed them himself.  Occasionally they added another to their collection and, at the last census, had nineteen.