AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES The dreadful fright she had suffered did not throw a cloud over the spirit of Erebus for as long as might have been expected.

She was as quick as any one to realize that all's well that ends well; and Wiggins escaped lightly, with a couple of days in bed.

The adventure, however, induced a change in her attitude to him; she was far less condescending with him than she had been; indeed she seemed to have acquired something of a proprietary interest in him and was uncommonly solicitous for his welfare.

To such a point did this solicitude go that more than once he remonstrated bitterly with her for fussing about him.
During the rest of the winter, the spring and the early summer, their lives followed an even tenor: they did their lessons; they played their games; then tended the inmates of the cats' home, selling them as they grew big, and replacing the sold with threepenny kittens just able to lap.
In the spring they fished the free water of the Whittle, the little trout-stream that runs through the estate of the Morgans of Muttle Deeping Grange.

The free water runs for rather more than half a mile on the Little Deeping side of Muttle Deeping; and the Twins fished it with an assiduity and a skill which set the villagers grumbling that they left no fish for any one else.