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.

CHAPTER 7 —­ The Unknown Nymph

     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.