Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/68

 immediate vicinity of which it was distinctly chilly, and a cupboard or two, one open, displaying shelves neatly piled with plates and bowls and cups and saucers. On a clothes-line extending across a corner, from one wall to that which joined it at right angles, several sets of costumes were drying, tights and shirts of sky-blue, bright pink, and red, while the trunks which completed these outfits, lemon, black, and cerise satin, tricked out with tinsel gewgaws and bows of ribbons of the same shades, were heaped on the broad flat top of a dresser, where also reposed a loaf of bread in an envelope of glazed tissue, and a yellow bowl, harbouring apples and oranges.

The inmates, Paul fancied, were even odder than the room. Robin and Hugo, dressed precisely alike, also bore such an astonishing resemblance one to the other, that it was not difficult to come to the conclusion that they must be twins. Their rosy faces were round, their eyes soft and melting. Both flaunted bushy, black moustaches which would have given less naïve countenances an expression of the wildest ferocity but which, in the case of the Brothers Steel, simply seemed to be an incongruous detail. Both had parted their hair in an eccentrically barbered style with a mound of curls brushed carefully up over the right brow. The woman was not pretty, but her face was good-natured and pleasant—she reminded Paul of a little Roumanian dress-