"Why, they have known Rodgers all their lives!"
"Perhaps that is why they have run away," said Ruth, smiling. "Rodgers sounds to me--from his telegram--as though he had one awful lack."
"Lack of a sense of humor. And that is fatal in the character of anybody who has a pair of twins on his hands."
Mr. Howbridge threw up his own hands in amazement. "I must lack that myself," he said. "I see nothing funny, at least, in the idea of having Ralph and Rowena Birdsall in my house."
"It helps," said Ruth. "A sense of humor is what has kept me going all these years," she added demurely. "If you think a pair of twins can be compared to Tess and Dot and Sammy Pinkney--to say nothing of Aggie and Neale--"
"Oh! Oh!" shouted the two latter in chorus.
"You have a mean mind, Ruthie Kenway," declared the blonde beauty.
"I knew I wasn't much liked," admitted Neale O'Neil. "But that is the unkindest cut of all."
"You have had experience, I grant you," said Mr. Howbridge, about to take his departure. "But I foresee much trouble in the case of these Birdsall twins."
And he was a true prophet there. The twins had utterly disappeared. The Arlington police--indeed, all the county officers together--could find no trace of the orphaned brother and sister.
Mr. Howbridge put private detectives on the case. The twins seemed to have disappeared as utterly as though they really were under the two feet of ice on Arlington Pond.
The lawyer searched personally, advertised in the newspapers, and even offered a reward for the apprehension of the children. A fortnight passed without success.
The governess, Miss Mason, was discharged, for it seemed unnecessary to pay her salary when there were no children for her to teach. Rodgers and his wife could give no aid in the search. They were rather relieved, if the truth were told, to be free of the twins.
"Master Ralph was hard enough to get along with," the ex-butler admitted. "But Miss Rowena was worse. They wanted to go back into their own house to live. They could not understand why it was shut up, sir," and the old serving man shook his head.
"They seemed to have taken a dislike to you, sir," he added to Mr. Howbridge. "They said you 'hadn't any right to boss.' That is the way they put it."