Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/52



some time in July, Mrs. Carroll told me that she had invited her nephew and niece, Gerald and Katherine Dale, to come on a visit to Derryaghy, I became at once very curious to see them. I had never even heard of them before, and now I learned such interesting items as that they lived in London, were twins, and about my own age, or perhaps a year older. Mrs. Carroll could not remember. They arrived at the end of the month, and that night I went to dinner to meet them. As it happened, I was late. My watch had stopped for a half an hour or so in the afternoon, and then gone on again, an annoying and foolish trick it occasionally played me. I was told they were already in the dining room, but that dinner had only begun. The prospect of meeting strangers always produced in me an unconquerable shyness, and, to-night, partly because I was late, and partly because these particular strangers were so nearly my own age, my shyness was doubled. I did not look at either of them as I entered the room where, through daylight had not yet quite failed, two softly shaded lamps burned, amid a profusion of flowers, upon the white and silver table. I shook hands with my hostess and with Miss Dick, mumbling out apologies, and had begun a lengthy and involved description of the cause of my delay, when Mrs. Carroll cut me short by introducing me to the Dales. I shook hands with one and bowed to the