The influence of Wee Winnie on the war-path was soon apparent. On the following Wednesday morning the ante-room of the Club was as crowded with candidates as if Lillie had advertised for a clerk with three tongues at ten pounds a year. Silverdale had gone down to Fleet Street to inquire if anything had been heard of Miss Ellaline Rand's projected paper, and Lillie grappled with the applicants1 single-handed.
Turple the magnificent, was told to usher2 them into the confessional one by one, but the first two candidates insisted that they were one, and as he could not tell which one he gave way.
It is said that the shepherd knows every sheep of his flock individually, and that a superintendent3 can tell one policeman from another. Some music-hall managers even profess4 to distinguish between one pair of singing sisters and all the other pairs. But even the most trained eye would be puzzled to detect any difference between these two lovely young creatures. They were as like as two peas or two cues, or the two gentlemen who mount and descend5 together the mirror-lined staircase of a restaurant. Interrogated6 as to the motives7 of their would-be renunciation, one of them replied: "My sister and myself are twins. We were born so. When the news was announced to our father, he is reported to have exclaimed, 'What a misfortune!' His sympathy was not misplaced, for from our nursery days upward our perfect resemblance to each other has brought us perpetual annoyance8. Do what we would, we never could never get mistaken for each other. The pleasing delusion9 that either of us would be saddled with the misdeeds of the other has got us into scrapes without number. At school we each played all sorts of pranks10, making sure the other would be punished for them. Alas11! the consequences have always recoiled12 on the head of the guilty party. We were not even whipped for neglecting each other's lessons. It was always for neglecting our own. But in spite of the stern refusal of experience to favor us with the usual imbroglio13, we always went on hoping that the luck would turn. We read Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and that confirmed us in our evil courses. When we grew up, it would be hard to say which was the giddier, for each hoped that the other would have to bear the burden of her escapades. You will have gathered from our friskiness14 that our parents were strict Puritans, but at last they allowed an eligible15 young curate to visit the house with a view to matrimony. He was too good for us; our parents were as much as we wanted in that line. Unfortunately, in this crisis, unknown to each other, the old temptation seized us. Each felt it a unique chance of trying if the thing wouldn't work. When the other was out of the room, each made love to the unwelcome suitor so as to make him fall in love with her sister. Wretched victims of mendacious16 farce-writers! The result was that he fell in love with us both!"
She paused a moment overcome with emotion, then resumed. "He proposed to us both simultaneously17, vowed18 he could not live without us. He exclaimed passionately19 that he could not be happy with either were t'other dear charmer away. He said he was ready to become a Mormon for love of us."
"And what was your reply?" said Lillie anxiously.
The fresh young voices broke out into a duet: "We told him to ask papa."
"We were both so overwhelmed by this catastrophe," pursued the story-teller, "that we vowed for mutual20 self-protection against our besetting21 temptation to fribble at the other's expense, never to let each other out of sight. In the farces22 all the mistakes happen through the twins being on only one at a time. Thus have we balanced each other's tendencies to indiscretion before it was too late, and saved ourselves from ourselves. This necessity of being always together, imposed on us by our unhappy resemblance, naturally excludes either from marriage."
Lillie was not favorably impressed with these skittish23 sisters. "I sympathize intensely with the sufferings of either," she said slily, "in being constrained24 to the society of the other. But your motives of celibacy25 are not sufficiently26 pure, nor have you fulfilled our prime condition, for even granting that your reply to the eligible young Churchman was tantamount to a rejection27, it still only amounts to a half rejection each, which is fifty per cent. below our standard."
She rang the bell. Turple the magnificent ushered28 the twins out and the next candidate in. She was an ethereal blonde in a simple white frock, and her story was as simple.
"Read this Rondeau," she said. "It will tell you all."
Lillie took the lines. They were headed
THE LOVELY MAY—AN OLD MAID'S PLAINT.
The lovely May at last is here,
Long summer days are drawing near,
And nights with cloudless moonshine rich;
In woodlands green, on waters clear,
Soft-couched in fern, or on the mere29,
Gliding30 like some white water-witch,
Or lunching in a leafy niche31,
I see my sweet-faced sister dear,
The lovely May.
She is engaged—and her career
Is one of skittles blent with beer,
While I, plain sewing left to stitch,
Can ne'er expect those pleasures which,
At this bright season of the year,
The lovely may.
Lillie looked up interrogatively. "But surely you have nothing to complain of in the way of loveliness?" she said.
"No, of course not. I am the lovely May. It was my sister who wrote that. She died in June and I found it among her manuscripts. Remorse32 set in at the thought of Maria stitching while I was otherwise engaged. I disengaged myself at once. What's fair for one is fair for all. Women should combine. While there's one woman who can't get a husband, no man should be allowed to get a wife."
"Hear, hear!" cried Lillie enthusiastically. "Only I am afraid there will always be blacklegs among us who will betray their sex for the sake of a husband."
"Alas, yes," agreed the lovely May. "I fear such was the nature of my sister Maria. She coveted33 even my first husband."
"What!" gasped34 the President. "Are you a widow?"
"Certainly! I left off black when I was engaged again, and when I was disengaged I dared not resume it for fear of seeming to mourn my fiancé."
"We cannot have widows in the Old Maids' Club," said Lillie regretfully.
"Then I shall start a new Widows' Club and Old Maids shall have no place in it." And the lovely May sailed out, all smiles and tears.
The newcomer was a most divinely tall and most divinely fair brunette with a brooding, morbid35 expression. Candidate gave the name of Miss Summerson.
Being invited to make a statement, she said: "I have abandoned the idea of marrying. I have no money. Ergo, I cannot afford to marry a poor man. And I am resolved never to marry a rich one. I want to be loved for myself, not for my want of money. You may stare, but I know what I am talking about. What other attraction have I? Good looks? Plenty of girls with money have that, who would be glad to marry the men I have rejected. In the town I came from I lived with my cousin, who was an heiress. She was far lovelier than I. Yet all the moneyed men were at my feet. They were afraid of being suspected of fortune-hunting and anxious to vindicate36 their elevation37 of character. Why should I marry to gratify a man's vanity, his cravings after cheap quixotism?"
"Your attitude on the great question of the age does you infinite credit, but as you have no banking38 account to put it to, you traverse the regulation requiring a property qualification," said the President.
"Is there no way over the difficulty?"
"I fear not: unless you marry a rich man, and that disqualifies you under another rule." And Miss Summerson passed sadly into the outer darkness, to be replaced by a young lady who gave the name of Nell Lightfoot. She wore a charming hat and a smile like the spreading of sunshine over a crystal pool. "I met a young Scotchman," she said, "at a New Year's dance, and we were favorably impressed by each other. On the fourteenth of the following February I received from him a Valentine, containing a proposal of marriage and a revelation of the degradation39 of masculine nature. It would seem he had two strings40 to his bow—the other being a rich widow whom he had met in a Devonshire lane. Being a Scotchman he had for economy's sake composed a Valentine which with a few slight alterations41 would do for both of us. Unfortunately for himself he sent me the original draft by mistake and here is his
VERACIOUS42 VALENTINE.
Though the weather is snowy and dreary43
And a shiver careers down my spine44,
Yet the heart in my bosom45 is cheery,
For I feel I've exchanged mine for thine.
Do not call it delusion, my dearie,
But becom............