Free The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

by ear any song she’d heard often enough to remember how it went. She’d passed on the talent to her lone chick. Dittany was properly grateful and loved to play, but was not eager to usurp her mother’s place at the piano just now; though it did occur to her to wonder what Mum was sitting on since the twins were presumably occupying the piano bench.
    Dittany also wondered about supper. She knew she ought to get up and start fixing things, but didn’t want to for fear the twins might take the activity as a hint that she wanted them to stay, which she most assuredly didn’t. What they ought to do was get back to the yarn shop and take their cousin out to supper. Miss Jane must have had an utterly ghastly day, what with all that extra mopping and bodies on the sidewalk and those nosy hordes of customers pushing in on her.
    The twins must have been thinking the same thing themselves, for soon she could hear them telling her mother and Arethusa that this had been absolutely super and they hadn’t had so much fun in ages but they really must be getting back to Cousin Pru because surely the tumult and the shouting must have died away by now and she’d be wondering where they were; which their hostesses had to agree she almost certainly was. Mum was letting them out the front door, thank goodness. Dittany got up and began padding around in her stocking feet. She was scrubbing new potatoes at the sink when the two older women came out to join her.
    “Well,” cried her mother gaily, “the sleeping beauty has arisen. You ought to have something on your feet, dearie, that floor might be chilly. Did you and the twins have a good zizz? I remember when you were a dear little lump in my tum, I just wanted to rest and rest.”
    “Sometimes for as much as ten minutes at a time, if recollection serves me,” said Arethusa. “You kept jumping up to change the trimming on the bassinet.”
    “Oh my stars, the bassinet!” cried Clorinda. “It’s up in the attic still, I hope. Or did I lend it to somebody? But who? Dittany, what are we going to do about the bassinet?”
    “Nothing, Mum. Osbert’s parents have ordered us a lovely double crib from Eaton’s.”
    “But when the babies are so teeny-tiny, a sweet little bassinet with ruffles and flounces and a dear little pink-and-blue blanket with teddy bears on it—or kittens, perhaps? Tom kittens and Tilly kittens? Maybe Miss Jane has a pattern. I could whip one up.”
    “Mum, you’ve already knit a lovely carriage robe, and so have Osbert’s Aunt Lucy and Zilla Trott and Dot Coskoff and about six other people. Besides, two twins wouldn’t fit into my bassinet even if you could remember what you did with it.”
    “We could get another, dear, and just put them side by side. Unless the twins turn out to be Siamese, but I don’t suppose they would. We’ve never had Siamese twins in our family.”
    “Twins come in the paternal line,” Arethusa pointed out, “so your family doesn’t count. Or is it the other way around and our family doesn’t count? But my father was a twin. And so,” she added after a moment’s thought, “was his brother.”
    “Not Siamese, though?” said Dittany.
    “Oh no, Canadian to the bone. Were you planning to cook those potatoes or keep them for souvenirs?”
    “Possess your soul in patience, Arethusa. You’ll get fed. Why don’t you and Mum have a little sherry? Maybe it will refresh your memory about …” Dittany was about to mention VP Nutmeg, but remembered just in time that this was a clandestine operation and she still wasn’t supposed to know who the first grabber had been. “… about what that man with the bullet hole said to you before he died.”
    “But I’ve told you what he said,” Arethusa protested.
    “No, you haven’t. You’ve told Mum, you’ve told Sergeant MacVicar, you’ve told Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy, I expect you’ve told Glanville and Ranville and no doubt a few dozen more, but you’ve never said one single