He said this chiefly to the Princess, for she evidently had profited more by her schooling, and understood things quite like a Christian.

“Did you ever eat an orange, Princess?” he continued.

“Kind o’ fish?”

“No, fruit; a yella ball that grows on a tree.”

“Me know,” said Nicholas; “me see him in boxes St. Michael’s.  Him bully.”

“Yes.  Well, we had a lot of trees all full of those yella balls, and we used to eat as many as we liked.  We don’t have much winter down where I live—­summer pretty nearly all the time.”

“I’d like go there,” said the girl.

“Well, will you come and see us, Muckluck?  When I’ve found a gold-mine and have bought back the Orange Grove, my sister and me are goin’ to live together, like you and Nicholas.”

“She look like you?”

“No; and it’s funny, too, ’cause we’re twins.”

“Twins!  What’s twins?”

“Two people born at the same time.”

“No!” ejaculated Nicholas.

“Why, yes, and they always care a heap about each other when they’re twins.”

But Muckluck stared incredulously.

“Two at the same time!” she exclaimed.  “It’s like that, then, in your country?”

The Boy saw not astonishment alone, but something akin to disgust in the face of the Princess.  He felt, vaguely, he must justify his twinship.

“Of course; there’s nothing strange about it; it happens quite often.”

“Often?”

“Yes; people are very much pleased.  Once in a while there are even three—­”

“All at the same time!” Her horror turned into shrieks of laughter.  “Why, your women are like our dogs!  Human beings and seals never have more than one at a time!”

The old man in the corner began to moan and mutter feverishly.  Nicholas went to him, bent down, and apparently tried to soothe him.  Muckluck gathered up the supper-things and set them aside.

“You were at the Holy Cross school?” asked the Boy.

“Six years—­with Mother Aloysius and the Sisters.  They very good.”

“So you’re a Catholic, then?”

“Oh yes.”

“You speak the best English I’ve heard from a native.”

“I love Sister Winifred.  I want to go back—­unless”—­she regarded the Boy with a speculative eye—­“unless I go your country.”

The sick man began to talk deliriously, and lifted up a terrible old face with fever-bright eyes glaring through wisps of straight gray hair.  No voice but his was heard for some time in the ighloo, then, “I fraid,” said Muckluck, crouching near the fire, but with head turned over shoulder, staring at the sick man.

“No wonder,” said the Boy, thinking such an apparition enough to frighten anybody.

“Nicholas ’fraid, too,” she whispered, “when the devil talks.”

“The devil?”

“Yes.  Sh!  You hear?”

The delirious chatter went on, rising to a scream.  Nicholas came hurrying back to the fire with a look of terror in his face.