"Don't think!" he said gently.

"Fred thought the twins would be here, I know, or he would not have
stayed away," Evelyn said, wishing to do justice to Fred, and feeling
indefinitely guilty about something.

"The twins are jolly good company,--oh, I say!" laughed Rance, in tones
so like her brothers-in-law that Evelyn laughed delightedly. It was
lovely to have someone to laugh with.

"But where are the heavenly twins to-night?"

"I suppose they saw a flock of ducks going over, or heard the honk-honk
of wild geese," she answered. "It does not take much to distract them
from labor--and they have a soul above it, you know."

Rance Belmont need not have asked her about the twins; he had met them
on their way to the Plover Slough and had given Reginald the loan of
his gun; he had learned from them that Fred, too, was away.

"But if dear Aunt Patience will only lift her anchor all will yet be
well, and the dear twins will not need to be bothered with anything so
beastly as farm-work." His tone and manner were so like the twins that
Evelyn applauded his efforts. Then he told her the story of the cow,
and of how the twins, endeavoring to follow the example of some of the
Canadians whom they had seen locking their wagon-wheels with a chain
when going down the Souris hill, had made a slight mistake in the
location of the chain and hobbled the oxen, with disastrous results.