“You see I am weak in more ways than one.  But I do mean to give them every chance.  It isn’t that these old arms ache for them, that this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, and modern science says let them cry!—­it is that, deep in me, Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned love—­love which rocks them when it is not good for them—­love which overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned colic—­love which ventures a bacilli-laden kiss.  Friend, friend—­I am very unfit!  It will be well for them when I move on.  Only try to love them, Tappan.  And if you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence, rather than with hygiene!”

He died of pneumonia a few weeks later.  He had no chance.  Remsen Tappan picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly sterilised twins.

So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be administered.

Now home tuition and the “culture of the indiwidool” was a personal hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination.  Had not his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory?

So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained.  As they grew older they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the longing for it.

It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent abroad to school; Naida, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and develop whatever was in him.  For like all parents, Duane’s had been terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making—­one of the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to overstock the world with mediocre artists.

So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane’s Titianesque genius and Naida’s unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity.  Alas! it is those who depart who forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine’s and Scott’s letters remained unanswered.