“Shall I raise a window?” he suggested finally.  “It’s rather—­er—­hot in here.”

“Yes, do,” she urged.  “Raise all of them.  It’s—­do you—­do you notice a—­a funny smell in here?  Or am I imagining it?  It—­it almost makes me sick!”

“Yes, there is a smell,” he said, in evident relief.  “I thought maybe you’d been cleaning the carpet with something.  It’s ghastly.  Can’t we go somewhere else?”

“Come on.”  She opened the door into the sitting-room.  “We’re coming out here if you do not mind, Prue.”  And Fairy explained the difficulty.

“Why, that’s very strange,” said Prudence, knitting her brows.  “I was in there right after supper, and I didn’t notice anything.  What does it smell like?”

“It’s a new smell to me,” laughed Fairy, “but something about it is strangely suggestive of our angel-twins.”

Prudence went to investigate, and Fairy shoved a big chair near the table, waving her hand toward it lightly with a smile at Babbie.  Then she sank into a low rocker, and leaned one arm on the table.  She wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully.

“That smell,” she began.  “I am very suspicious about it.  It was not at all natural——­”

“Excuse me, Fairy,” he said, ill at ease for the first time in her knowledge of him.  “Did you know your sleeve was coming out?”

Fairy gasped, and raised her arm.

“Both arms, apparently,” he continued, smiling, but his face was flushed.

“Excuse me just a minute, will you?” Fairy was unruffled.  She sought her sister.  “Look here, Prue,—­what do you make of this?  I’m coming to pieces!  I’m hanging by a single thread, as it were.”

Her sleeves were undoubtedly ready to drop off at a second’s notice!  Prudence was shocked.  She grew positively white in the face.

“Oh, Fairy,” she wailed.  “We are disgraced.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Fairy coolly.  “I remember now that Lark was looking for the scissors before supper.  Aren’t those twins unique?  This is almost bordering on talent, isn’t it?  Don’t look so distressed, Prue.  Etiquette itself must be subservient to twins, it seems.  Don’t forget to bring in the stew at a quarter past nine, and have it as good as possible,—­please, dear.”

“I will,” vowed Prudence, “I’ll—­I’ll use cream.  Oh, those horrible twins!”

“Go in and entertain Babbie till I come down, won’t you?” And Fairy ran lightly up the stairs, humming a snatch of song.

But Prudence did a poor job of entertaining Babbie during her sister’s absence.  She felt really dizzy!  Such a way to introduce Etiquette into the parsonage life.  She was glad to make her escape from the room when Fairy returned, a graceful figure in the fine blue silk!  She went back to the dining-room, and painstakingly arranged the big tray for the designated moment of its entrance,—­according to etiquette.  Fairy and Babbie in the next room talked incessantly, laughing often and long, and Prudence, hearing, smiled in sympathy.  She herself thought it would be altogether stupid to be shut up in a room alone with “just a man” for a whole evening,—­but etiquette required it.  Fairy knew about such things, of course.