piece on the piano in great style. Rowena was satisfied–satisfied
down to the bottom of her heart.
The young strangers were kept long at the piano. The villagers were
astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance,
and could not bear to have them stop. All the music that they had ever
heard before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace and
charm when compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound.
They realized that for once in their lives they were hearing masters.
CHAPTER 7
The Unknown Nymph
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie
is that a cat has only nine lives.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several homes,
chatting with vivacity and all agreeing that it would be many a long
day before Dawson’s Landing would see the equal of this one again.
The twins had accepted several invitations while the reception
was in progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at
an amateur entertainment for the benefit of a local charity.
Society was eager to receive them to its bosom. Judge Driscoll had
the good fortune to secure them for an immediate drive, and to be
the first to display them in public. They entered his buggy with him
and were paraded down the main street, everybody flocking to the windows
and sidewalks to see.
The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail,
and where the richest man lived, and the Freemasons’ hall,
and the Methodist church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the
Baptist church was going to be when they got some money to build it with,
and showed them the town hall and the slaughterhouse, and got out
of the independent fire company in uniform and had them put out
an imaginary fire; then he let them inspect the muskets of the
militia company, and poured out an exhaustless stream of enthusiasm
over all these splendors, and seemed very well satisfied with the
responses he got, for the twins admired his admiration, and paid him
back the best they could, though they could have done better if
some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous experiences of this
sort in various countries had not already rubbed off a considerable part
of the novelty in it.
The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them have a good time,
and if there was a defect anywhere, it was not his fault.
He told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub,
but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a
pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull
at them before. And he told them all about his several dignities,
and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit,
and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the
Society of Freethinkers. He said the society had been in existence
four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established.
He would call for the brothers in the evening, if they would like
to attend a meeting of it.
Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about
Pudd’nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression
of him in advance and be prepared to like him. This scheme succeeded–
the favorable impression was achieved. Later it was confirmed and
solidified when Wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers
the usual topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon
ordinary subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and
good-fellowship–a proposition which was put to vote and carried.
The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended,
the lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends than he
had been when it began. He invited the twins to look in at his
lodgings presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement,
and they accepted with pleasure.
Toward the middle of the evening, they found themselves on the road
to his house. Pudd’nhead was at home waiting for them and putting