her flesh--and such children. The father of the twins had been a
professional pugilist, but even that fact could never sufficiently
account for Pacific Simonson. She had apparently inherited instincts
from tribes of warlike ancestors who skulked behind trees with
battle-axes, and no one except her superior in size and courage was
safe from her violent hand. She had little, wicked, dark eyes and
crimson, swollen cheeks, while Atlantic had flaxen hair, a low
forehead, and a square jaw. He had not Pacific's ingenuity in
conceiving evil; but when it was once conceived, he had a dogged
persistency in carrying it out that made him worthy of his twin.

Yet with all these crosses Mrs. Grubb was moderately cheerful, for
her troubles were as nebulous as everything else to her mind. She
intended to invent some feasible plan for her deliverance sooner or
later, but she was much more intent upon development than
deliverance, and she never seemed to have the leisure to break her
shackles. Nothing really mattered much. Her body might be
occasionally in Eden Place, but her soul was always in a hired hall.
She delighted in joining the New Order of Something,--anything, so
long as it was an Order and a new one,--and then going with a
selected committee to secure a lodge-room or a hall for meetings.
She liked to walk up the dim aisle with the janitor following after
her, and imagine brilliant lights (paid for by collection), a neat
table and lamp and pitcher of iced water, and herself in the chair as
president or vice-president, secretary or humble trustee. There was
that about her that precluded the possibility of simple membership.
She always rose into office the week after she had joined any
society. If there was no office vacant, then some bold spirit
(generally male) would create one, that Mrs. Grubb might not wither
in the privacy of the ranks. Before the charter members had fully