Sahwah came forward, radiating smiles, to meet the twins about whom she had heard so much, and grasped their hands with delighted cordiality.

“Agony and Oh-Pshaw!” she exclaimed.  “What delicious names!”

“Oh, we have baptismal names among our goods and chattels, too,” said the twin whom Sahwah held by the right hand.  “They are very good names, too, in their way, even Alta and Agnes, but you’re not to use them under any circumstances.  You’re to call us Agony and Oh-Pshaw the same as everybody does.”

Sahwah started at the deep, rich tones of Agony’s voice.  People invariably did when they heard it for the first time.  It rolled and reverberated like the lowest tones of a cathedral organ.  Although low-pitched and well-modulated, it had a peculiar penetrating quality, which made it carry for a surprisingly long distance.

Gladys and Migwan, upstairs putting their room to rights, heard it and came rushing down into the parlor to fling themselves upon the Twins with loud cries of joy.

“Agony!  It’s been years since I’ve seen you!”

“Gladys!  I simply can’t get used to going to bed without shouting good-night through the transom to you!”

“Hinpoha, my angel of light, come to my arms once more!  Come sit on my knee and tell me all your adventures since you went home from college!”

Just then Nyoda came into the room and raptures were interrupted by new introductions.

“Twins!” said Nyoda delightedly.  “And just alike, too!  How am I going to tell you apart?”

“Easy,” said Agony brightly.  “Oh-Pshaw’s nose is a shade more classic than mine, while I have a more angelic expression.”

“Thank you for calling those little points to my attention,” said Nyoda.  “Now that you mention it I see the difference clearly.  I shall never mistake one of you for the other.”

Nyoda’s clear-seeing eye had already noted a dozen points of difference in the two girls.  Both had very black hair and very blue eyes and very red lips; both had deep, vibrant voices.  But Agony was more vivid than Oh-Pshaw in every way.  Her hair was more brilliantly black; her eyes more sparklingly blue; her lips more glowingly carmine.  The greatest point of difference was their voices.  Oh-Pshaw spoke in deep, musical chest tones, but in Agony’s there was an added quality of resonance, a timbre unlike anything she had ever heard before.  Nyoda had heard a great many kinds of voices in her years in the classroom.

Also her eye detected other, subtler, differences.  In Agony she read a nature impulsive, enthusiastic, brilliant, confident, fascinating; also hot-headed, strong-willed and impatient of restraint.  In Oh-Pshaw she saw a less all-conquering, a more plodding nature, slower to comprehend, less ardent and with less power to influence.  But if the eyes were not so sparkling they were more thoughtful, and if the red lips were set in a less bewitchingly mischievous curve there was something about their lines that told more of patience and perseverance.  All this Nyoda, who was an expert judge of character, read in the faces of the two girls as she watched them with interested and friendly scrutiny.