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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14646 ***
+
+CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS
+
+By the Author of _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_
+
+Frontispiece by Arthur Litle
+
+Garden City New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist,
+pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you." said Anna-Felicitas simply.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they decided,
+as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class deck of the
+American liner _St. Luke_, and watched the dirty water of the Mersey
+slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist,
+and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a
+father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized
+that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet
+sea, endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of
+it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they
+could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the very
+remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to the
+other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways, derelicts, two
+wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor really
+English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were both,--they
+decided, looking very calm and determined and sitting very close
+together beneath the rug their English aunt had given them to put round
+their miserable alien legs, that what they really were, were Christopher
+and Columbus, because they were setting out to discover a New World.
+
+"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go and
+discover America. All for ourselves."
+
+It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and Columbus. She
+was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their seventeenth
+birthday--and what a birthday: no cake, no candles, no kisses and
+wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to
+comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it hard, you can't get blood out of an
+aunt--only a month before. Both were very German outside and very
+English inside. Both had fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have,
+and eyes the colour of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic.
+Their noses were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if
+you are a Junker's daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose.
+Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round.
+Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the most
+of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was tall and
+thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker made her eyes
+more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both held their heads up
+with a great air of calm whenever anybody on the ship looked at them, as
+who should say serenely, "We're _thoroughly_ happy, and having the time
+of our lives."
+
+For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they were even
+aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry. Like other
+persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful nor pretended to
+be so much amused as when they were right down on the very bottom of
+their luck. Like other persons of German blood, they had the squashiest
+corners deep in their hearts, where they secretly clung to cakes and
+Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible
+anniversary, both dead and alive.
+
+The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the rubbish that
+floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty
+boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay
+about on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their
+mother's country, the country of their dreams ever since they could
+remember--and the _St. Luke_ with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.
+
+Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting an inch
+closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a submarine already?
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, changing as it
+were the unspoken conversation.
+
+As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward her
+twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and encourage
+her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them, and hadn't
+seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that happened to
+her,--such as, for instance, when the war began and they three, their
+father having died some years before, left their home up by the Baltic,
+just as there was the most heavenly weather going on, and the garden was
+a dream, and the blue Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens
+that very day,--all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose
+thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the
+tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery,--and came by slow
+and difficult stages to England; or such as when their mother began
+catching cold and didn't seem at last ever able to leave off catching
+cold, and though she tried to pretend she didn't mind colds and that
+they didn't matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter
+very much, for between them they killed her.
+
+Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that she was
+dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose's duty, as the next eldest in the family,
+to carry on the tradition and discountenance too much drooping in
+Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much too thoughtfully at the
+deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky and the rubbish brooding on
+the face of the waters, and she had jumped rather excessively when the
+_St. Luke_ stopped so suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake
+hard, and emitted that agonized whistle.
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, "and we're
+going to discover America."
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'll be Christopher."
+
+"No. I'll be Christopher," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable, acquiescent
+person in the world. "Then I suppose I'll have to be Columbus. But I
+think Christopher sounds prettier."
+
+Both rolled their r's incurably. It was evidently in their blood, for
+nothing, no amount of teaching and admonishment, could get them out of
+it. Before they were able to talk at all, in those happy days when
+parents make astounding assertions to other parents about the
+intelligence and certain future brilliancy of their offspring, and the
+other parents, however much they may pity such self-deception, can't
+contradict, because after all it just possibly may be so, the most
+foolish people occasionally producing geniuses,--in those happy days of
+undisturbed bright castle-building, the mother, who was English, of the
+two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the _St. Luke_, said to
+the father, who was German, "At any rate these two blessed little
+bundles of deliciousness"--she had one on each arm and was tickling
+their noses alternately with her eyelashes, and they were screaming for
+joy--"won't have to learn either German or English. They'll just _know_
+them."
+
+"Perhaps," said the father, who was a cautious man.
+
+"They're born bi-lingual," said the mother; and the twins wheezed and
+choked with laughter, for she was tickling them beneath their chins,
+softly fluttering her eyelashes along the creases of fat she thought so
+adorable.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+"It gives them a tremendous start," said the mother; and the twins
+squirmed in a dreadful ecstasy, for she had now got to their ears.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+But what happened was that they didn't speak either language. Not, that
+is, as a native should. Their German bristled with mistakes. They spoke
+it with a foreign accent. It was copious, but incorrect. Almost the last
+thing their father, an accurate man, said to them as he lay dying, had
+to do with a misplaced dative. And when they talked English it rolled
+about uncontrollably on its r's, and had a great many long words in it
+got from Milton, and Dr. Johnson, and people like that, whom their
+mother had particularly loved, but as they talked far more to their
+mother than to their father, who was a man of much briefness in words
+though not in temper, they were better on the whole at English than
+German.
+
+Their mother, who loved England more the longer she lived away from
+it,--"As one does; and the same principle," Anna-Rose explained to
+Anna-Felicitas when they had lived some time with their aunt and uncle,
+"applies to relations, aunts' husbands, and the clergy,"--never tired of
+telling her children about it, and its poetry, and its spirit, and the
+greatness and glory of its points of view. They drank it all in and
+believed every word of it, for so did their mother; and as they grew up
+they flung themselves on all the English books they could lay hands
+upon, and they read with their mother and learned by heart most of the
+obviously beautiful things; and because she glowed with enthusiasm they
+glowed too--Anna-Rose in a flare and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow and
+steadily. They adored their mother. Whatever she loved they loved
+blindly. It was a pity she died. She died soon after the war began. They
+had been so happy, so _dreadfully_ happy....
+
+"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a shake, for
+here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to think of one's
+mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to a new life and
+everything is all promise because it isn't anything else, and not if
+one's mother happened to have been so--well, so fearfully sweet. "You
+can't be Christopher, because, you see, I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with it, but
+she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and expressed a hope that
+Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her Col for short. "I'm afraid
+you will, though," she added, "and then I shall feel so like Onkel
+Nicolas."
+
+This was their German uncle, known during his life-time, which had
+abruptly left off when the twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient
+person, older by far even than their father, who had seemed so very old.
+But Onkel Col had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of
+the _liebe Gott_ in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He came to
+a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them anything
+except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a black band round
+the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was more good-tempered
+than ever, and their mother, when they questioned her, just said that
+poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven, and that in future they would speak
+of him as Onkel Nicolas, because it was more respectful.
+
+"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
+Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the garden.
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so often
+explained to her sister, naturally knew more about everything, "because
+the angels won't like him. Nobody _could_ like Onkel Col. Even if
+they're angels. And though they're obliged to have him there because he
+was such a very good man, they won't talk to him much or notice him much
+when God isn't looking. And second of all, because you _are_ poor when
+you get to heaven. Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their
+things with them, and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He
+couldn't even take his clothes with him."
+
+"Then is he quite--did Onkel Col go there quite--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection with
+Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at them from the
+folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever they were led in,
+trembling, to see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it
+seemed particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
+which was surely of all places the most _endimanché_.
+
+"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a little.
+She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her mouth close to
+Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."
+
+They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in their
+eyes.
+
+"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away from the
+awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven because they
+don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you can't have
+the moth without having anything for it to go into."
+
+"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn when they take their
+furs out."
+
+"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven," continued
+Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there _isn't_ anything to steal."
+
+"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for she didn't
+like to think there was nothing really valuable in heaven.
+
+"Oh, nobody ever steals _them_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new uncomfortable
+view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right, and she always was
+right for she said so herself, that heaven couldn't be such a safe place
+after all, nor such a kind place. Thieves could break in and steal if
+they wanted to. She had a proper horror of thieves. She was sure the
+night would certainly come when they would break into her father's
+_Schloss_, or, as her English nurse called it, her dear Papa's slosh;
+and she was worried that poor Onkel Col should be being snubbed up
+there, and without anything to put on, which would make being snubbed so
+much worse, for clothes did somehow comfort one.
+
+She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment when she
+knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour for
+inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the orchard, an
+exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because she had learned
+through affliction that her inside, fond and proud of it as she was, was
+yet not of that superior and blessed kind that suffers green apples
+gladly--she sought out the nursemaid, whose name, too, confusingly, was
+Anna, and led the conversation up to heaven and the possible conditions
+prevailing in it by asking her to tell her, in strict confidence and as
+woman to woman, what she thought Onkel Col exactly looked like at that
+moment.
+
+"Unrecognizable," said the nursemaid promptly.
+
+"Unrecognizable?" echoed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+And the nursemaid, after glancing over her shoulder to see if the
+governess were nowhere in sight, told Anna-Felicitas the true story of
+Onkel Col's end: which is so bad that it isn't fit to be put in any book
+except one with an appendix.
+
+A stewardess passed just as Anna-Felicitas was asking Anna-Rose not to
+remind her of these grim portions of the past by calling her Col, a
+stewardess in such a very clean white cap that she looked both reliable
+and benevolent, while secretly she was neither.
+
+"Can you please tell us why we're stopping?" Anna-Rose inquired of her
+politely, leaning forward to catch her attention as she hurried by.
+
+The stewardess allowed her roving eye to alight for a moment on the two
+objects beneath the rug. Their chairs were close together, and the rug
+covered them both up to their chins. Over the top of it their heads
+appeared, exactly alike as far as she could see in the dusk; round
+heads, each with a blue knitted cap pulled well over its ears, and round
+eyes staring at her with what anybody except the stewardess would have
+recognized as a passionate desire for some sort of reassurance. They
+might have been seven instead of seventeen for all the stewardess could
+tell. They looked younger than anything she had yet seen sitting alone
+on a deck and asking questions. But she was an exasperated widow, who
+had never had children and wasn't to be touched by anything except a
+tip, besides despising, because she was herself a second-class
+stewardess, all second-class passengers,--"As one does," Anna-Rose
+explained later on to Anna-Felicitas, "and the same principle applies to
+Jews." So she said with an acidity completely at variance with the
+promise of her cap, "Ask the Captain," and disappeared.
+
+The twins looked at each other. They knew very well that captains on
+ships were mighty beings who were not asked questions.
+
+"She's trifling with us," murmured Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose was obliged to admit, though the thought was repugnant
+to her that they should look like people a stewardess would dare trifle
+with.
+
+"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
+silence.
+
+"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the rug."
+
+"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown up."
+
+"Yes. She ought to have seen us six months ago."
+
+Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised at the
+activities and complete appearance of the two pupæ now rolled motionless
+in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both been probationers in a
+children's hospital in Worcestershire, arrayed, even as the stewardess,
+in spotless caps, hurrying hither and thither with trays of food,
+sweeping and washing up, learning to make beds in a given time, and be
+deft, and quick, and never tired, and always punctual.
+
+This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of their Aunt
+Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their departure and who
+had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was an amiable aunt, but
+she didn't understand about birthdays. It was the first one they had had
+since they were complete orphans, and so they were rather sensitive
+about it. But they hadn't cried, because since their mother's death they
+had done with crying. What could there ever again be in the world bad
+enough to cry about after that? And besides, just before she dropped
+away from them into the unconsciousness out of which she never came
+back, but instead just dropped a little further into death, she had
+opened her eyes unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row
+by her bed, two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen
+faces and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
+moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and distance
+and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered with a flicker of
+the old encouraging smile that had comforted every hurt and bruise they
+had ever had, "_Don't cry_ ... little darlings, _don't_ cry...."
+
+But on that first birthday after her death they had got more and more
+solemn as time passed, and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no
+sounds, prick up their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in
+the next room, no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the
+presents, and at last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open
+of the door and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with
+candles, each on a table covered with flowers and all the things one has
+most wanted.
+
+Their aunt didn't know. How should she? England was a great and beloved
+country, but it didn't have proper birthdays.
+
+"Every country has one drawback," Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas
+when the morning was finally over, in case she should by any chance be
+thinking badly of the dear country that had produced their mother as
+well as Shakespeare, "and not knowing about birthdays is England's."
+
+"There's Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, whose honest mind groped
+continually after accuracy.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose admitted after a pause. "Yes. There's Uncle Arthur."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like foreigners,
+and said so. He never had liked them and had always said so. It wasn't
+the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as the war went on, and these
+German nieces of his wife became more and more, as he told her, a
+blighted nuisance, so did he become more and more pointed, and said he
+didn't mind French foreigners, nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks
+later, that it wasn't Italian foreigners either that he minded; and
+still later, that nor was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of
+countries called neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a
+general way. To his wife when alone he said much more.
+
+Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to soften his
+heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings when he came home
+weary from his daily avocations, which were golf. Her own suggestion
+instantly projected a touching picture on her impressionable imagination
+of youth, grateful for a roof over its head, in return alleviating the
+tedium of crabbed age by introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was
+evidently unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great
+masters of English literature.
+
+But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when she
+proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug, where he
+was moving money about in trouser-pockets of the best material. And
+later on she discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen,"
+and "Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals during
+his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get mentioned
+were well-known racehorses.
+
+Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he said
+things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate alien nieces
+longer than one would have supposed possible if one had overheard what
+he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their bed. His ordered
+existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew, was shaken in its
+innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans.
+Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but
+who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he
+couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures,
+his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but
+he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs
+couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she
+belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when
+she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
+children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that
+he would like to know.
+
+Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was both
+silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said nothing. She
+herself was quietly going through very much on behalf of her nieces.
+Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The tradespeople twitted
+the cook with having to cook for them and were facetious about sausages
+and asked how one made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
+very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was doing
+and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard such strange
+things, one never could possibly tell even with children; and regularly
+the local policeman bicycled over to see if the aliens, who were
+registered at the county-town police-station, were still safe. And then
+they looked so very German, Aunt Alice felt. There was no mistaking
+them. And every time they opened their mouths there were all those r's
+rolling about. She hardly liked callers to find her nieces in her
+drawing-room at tea-time, they were so difficult to explain; yet they
+were too old to shut up in a nursery.
+
+After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them back to
+Germany; but their consternation had been so great and their entreaties
+to be kept where they were so desperate that he said no more about that.
+Besides, they told him that if they went back there they would be sure
+to be shot as spies, for over there nobody would believe they were
+German, just as over here nobody would believe they were English; and
+besides, this was in those days of the war when England was still
+regarding Germany as more mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever
+of the tradition of great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward
+a foe, and Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be
+behind his country in generosity.
+
+Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous necklace of
+war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead of horror strung
+upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle remaining good, in
+practice found himself vindictive. He was saddled; that's what he was.
+Saddled with this monstrous unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic of
+Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given notice by
+his old servants, having particular attention paid his house at night by
+the police, getting anonymous letters about lights seen in his upper
+windows the nights; the Zeppelins came, which were the windows of the
+floor those blighted twins slept on, and all because he had married Aunt
+Alice.
+
+At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was not a
+place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married Uncle
+Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed; but now she
+was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be told that she had
+brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life by having let him
+marry her. Inquiring backwards into her recollections it appeared to her
+that she had had no say at all about being married, but that Uncle
+Arthur had told her she was going to be, and then that she had been.
+Which was what had indeed happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little
+woman even in those days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with
+agreeable fat at the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist
+delicacy that comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she
+suggested, just as now, most of the things most men want to come home
+to,--slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and peace within
+one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out privately to
+Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the first time, she
+suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied fashions succulent, she
+was doomed to make some good man happy. But she did find it real hard
+work.
+
+It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that Uncle
+Arthur would not much longer endure his nieces, and that even if he did
+she would not be able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very
+dreadful to her that she was being forced to choose between two duties,
+and that she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she
+must either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
+and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing by, go
+away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or she must
+stand by Arthur.
+
+She chose Arthur.
+
+How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her husband?
+Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole of their
+married life that she was now unalterably attached to him. Sometimes a
+wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing dusk of her mind,
+the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving him for them, and helping
+and protecting the two poor aliens till happier days should return. If
+there were any good stuff in Arthur would he not recognize, however
+angry he might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
+this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
+too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
+lean and dangerous enterprises.
+
+And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
+determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would remove
+them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a children's
+hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed to very
+largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to hospitals. The
+matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron; and from January to
+April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from Germans.
+
+Then they came back again.
+
+It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with them.
+The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was who
+brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
+arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
+nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
+Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
+said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
+poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
+it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as
+though they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")
+
+Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
+r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little
+mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and
+equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a
+week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a
+fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on
+patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron,
+with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the
+biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
+being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably have
+continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses if it
+had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the younger
+Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.
+
+In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's shortcomings
+by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas
+was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
+never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
+bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her duty, but
+every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against it and it
+fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with apprehension.
+Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.
+
+"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly
+to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.
+
+"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.
+
+"She reads, you see, a lot--whenever she gets the chance she reads--"
+
+"Reads!" echoed the sister.
+
+"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"
+
+"Thinking! Reading doesn't make _me_ think."
+
+"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
+dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
+nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
+be pleased to keep her on."
+
+"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced
+these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like
+very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to
+look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."
+
+The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many notes--and
+stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to
+her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from
+everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
+ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining
+and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
+kitten.
+
+"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
+always do what one considers one's first duty."
+
+So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly
+relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said
+Damn.
+
+"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.
+
+"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can
+we--"
+
+"Arthur," said his wife.
+
+"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people
+wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any
+better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for when he
+marries!"
+
+"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt Alice,
+tears in her gentle eyes.
+
+There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of Aunt Alice.
+She answered advertisements and offered the twins as nursery
+governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps, even as orphans
+willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim on salaries, she
+offered them for nothing, and at last she offered them accompanied by a
+bonus. "Their mother was English. They are quite English," wrote Aunt
+Alice innumerable times in innumerable letters. "I feel bound, however,
+to tell you that they once had a German father, but of course it was
+through no fault of their own," etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with
+writing letters; and any solution of the problem that might possibly
+have been arrived at came to nothing because Anna-Rose would not be
+separated from Anna-Felicitas, and if it was difficult to find anybody
+who would take on one German nobody at all could be found to take on
+two.
+
+Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt Alice was
+at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The twins racked their
+brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to relieve Uncle Arthur of
+their presence as he was to be relieved. If only they could be
+independent, do something, work, go as housemaids,--anything.
+
+They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it to _The
+Times_, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay for it. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but unimpeachable
+    Sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with respectability.
+    No objection to being demeaned.
+
+Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was Anna-Rose's
+word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding things like
+being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose. "Upper and Under.
+I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she regarded
+it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word, liked it, and
+explained that it Put a whole sentence into a nut-shell, and wouldn't
+change it.
+
+No one answered this advertisement except a society in London for
+helping alien enemies in distress.
+
+"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.
+
+"And fancy thinking _us_ enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While
+mummy--" Her eyes filled with tears. She kept them back, however,
+behind convenient long eye-lashes.
+
+Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of _The Times_ that
+they instantly answered without saying a word to Aunt Alice. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Slightly wounded Officer would be glad to find intelligent and
+    interesting companion who can drive a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments by
+    arrangement.
+
+"We'll _tell_ him we're intelligent and interesting," said Anna-Rose,
+eagerly.
+
+"Yes--who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given a chance?"
+said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.
+
+"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the emoluments
+won't have to be doubled."
+
+"Yes--because he mightn't like paying twice over."
+
+"Yes--and while the preliminaries are being settled we could be learning
+to drive Uncle Arthur's car."
+
+"Yes--except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they different?"
+
+"Yes--but only about the same difference as there is between a man and a
+woman. A man and a woman are both human beings, you know. And Daimlers
+and Humbers are both cars."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.
+
+They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.
+
+The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward the end
+of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and were
+requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to express their
+sympathy with his wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity
+of driving a Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
+instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell them
+if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so it was very
+unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite the contrary.
+
+They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all hope
+and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have betrayed their
+want of intelligence and interestingness right away, when one day a
+letter came from General Headquarters in France, addressed _To Both the
+Miss Twinklers_, and it was a long letter, pages long, from the slightly
+wounded officer, telling them he had been patched up again and sent back
+to the front, and their answer to his advertisement had been forwarded
+to him there, and that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that
+the one he had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped
+when he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
+glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring them,--quick motoring
+in his racing car, sixty miles an hour motoring, flashing through the
+wonders of the New Forest, where he lived. And then there was a long bit
+about what the New Forest must be looking like just then, all quiet in
+the spring sunshine, with lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the
+big beeches, and the heather just coming alive, and all the winding
+solitary roads so full of peace, so empty of noise.
+
+"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end. "You've no
+idea what it's like getting letters from home out here. Write and tell
+me what you do and what the garden is like these fine afternoons. The
+lilacs must be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them
+still about, and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and
+tea is brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
+except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog barking
+somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."
+
+The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a scrawl in
+the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English kids like you that
+we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again soon."
+
+"English kids like us!"
+
+They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their belligerent
+ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and as if Captain
+Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under false pretences. They
+also wondered why he should conclude they were kids.
+
+They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly what
+could be described as English, but on the other hand neither were they
+exactly what could be described as German. "We would be very glad indeed
+if we were really _something_," they added.
+
+But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in the
+list of casualties in _The Times_ that Captain John Desmond had been
+killed.
+
+And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was revealed to
+Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday morning
+considering his troubles in detail.
+
+Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into being,--obvious,
+unquestionable, splendidly simple,--out of a trifle. For, chancing to
+raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to the bookshelves in front of him,
+they rested on one particular book, and on the back of this book stood
+out in big gilt letters the word
+
+    AMERICA
+
+There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it
+had all the effect of a revelation.
+
+There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the devil
+hadn't Alice thought of _that_? He knew some Americans; he didn't like
+them, but he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice would write
+to them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would give the twins
+ÂŁ200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome, especially in
+war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no earthly sort of claim on
+him, whatever Alice might choose to think they had on her. Yet it was
+such a confounded mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he
+wouldn't come under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money,
+as aiding the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to
+be rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would fall
+on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed Germans
+without making a face.
+
+Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
+insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's what
+_they've_ done," he said to himself--for this was 1916, and America had
+not yet made her magnificent entry into the war--as he had already said
+to himself a hundred times. "Lost their chance of coming in on the side
+of civilization, and helping sweep the world up tidy of barbarism.
+Shoulder to shoulder with us, that's where _they_ ought to have been.
+English-speaking races--duty to the world--" He then damned the
+Americans; but was suddenly interrupted by perceiving that if they had
+been shoulder to shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been
+able to send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
+he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
+however, concede any others.
+
+At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
+Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
+uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
+to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.
+
+It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet Sunday, when
+he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had overdone the joint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+And so, on a late September afternoon, the _St. Luke_, sliding away from
+her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his burden.
+
+It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
+not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
+knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
+pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
+moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
+perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
+in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
+case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
+that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
+nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
+_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.
+
+For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
+enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
+And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
+seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
+her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
+them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
+they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
+_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
+afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
+waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.
+
+"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
+handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.
+
+"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
+gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
+eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
+sniffing.
+
+Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out
+her handkerchief and waved it violently.
+
+Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.
+"Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has any one
+come to see us off?"
+
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.
+
+The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had
+faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round
+and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight
+for a minute.
+
+"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But do you
+suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen
+off?"
+
+And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were
+safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, "That
+man--" and then stopped. "What man?"
+
+"Standing just behind us--"
+
+"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than
+she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.
+
+"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.
+
+"Yes. Did you ever?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her
+handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever; and after a
+pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and
+anxieties--she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn't remember
+some of them--turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried
+eye on her said, "You won't go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna
+F.?"
+
+"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.
+
+"Your German Bible. The bit about _wenn die bösen Buben locken, so folge
+sie nicht_."
+
+Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a troubled
+brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you, Anna F.?"
+
+For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she was very
+pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite creature God had
+yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed this conviction from
+her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds. She considered it wouldn't
+have been at all good for her; and she had, up to this, and ever since
+they could both remember, jeered in a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her
+defects, concentrating particularly on her nose, on her leanness, and
+on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.
+
+But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own
+face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
+Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was
+lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days
+before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that
+her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and
+forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--"For," had said her
+father at monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as
+straight as a fir-tree,"--she only seemed to fall into even more
+attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had
+the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger
+sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully
+avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her
+conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.
+
+But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to
+handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so
+carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at
+that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling
+her meaning, and after a space of staring at her with a mild inquiry in
+her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too
+polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
+_St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make
+conversation about Christopher and Columbus.
+
+She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.
+She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on
+like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't
+only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
+into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and
+discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure,
+said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully
+to heart."
+
+The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and
+would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of passengers
+walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and passing and
+repassing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads
+that might be either the heads of boys or of girls, and they were
+greatly relieved to think they wouldn't have to begin and be sea-sick
+for some hours yet. "So couldn't we walk about a little?" suggested
+Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane
+chair.
+
+But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a ship if
+they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid being sick but
+also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the moment the ship got
+under way, and not move out of them till it stopped again. "Or, at
+least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself
+been further on a ship than to Calais, but recognized that it might be
+difficult to avoid moving sooner or later if it was New York you were
+going to. "Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as
+seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you second-class
+for that very reason, because it is so much less conspicuous."
+
+It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle Arthur's generosities
+were of the kind that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in
+eating he was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be
+damned, so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and
+the extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that were
+necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary, before he
+finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so profoundly that
+when it came to taking their passage he could hardly be got not to send
+them in the steerage. This was too much, however, for Aunt Alice, whose
+maid was going with them as far as Euston and therefore would know what
+sort of tickets they had, and she insisted with such quiet obstinacy
+that they should be sent first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the
+difference and consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also
+explained that second-class was less conspicuous.
+
+Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the wisdom of
+walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already, but she too was
+stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has a wonderful effect,
+as she had already in her brief career had numerous occasions to
+observe, in doing away with prudent determinations. So, after cautiously
+looking round the corners to see if the man who was on the verge of
+being sorry for them were nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the
+damp, dark deck; and the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them
+a sensation of being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between
+two worlds.
+
+Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then against the
+side of the _St. Luke_ when some other steamer, invisible in the mist,
+felt her way slowly by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
+that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other side,
+hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it further and
+further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt, it yet, because
+on either side of it were still the shores of England, didn't seem as
+forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land they were bound for. For
+suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of Anna-Rose, who had been privately
+asking herself the same thing, America didn't like them? Suppose the
+same sort of difficulties were waiting for them over there that had
+dogged their footsteps in England?
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself on the
+readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will like us,
+because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to it in exactly
+the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,--and don't you go forgetting it and
+showing your disagreeable side--that the dove was in when it flew across
+the waters to the ark, and with olive branches in our beaks just the
+same as the dove's, only they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's
+friends."
+
+"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends--" began Anna-Felicitas, who
+had great doubts as to everything connected with Uncle Arthur.
+
+"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she wasn't
+going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question liked to give
+all the information in her power, "secondly, America is the greatest of
+the neutrals except the _liebe Gott_, and is bound particularly to
+prize us because we're so unusually and peculiarly neutral. What ever was
+more neutral than you and me? We're neither one thing nor the other, and
+yet at the same time we're both." Anna-Felicitas remarked that it sounded
+rather as if they were the Athanasian Creed.
+
+"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's ÂŁ200
+waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm thing to think of.
+We never had ÂŁ200 waiting for us anywhere in our lives before, did
+we,--so you remember that, and don't get grumbling."
+
+Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that she
+couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the goodwill of
+Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt Alice's friends they
+had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's friends were more likely to
+like her.
+
+Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which to start
+on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and that one
+didn't have doubts.
+
+Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she was very
+hungry, not having had anything that could be called a meal since
+breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in "Lycidas," the hungry
+ones who looked up and were not fed, and she quoted the lines in case
+Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew
+the lines by heart, and if there was any quoting to be done liked to do
+it herself), and said she felt just like that,--"Empty," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "and yet swollen. When do you suppose people have food
+on board ships? I don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about--oh well,
+about leaving England, if it was after dinner."
+
+"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At least,
+not more than's just proper."
+
+"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily. "Except
+what's proper."
+
+"And even if we were feeling it _dreadfully_," said Anna-Rose, with a
+little catch in her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't
+make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."
+
+"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got much to
+bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things, Anna-F."
+
+"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.
+
+They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there wouldn't
+soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all disappeared.
+They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there were no lights.
+The row of cabin windows along the wall were closely shuttered, and the
+door they had come through when first they came on deck was shut too,
+and they couldn't find it in the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling
+along a wall for a door they knew was there and not be able to find it,
+that they began to laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up
+more than anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
+Arthur.
+
+"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and vainly
+along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.
+
+"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas,
+following in her tracks.
+
+A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left off
+patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity against the
+wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It was a male
+figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they thought, and it stopped
+in front of them and said in an American voice, "Hello."
+
+Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of reply
+to Hello.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured "Hello"
+back again.
+
+Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to people
+they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think they had
+brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided that perhaps
+"Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said it.
+
+"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of this.
+
+"That's what _we_ think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.
+
+"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose, still
+distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to know.
+
+"But _don't_ tell us to ask the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas, even more
+earnestly.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."
+
+The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding on; and
+they followed him as obediently as though such persons as possible _böse
+Buben_ didn't exist.
+
+"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.
+
+"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs were
+long and they could hardly keep up with him.
+
+"English?" said the man.
+
+"Ye--es," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I said," Anna-Felicitas
+endeavoured to explain, hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep
+within reach of his ear, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the pantings for
+breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"
+
+They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful question to
+have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but, having got to the
+door they had been searching for, opened it and stepped into the bright
+light inside, and putting out his arm behind him pulled them in one
+after the other over the high wooden door-frame.
+
+Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the afternoon,
+engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like grievances to an
+official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She stopped suddenly when
+the man appeared, and the official took his hands out of his pockets and
+became alert and attentive, and the stewardess hastily picked up a tray
+she had set down and began to move away along a passage.
+
+The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and came
+back even more quickly than she had tried to go.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to Anna-Felicitas,
+"it's Hi she answers to."
+
+"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good circumlocutions to
+throw them away on her."
+
+"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.
+
+He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason into a
+laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to follow him, and
+went out again into the night.
+
+"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the stewardess
+down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber and machine-oil
+and cooking all mixed up together.
+
+"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't tell us to
+ask the Captain, because we really do know better than that."
+
+"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.
+
+"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."
+
+The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.
+
+"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of course."
+
+"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess shortly,
+eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.
+
+"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."
+
+"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing to stare
+round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down
+arm-in-arm.
+
+"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do you
+suppose we quarrel?"
+
+"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
+stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."
+
+She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or
+the long girl.
+
+"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas
+gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head. She was
+unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a
+reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
+years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take more than even
+the Captain to obsess _me_."
+
+They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the
+stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly
+leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If you're friends, what
+do you want to know his name for, then?"
+
+"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The Captain's," said the stewardess.
+
+"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
+patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."
+
+"Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself, however, and
+merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman _was_ the Captain," went
+upstairs and left them.
+
+Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your advice," she
+called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for it was evident that
+for some reason her heart was hardened, by flattery. "You _told_ us to
+ask the Captain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it occurred to
+them that perhaps what was the matter with the stewardess was that she
+needed a tip. At first, with their recent experiences fresh in their
+minds, they thought that she was probably passionately pro-Ally, and had
+already detected all those Junkers in their past and accordingly
+couldn't endure them. Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You
+will have to give your stewardess a little something."
+
+This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they had
+been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the tippers, and
+anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses. Neither, it
+appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she said vaguely
+that as it was an American boat they were going on she supposed it would
+have to be American money, which was dollars, and she didn't know much
+about dollars except that you divided them by four and multiplied them
+by five, or else it was the other way about; and when, feeling still
+uninformed, they had begged her to tell them why one did that, she said
+it was the quickest way of finding out what a dollar really was, and
+would they mind not talking any more for a little while because her head
+ached.
+
+The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had all
+been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but Americans,
+Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of their talking
+English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this point
+and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to crane out her
+head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her whether she didn't think
+that might be so, but was afraid of disturbing the people in the
+opposite berths.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin, and
+Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
+Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the opposite
+side were two similar berths, each containing as Anna-Felicitas
+whispered after peeping cautiously through their closed curtains,--for
+at first on coming in after dinner to go to bed the cabin seemed empty,
+except for inanimate things, like clothes hanging up and an immense
+smell,--its human freight. They were awed by this discovery, for the
+human freight was motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the
+noises suggesting sleep.
+
+They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible, but it
+was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for anything, not
+even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced a little uneasily
+at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed cautiously and
+delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly was. It appeared to
+be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum pudding at Christmas, and
+German bedrooms in the morning. It was a smell they didn't like the idea
+of sleeping with, but they saw no way of getting air. They thought of
+ringing for the stewardess and asking her to open a window, though they
+could see no window, but came to the conclusion it was better not to
+stir her up; not yet, at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed
+what was the matter with her. They said nothing out loud, for fear of
+disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains, but they knew what each
+was thinking, for one isn't, as they had long ago found out, a twin for
+nothing.
+
+There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely hoisted up
+into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for some time after the
+rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had already neatly inserted
+herself into her own berth, after watching these legs in silence and
+fighting a desire to give them a tug and see what would happen, had to
+get out at last on hearing Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there
+as though she were choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was
+then on a level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
+Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do anything
+with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the blankets, but
+lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes up very tight and
+stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and evidently struggling
+with what appeared to be an attack of immoderate and ill-timed mirth.
+
+Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was suddenly seized
+herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a hasty glance round
+at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her own berth and pulled the
+sheet over her mouth.
+
+She was sobering herself by going over her different responsibilities,
+checking them off on her fingers,--the two five-pound notes under her
+pillow for extra expenses till they were united in New York to their
+capital, the tickets, the passports, and Anna-Felicitas,--when two thick
+fair pigtails appeared dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by
+Anna-Felicitas's head.
+
+"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered Anna-Felicitas, her
+eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still
+further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood
+rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
+freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of
+its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really
+stowaways.
+
+"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head emphatically,
+which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose, considering that it
+was upside down. "_German_ stowaways," whispered Anna-Felicitas,
+sniffing expressively though cautiously.
+
+Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the bulging
+curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much curved. In spite
+of herself her flesh began to creep a little.
+
+"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously congested.
+"Stowaways are."
+
+There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board and
+took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till they came
+to bed.
+
+"_German_ men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a delicate
+expressive sniff.
+
+"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into ladies'
+cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."
+
+"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies' disguise."
+She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible suggestions.
+
+"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly, for
+Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic fit.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
+inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
+very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet creep
+across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness.
+She sat up to watch, her eyes round with interest.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with several
+pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the berths. Having
+got there she stood still a moment listening, and then putting a careful
+finger between the curtain of the lower berth and its frame, drew it the
+smallest crack aside and peeped in.
+
+Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your pardon,"
+she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I thought--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush down her
+back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any more than
+before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker than she had gone.
+She just stopped on the way to switch off the light, and then felt along
+the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till she got to her head, and pulling
+it near her by its left pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its
+left ear, "Wide awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."
+
+And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady in the
+berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that didn't make them
+less German. Nothing ever makes a German less German, Anna-Rose
+explained to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their blood
+by the right kind of mother."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."
+
+This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the next day,
+by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human freight being
+Germans, for one of their own submarines came after the _St. Luke_ and
+no one was quite so loud in expression of terror and dislike as the two
+Germans.
+
+They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were Germans.
+They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was nothing compared
+to how one had been born. The curtains of their berths, till then so
+carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and the berths gave up their
+contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it
+was the resurrection and the berths were riven sepulchres chucking up
+their dead.
+
+This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the _St. Luke_ was
+pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The twins, waking
+about seven, found with a pained surprise that they were not where they
+had been dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing
+tennis happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
+that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
+groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long
+it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head
+once with the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped
+it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as quiet
+as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even raise her head,
+she felt so very uncomfortable.
+
+At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same stewardess, they
+languidly noted, with whom already they had had two encounters, for it
+happened that this was one of the cabins she attended to--and said that
+if anybody wanted breakfast they had better be quick or it would be
+over.
+
+"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending tone; and
+instantly was sick.
+
+The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the twins,
+in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so as not to
+witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the cabin, feebly
+marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being quick to persons who
+were being constantly stood on their heads. And breakfast,--they
+shuddered and thought of other things; of fresh, sweet air, and of the
+scent of pinks and apricots warm with the sun.
+
+At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in, and
+with determination in every gesture.
+
+"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them talking
+at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side, "you mustn't
+give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed. You must get up
+and go on deck. And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all
+the time?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was more on
+the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could only see the
+stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured that she didn't
+care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat drill at
+mid-day, and you've got to be present."
+
+Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every soul on the
+ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat drill."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that moment
+how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths redoubled
+their groans.
+
+"Come, come--" said the stewardess.
+
+Then the _St. Luke_ whistled five times, and the stewardess turned pale.
+For a brief space, before they understood what had happened, the twins
+supposed she was going to be sick. But it wasn't that that was the
+matter with her, for after a moment's staring at nothing with horror on
+her face she pounced on them and pulled them bodily out of their berths,
+regardless by which end, and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she
+plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the
+passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled
+back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with
+hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and
+all the time she was calling out "Quick--quick--quick--" There was a
+great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.
+
+The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the
+Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled
+vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the
+fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran
+in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps,--a steward so much
+bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the
+German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their
+protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother
+Nature--Mother Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only
+stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and
+seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.
+
+Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt there
+was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing their
+valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward assuring
+them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be taken up and
+somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never dare do anything
+to a ship containing its own flesh and blood--and an American ship,
+too--there must be some awful mistake--but anyhow they must be
+saved--there would be terrible trouble, that they could assure the
+steward and the twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if
+America allowed two Germans to be destroyed--and anyhow they would
+insist on having their passage money refunded....
+
+The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and very
+unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of
+her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly
+wondered, while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at
+the cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
+buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally seemed
+busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag
+of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in
+spite of the steward's assuring her that it would drag her down in the
+water like a stone tied to a kitten.
+
+"You're a _very_ cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said, as he pushed
+them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding up Anna-Felicitas
+on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run alone.
+
+The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at the foot
+of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got her on deck
+propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to the set of cabins
+they were in, and darted away and in a minute was back again with a big
+coat which he wrapped round her.
+
+"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to drown," he said
+briskly, "but mind you don't forget to throw it off, Missie, the minute
+you feel the water."
+
+Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning against the
+wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference to whatever
+might be going to happen next. Her face was now as white as the frill of
+the night-gown that straggled out from beneath her coat, for the journey
+from the cabin to the deck had altogether finished her. Anna-Rose was
+thankful that she felt too ill to be afraid. Her own heart was black
+with despair,--despair that Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one,
+should presently, at any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving
+water, and certainly be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of
+life.
+
+She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep her warm.
+Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold hands and put them
+away beneath the coat the steward had brought. She slid an arm round her
+and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so that she should know somebody
+was there, somebody who loved her. "What's the _good_ of it all--_why_
+were we born--" she wondered, staring at the hideous gray waves as
+they swept up into sight over the side of the ship and away again as the
+ship rose up, and at the wet deck and the torn sky, and the
+miserable-looking passengers in their life-jackets collected together
+round the life-boat.
+
+Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed, kept up a
+constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly smoking
+cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about them, all of
+them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the torpedo to
+appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed. The ship was
+zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay on. An official
+stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water in it and provisions.
+That the submarine must be mad, as the official remarked, to fire on an
+American ship, didn't console anybody, and his further assurance that
+the matter would not be allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt
+too sure that in all probability they themselves were going to rest
+there, down underneath that repulsive icy water, after a struggle that
+was going to be unpleasant.
+
+The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship left the
+landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be sorry for
+her, came across from the first class, where his life-boat was, to watch
+for the track of the expected torpedo, and caught sight of the twins
+huddled in their corner.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes out at the
+desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home: the home that
+was, that used to be till such a little while ago, the home that now
+seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably beautiful and blest,
+with its daily life of love and laughter and of easy confidence that
+to-morrow was going to be just as good. Happiness had been the ordinary
+condition there, a simple matter of course. Its place was taken now by
+courage. Anna-Rose felt sick at all this courage there was about. There
+should be no occasion for it. There should be no horrors to face, no
+cruelties to endure. Why couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must
+people get killing each other? She, for her part, would be behind nobody
+in courage and in the defying of a Fate that could behave, as she felt,
+so very unlike her idea of anything even remotely decent; but it
+oughtn't to be necessary, this constant condition of screwed-upness; it
+was waste of effort, waste of time, waste of life,--oh the _stupidity_
+of it all, she thought, rebellious and bewildered.
+
+"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little into a small cup.
+
+Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her. She
+recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had much
+better be sorry for himself now, she thought, because he, just as much
+as they were, was bound for a watery bier.
+
+"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the smell of
+brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar strictness on no
+account to talk to strange men, "I don't drink."
+
+"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.
+
+"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping a
+drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."
+
+"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell me where
+your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on,
+considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."
+
+The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that they had
+a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine hand over fist.
+Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of supposing her to be
+in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did in spite of herself
+steal into her heart.
+
+He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some pillows.
+
+"If you _will_ sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the pillows behind
+their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open her eyes, and her
+head hung about so limply that it looked as if it might at any moment
+roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable as you can."
+
+Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange Anna-Felicitas's
+indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw little use in being
+comfortable just a minute or two before drowning. "Drowning be hanged,"
+said the man.
+
+"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling suddenly
+quite at home, "except that _he_ would have said 'Drowning be damned.'"
+
+The man laughed. "Is he dead?" he asked, busy with Anna-Felicitas's
+head, which defied their united efforts to make it hold itself up.
+
+"Dead?" echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur's ever being
+anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear words for such a
+long time as eternity seemed very odd.
+
+"You said he _used_ to talk like that."
+
+"Oh, no he's not dead at all. Quite the contrary."
+
+The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas's head arranged in
+a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had some sort of
+self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she could
+manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back. He was
+going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going to say "You
+poor things," or words to that effect. That's what the people round
+Uncle Arthur's had said to them. That's what everybody had said to them
+since the war began, and Aunt Alice's friends had said it to her too,
+because she had to have her nieces live with her, and no doubt Uncle
+Arthur's friends who played golf with him had said it to him as well,
+except that probably they put in a damn so as to make it clearer for him
+and said "You poor damned thing," or something like that, and she was
+sick of the very words poor things. Poor things, indeed! "We're with
+each other," she said briefly, lifting her chin.
+
+"Well, I don't think that's enough," said the man. "Not half enough.
+You ought to have a mother or something."
+
+"_Everybody_ can't have mothers," said Anna-Rose very defiantly indeed,
+tears rushing into her eyes.
+
+The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. "There now," he
+said. "That's better. What's the good of catching your deaths?"
+
+Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn't gone on about mothers, said that with
+so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to her
+particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a chair
+and sat down beside her.
+
+She didn't know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation to laugh
+at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily comforting. It
+made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like waking up to
+sunshine and one's morning bath and breakfast after a nightmare. He
+seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked him to sit near them.
+She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had said there were very few
+good men, hardly any in fact except one's husband, but this one did seem
+one of the few exceptions. And she thought that by now, he having
+brought them all those pillows, he could no longer come under the
+heading of strange men. When he wasn't looking she put out her hand
+secretly and touched his coat where he wouldn't feel it. It comforted
+her to touch his coat. She hoped Aunt Alice wouldn't have disapproved of
+seeing her sitting side by side with him and liking it.
+
+Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose, having
+given her the desired promise not to talk or let Anna-Felicitas talk to
+strange men, and desiring to collect any available information for her
+guidance in her new responsible position had asked, "But when are men
+_not_ strange?"
+
+"When you've married them," said Aunt Alice. "After that, of course, you
+love them."
+
+And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Nothing more was seen of the submarine.
+
+The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them know he
+had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having saved the
+ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a ship, and they
+the one just man whose presence would have saved those cities if he had
+been in them; and the American passengers were equally sure that the
+submarine, on thinking it over, had decided that President Wilson was
+not a man to be trifled with, and had gone in search of some prey which
+would not have the might and majesty of America at its back.
+
+As the day went on, and the _St. Luke_ left off zig-zagging, the relief
+of those on board was the relief of a reprieve from death. Almost
+everybody was cured of sea-sickness, and quite everybody was ready to
+overwhelm his neighbour with cordiality and benevolence. Rich people
+didn't mind poor people, and came along from the first class and talked
+to them just as if they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves.
+A billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
+times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly proud
+of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked somebody in a
+dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale, if he had been
+frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston talked quite a long
+while to an English lady without first having made sure that she was
+well-connected. What could have been more like heaven? The tone on the
+_St. Luke_ that day was very like what the tone in the kingdom of heaven
+must be in its simple politeness. "And so you see," said Anna-Rose, who
+was fond of philosophizing in season and out of season, and particularly
+out of season, "how good comes out of evil."
+
+She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
+Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr. Twist--such,
+the amiable stranger had told them, was his name--who had gone to see
+about tea being brought up to them; and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to
+sit up and take notice, the hours of fresh air having done their work,
+smiled the ready, watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It
+was so nice not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If
+she had been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about
+the number and size of one's negative blessings--all the things one
+hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to them once
+you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and yet people
+grumble.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent mood in
+which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled at anybody
+who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would have smiled just
+like that, with just that friendly, boneless familiarity at the devil if
+he had appeared, or even at Uncle Arthur himself.
+
+The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were having the
+pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the realization of this
+that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good coming out of evil. The
+background, she could not but perceive, was a very odd one for their
+pleasantest day for months--a rolling steamer and a cold wind flicking
+at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly, are
+negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that matters. Of
+what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid summer
+afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so beautifully framed
+in Uncle Arthur?
+
+No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.
+
+In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in the
+end.
+
+Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble agreement.
+
+She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable, Anna-Rose
+remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to him than they
+could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded Anna-Felicitas how
+they used to rub their eyes to try and see more clearly, for surely
+these means of happiness, these elaborate arrangements for it all round
+them, couldn't be for nothing? There must be some of it somewhere, if
+only they could discover where? And there was none. Not a trace of it.
+Not even the faintest little swish of its skirts.
+
+Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a long
+time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's death
+blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas said aloud
+that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was true. Their mother's
+death was something so tender, so beautiful, that terrible as it was to
+them to be left without her they yet felt raised up by it somehow,
+raised on to a higher level than where they had been before, closer in
+their hearts to real things, to real values. But Uncle Arthur came into
+possession of their lives as a consequence of that death, and he had
+towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun. Suddenly there was
+no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly everything one said and
+did was wrong. "And you needn't think," Anna-Felicitas had said wisely,
+"that he's like that because we're Germans--or _seem_ to be Germans,"
+she amended. "It's because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice.
+_She's_ not a German. And yet look at her."
+
+And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her mind's eye,
+for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a wood picnicking,
+and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a _tĂŞte-Ă -tĂŞte_ luncheon with
+Uncle Arthur who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she
+didn't like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
+less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what she
+imagined was simply awful,--Anna-Rose had, I say, looked at Aunt Alice
+in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was true.
+
+Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray of tea
+and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful picnic.
+
+Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him quite
+soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to clear his
+mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas, though their
+clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which their flair was done,
+might be misleading, were no longer children, but quite the contrary;
+that they were, in fact, persons who were almost ripe for going to
+dances, and certainly in another year would be perfectly ripe for dances
+supposing there were any.
+
+Mr. Twist listened attentively, and begged her to tell him any other
+little thing she might think of as useful to him in his capacity of
+friend and attendant,--both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
+till he had seen them safely landed in New York.
+
+"I hope you don't think we _need_ anybody," said Anna-Rose. "We shall
+like being friends with you very much, but only on terms of perfect
+equality."
+
+"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+She hesitated a moment.
+
+"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.
+
+"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry for us."
+
+"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.
+
+"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to--to our friends."
+
+"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Which was great waste of your time."
+
+"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.
+
+Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an activity
+in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr. Twist's attentions
+in the spirit in which they were offered, which was, as he said, one of
+mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was never sea-sick, he could move
+about and do things for them that might be difficult to do for
+themselves; as he knew a great deal about stewardesses, he could tell
+them what sort of tip theirs expected; as he was American, he could
+illuminate them about that country. He had been doing Red Cross work
+with an American ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home
+for a short visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose gathered, was
+ancient and widowed, was getting on. His mother, he said, lived in
+seclusion in a New England village with his sister, who had not married.
+
+"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you," said Mr.
+Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up--I mean," he added
+hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's less--well, less completely
+young."
+
+"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity. "People are
+completely young the day they're born, and ever after that they spend
+their time becoming less so."
+
+"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than you have.
+I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than I am."
+
+"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's head where
+it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must have got to the
+stage when one is called a maiden lady."
+
+"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who hadn't
+till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely at him
+whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be either a lady or
+a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of Germans, I think," went on
+Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at the cake Mr. Twist was offering
+her, "never to let us be anything but Its till we've taken on some men."
+
+Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage, and
+inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.
+
+"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose,
+turning to her severely, "you start being indiscreet. Well, I suppose,"
+she added with a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or
+later. Our name is Twinkler."
+
+She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist, perceiving he
+was expected to say something, said that he didn't mind that anyhow, and
+that he could bear something worse in the way of revelations.
+
+"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished, for in
+Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in England it
+was well known.
+
+Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he said.
+
+Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said, speaking
+very distinctly. "It's _von_ Twinkler."
+
+"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.
+
+"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen that we
+weren't."
+
+"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we used to have a
+German father."
+
+"But only because our mother married him," explained Anna-Felicitas.
+"Else we wouldn't have."
+
+"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it has
+dogged our footsteps ever since."
+
+"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying anybody
+does. You go into a church, and before you know where you are, you're
+all tangled up with posterity."
+
+"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at her own
+past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you. It's really
+simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."
+
+"If there hadn't been a war we'd have been all right," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "But directly there's a war, whoever it is you've
+married, if it isn't one of your own countrymen, rises up against you,
+just as if he were too many meringues you'd had for dinner."
+
+"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against you."
+
+"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We never used to bother about what we were," said Anna-Felicitas. "We
+were just human beings, and so was everybody else just human beings."
+
+"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people not
+being Germans."
+
+"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because, you see, we're not."
+
+Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little prominent and
+pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he put his head on one
+side and looked at them, of an attentive fox-terrier. "I don't think I
+quite follow," he said again.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.
+
+"It's because you've got into your head that we're German because of our
+father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father, when all's said and
+done?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."
+
+"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a mother,"
+said Anna-Rose.
+
+"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's always busy.
+He's always thinking of something else."
+
+"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight," said
+Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, whose habit of drooping still
+persisted in spite of her father's admonishments.
+
+"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to remember
+that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up beautifully for a
+moment, "but that's about everything."
+
+"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
+perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander. Whereas
+one's mother--"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother--"
+
+They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't bear
+speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.
+
+Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began to cry.
+The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any sort were
+possible.
+
+Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here, Anna-F.,"
+she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't _have_ you be sentimental--I
+won't _have_ you be sentimental...."
+
+And then she too began to cry.
+
+Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves, there was
+nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost confidence. It
+was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man. A person they
+hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their feelings. Showing
+their innermost miserable places.
+
+They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they
+weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,--odd ones
+left over from last time, which was years and years ago,--"But _really_
+years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,--"the
+years one falls down on garden paths in, and cuts one's knees, and
+one's mother--one's mother--c-c-c-comforts one--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and pulling
+out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even been
+unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right away."
+
+And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid promptness his
+Red Cross experience had taught him, started competently wiping up their
+faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
+encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something not too
+determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those pictures of
+efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe is
+familiar,--eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm mouths and
+chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect, offering in
+capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist was the reverse of
+eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of good-looking; that is, he would
+have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later
+to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled
+thing,--which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping
+their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they
+discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being
+friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged
+to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
+after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping,
+said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship)--he would
+have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.
+
+"But you have to _have_ a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who didn't think
+it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could eat with it and
+see out of it.
+
+"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose; but
+secretly she thought that having been begun so successfully at his feet,
+and carried upwards with such grace of long limbs and happy proportions,
+he might as well have gone on equally felicitously for the last little
+bit.
+
+"I expect God got tired of him over that last bit," she mused, "and just
+put on any sort of head."
+
+"Yes--that happened to be lying about," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "In a
+hurry to get done with him."
+
+"Anyway he's very kind," said Anna-Rose, a slight touch of defiance in
+her voice.
+
+"Oh, _very_ kind," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And it doesn't matter about faces for being kind," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not in the least," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And if it hadn't been for the submarine we shouldn't have got to know
+him. So you see," said Anna-Rose,--and again produced her favourite
+remark about good coming out of evil.
+
+Those were the days in mid-Atlantic when England was lost in its own
+peculiar mists, and the sunshine of America was stretching out towards
+them. The sea was getting calmer and bluer every hour, and submarines
+more and more unlikely. If a ship could be pleasant, which
+Anna-Felicitas doubted, for she still found difficulty in dressing and
+undressing without being sea-sick and was unpopular in the cabin, this
+ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day long, staring at the
+blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if you were living in the
+middle of a jewel, and tried not to remember--oh, there were heaps of
+things it was best not to remember; and when the rail of the ship moved
+up across the horizon too far into the sky, or moved down across it and
+showed too much water, you just shut your eyes and then it didn't
+matter; and the sun shone warm and steady on your face, and the wind
+tickled the tassel on the top of your German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist
+came and read aloud to you, which sent you to sleep quicker than
+anything you had ever known.
+
+The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket was called
+"Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an American collection of
+English poetry, professing in its preface to be a Short Cut to Culture;
+and he would read with what at that time, it being new to them, seemed
+to the twins a strange exotic pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to
+Dooty," and the effect was as if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian
+psalm in its ribs, and make it leap and giggle.
+
+Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she didn't mind what
+the ship's rail did with the horizon, opened them very round when first
+Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was used to hearing them read
+by her mother in the adorable husky voice that sent such thrills through
+one, but she listened with the courtesy and final gratitude due to the
+efforts to entertain her of so amiable a friend, and only the roundness
+of her eyes showed her astonishment at this waltzing round, as it
+appeared to her, of Mr. Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of
+God. He also read "Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur
+took for a Derby winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to
+refrain from stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point
+of having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
+questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on deck,
+which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it was because
+her deck-chair was so very much harder than she was.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who considered that, if these things were short-cuts to
+anywhere, seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got
+there, snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
+off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which worried
+Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment less
+beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more than ever,
+unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being administered, to
+make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again by taking and shaking
+her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of waking up suddenly and
+forgetting to be polite, as one does when first one wakes up and hasn't
+had time to remember one is a lady. "To-morrow to fresh woods and
+pastures noo," Mr. Twist would finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp
+of satisfaction at having swallowed yet another solid slab of culture;
+and Anna-Felicitas, returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur,
+with her eyes still shut and her head lolling limply, things like,
+"After all, it _does_ rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still
+doesn't like it."
+
+Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild inquiry,
+and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately explain what
+Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from anything resembling what
+she had said that Mr. Twist looked more mildly inquiring than ever.
+
+Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too sleepy or
+too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got angry, and would
+get what the Germans call a red head and look at Anna-Felicitas very
+severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would close his book and watch
+with that alert, cocked-up-ear look of a sympathetic and highly
+interested terrier; but sooner or later the ship would always give a
+roll, and Anna-Felicitas would shut her eyes and fade to paleness and
+become the helpless bundle of sickness that nobody could possibly go on
+being severe with.
+
+The passengers in the second class were more generally friendly than
+those in the first class. The first class sorted itself out into little
+groups, and whispered about each other, as Anna-Rose observed, watching
+their movements across the rope that separated her from them. The second
+class remained to the end one big group, frayed out just a little at the
+edge in one or two places.
+
+The chief fraying out was where the Twinkler kids, as the second-class
+young men, who knew no better, dared to call them, interrupted the
+circle by talking apart with Mr. Twist. Mr. Twist had no business there.
+He was a plutocrat of the first class; but in spite of the regulations
+which cut off the classes from communicating, with a view apparently to
+the continued sanitariness of the first class, the implication being
+that the second class was easily infectious and probably overrun, there
+he was every day and several times in every day. He must have heavily
+squared the officials, the second-class young men thought until the day
+when Mr. Twist let it somehow be understood that he had known the
+Twinkler young ladies for years, dandled them in their not very remote
+infancy on his already full-grown knee, and had been specially appointed
+to look after them on this journey.
+
+Mr. Twist did not specify who had appointed him, except to the Twinkler
+young ladies themselves, and to them he announced that it was no less a
+thing, being, or creature, than Providence. The second-class young men,
+therefore, in spite of their rising spirits as danger lay further
+behind, and their increasing tendency, peculiar to those who go on
+ships, to become affectionate, found themselves no further on in
+acquaintance with the Misses Twinkler the last day of the voyage than
+they had been the first. Not that, under any other conditions, they
+would have so much as noticed the existence of the Twinkler kids. In
+their blue caps, pulled down tight to their eyebrows and hiding every
+trace of hair, they looked like bald babies. They never came to meals;
+their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was, feeding them on deck with
+the care of a mother-bird for its fledglings, so that nobody except the
+two German ladies in their cabin had seen them without the caps. The
+young men put them down as half-grown only, somewhere about fourteen
+they thought, and nothing but what, if they were boys instead of girls,
+would have been called louts.
+
+Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed in the
+way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and the Misses
+Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent baldness, and
+their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt have been the
+objects of advances before New York was reached if it hadn't been for
+Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty in the second class on that
+voyage, the young men resentfully pointed out to each other, except
+these two kids who were too much under it, and a young lady of thirty
+who sat manicuring her nails most of the day with her back supported by
+a life-boat, and polishing them with red stuff till they flashed rosily
+in the sun. This young lady was avoided for the first two days, while
+the young men still remembered their mothers, because of what she looked
+like; but was greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely for
+that reason.
+
+Still, every one couldn't get near her. She was only one; and there
+were at least a dozen active, cooped-up young men taking lithe,
+imprisoned exercise in long, swift steps up and down the deck, ready for
+any sort of enterprise, bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So
+that at last the left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy
+nails was less kind to, actually in their despair attempted ghastly
+flirtations with the two German ladies. They approached them with a kind
+of angry amorousness. They tucked them up roughly in rugs. They brought
+them cushions as though they were curses. And it was through this
+_rapprochement_, in the icy warmth of which the German ladies expanded
+like bulky flowers and grew at least ten years younger, the ten years
+they shed being their most respectable ones, that the ship became aware
+of the nationality of the Misses Twinkler.
+
+The German ladies were not really German, as they explained directly
+there were no more submarines about, for a good woman, they said,
+becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they, therefore, were
+merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal as you could find, but
+the Twinklers were the real thing, they said,--real, unadulterated,
+arrogant Junkers, which is why they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no
+Junker, said the German ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked
+to except another Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck
+not been born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had
+missed it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
+were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
+democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers most
+abound, and knew the sort of thing well.
+
+It seemed to Mr. Twist, who caught scraps of conversation as he came
+and went, that in the cabin the Twinklers must have alienated sympathy.
+They had. They had done more; they had got themselves actively disliked.
+
+From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into their
+shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this prejudice had
+later flared up into a great and justified dislike. The ladies, to begin
+with, hadn't known that they were von Twinklers, but had supposed them
+mere Twinklers, and the von, as every German knows, makes all the
+difference, especially in the case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a
+race, the ladies knew, of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in
+the Westphalian district, but with it were one of the oldest families in
+Prussia; known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
+wherever it went.
+
+In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated the two
+apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their conduct, age, and
+obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded by their questionings,
+the smaller and more active Twinkler had let out her von at them much as
+one lets loose a dog when one is alone and weak against the attacks of
+an enemy, instead of falling in harmoniously with the natural change of
+attitude of the ladies, which became immediately perfectly polite and
+conciliatory, as well as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two
+young Junkers went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most
+motherly questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
+themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be permitted
+to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently, after a day or
+two of such uncloaked repugnance to it, left with quantities of it
+useless on their hands and all going sour.
+
+From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain Twinklers they
+had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin, and as von Twinklers
+they were intolerable in their high-nosed indifference.
+
+It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the beginning of
+the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such manifest youth should
+rise politely and considerately each morning very early, and get
+themselves dressed and out of the way in at the most ten minutes,
+leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful putting together bit by
+bit of that which ultimately emerged a perfect specimen of a lady of
+riper years, but the weedy Twinkler insisted on lying in her berth so
+late that if the ladies wished to be in time for the best parts of
+breakfast, which they naturally and passionately did wish, they were
+forced to dress in her presence, which was most annoying and awkward.
+
+It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but you never
+know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to trust them.
+They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have seen; they
+apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their spectacled
+American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so much gustiness,
+if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the weedy one had a most
+tiresome trick of being sick instantly every time Odol was used, or a
+little brandy was drunk. Odol is most refreshing; it has a lovely smell,
+without which no German bedroom is complete. And the brandy was not
+common schnaps, but an old expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell,
+was a credit to anybody's cabin.
+
+The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed did persist in using
+Odol and drinking a little brandy, indifferent to the feeble prayer from
+the upper berth which floated down entreating them not to, but in their
+own interests they were forced to give it up. The objectionable child
+did not pray a second time; she passed immediately from prayer to
+performance. Of two disagreeables wise women choose the lesser, but they
+remain resentful.
+
+The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and take
+herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of toilet with
+those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her hair, preparatory to
+washing her face, with their hairpins.
+
+When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding any,
+having come to the end of her own, lost no time in irresolution but
+picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her pigtails with that.
+
+It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
+everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an outrage,
+but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When they told her
+sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she was instantly to
+take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in a silence that was
+itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails with their buttonhook
+instead.
+
+Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and asked
+her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they raised their
+voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they later on
+declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had nevertheless
+acquired by practice in imitation some of the more salient Junker
+characteristics.
+
+"You are _salop_," said the upper berth lady,--which is untranslatable,
+not on grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is not, however, a term of
+praise.
+
+"Yes, that is what you are--_salop_," echoed the lower berth lady. "And
+your sister is _salop_ too--lying in bed till all hours."
+
+"It is shameful for girls to be _salop_," said the upper berth.
+
+"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was ours," said
+Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with vehemence.
+
+"That is because you are _salop_," said the lower berth.
+
+"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors either."
+
+"_Salop, salop_," said the lower berth, beating her hand on the wooden
+edge of her bunk.
+
+"And--and I'm sorry."
+
+Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry, she looked angry.
+And so she was; but it was with herself, for having failed in
+discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have noticed that the
+scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had pounced on them with the
+ill-considered haste of twelve years old. She hadn't been a lady,--she
+whose business it was to be an example and mainstay to Anna-Felicitas,
+in all things going first, showing her the way.
+
+She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was just
+going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when the upper
+berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of herself to have
+brought you up so badly."
+
+"And send you off like this before she has taught you even the ABC of
+manners," said the lower berth.
+
+"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none herself."
+
+"Evidently," said the lower berth, "she is herself _salop_."
+
+The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin in
+Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there in her
+nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful flight, her
+eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top of her head.
+
+The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize the
+significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large angry faces
+as a target. One of the faces would certainly have received the sponge
+and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if it hadn't been for the
+prompt and skilful intervention of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the unusual
+loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into attention and
+opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were saying and saw the
+sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was Anna-Rose who held it, where
+it would be in another second, and hastily putting out a shaking little
+hand from her top berth, caught hold feebly but obstinately of the
+upright ends of Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.
+
+"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of mind and
+entire absence of candour.
+
+She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be sick, and
+the excellent child--_das gute Kind_, as her father used to call her
+because she, so conveniently from the parental point of view, invariably
+never wanted to be or do anything particularly--without hesitation
+sacrificed herself in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and
+immediately was.
+
+By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, all fury had died out.
+She never could see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after
+one of these attacks without forgiving her and everybody else
+everything.
+
+She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and tuck her
+blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, murmured,
+"Christopher--don't mind _them_--" and she suddenly realized, for they
+never called each other by those names except in great moments of
+emotion when it was necessary to cheer and encourage, what
+Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it had been done
+deliberately, she could only whisper back, because she was so afraid of
+crying, "No, no, Columbus dear--of course--who really cares about
+_them_--" and came down off the steps with no fight left in her.
+
+Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
+retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled Twinkler
+should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a crack apart
+in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be going to do next
+and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness, getting dressed, they
+merely inquired what part of Westphalia she came from, and only in the
+tone they asked it did they convey that whatever part it was, it was
+anyhow a contemptible one.
+
+"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a little, in
+spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.
+
+Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to have to
+be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.
+
+"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being a
+Twinkler it must be Westphalia."
+
+"We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words
+and making a great effort to speak politely. "We come from England."
+
+"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling. "You were
+born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in Westphalia."
+
+"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only circumstance that
+stops them is if their mothers happen to be temporarily absent."
+
+"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts to
+remain bland.
+
+"Are you pretending--pretending to _us_," said the lower berth lady,
+again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not
+German?"
+
+"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner, "but I
+don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go on being one
+directly he got to a really neutral place."
+
+"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting
+what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the
+Twinkler background.
+
+"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of
+consideration, tying her shoe-laces.
+
+"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves
+now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from
+Westphalia?"
+
+"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
+considering.
+
+She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a
+deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining
+calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she
+said.
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on
+their elbows.
+
+"That's where our father lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her
+surprise at their surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he
+died he did that there too."
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your father fled
+his country."
+
+"No. _You_ said that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door.
+She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might
+not be able to be a lady.
+
+"After all, it _is_ what you do when you go to heaven," she said as she
+opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the
+last word.
+
+"But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it were,
+from afar. "Then--you were born in Prussia?"
+
+"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the door
+quickly behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind--he had the most
+amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was Edward--took a
+lively interest in the plans and probable future of the two Annas. He
+also took a lively and solicitous interest in their present, and a
+profoundly sympathetic one in their past. In fact, their three tenses
+interested him to the exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief
+desire was to see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting
+them in the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends--he distrusted Uncle Arthur,
+and therefore his friends--into the safe and pleasant waters of real
+American hospitality and kindliness.
+
+He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the tap. He
+reminded himself of that which he had been taught since childhood, of
+the mighty heart of America which, once touched, would take persons like
+the twins right in and never let them out again. But it had to be
+touched. It had, as it were, to be put in connection with them by means
+of advertisement. America, he reflected, was a little deaf. She had to
+be shouted to. But once she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...
+
+He cogitated much in his cabin--one with a private bathroom, for Mr.
+Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample means--on these two defenceless
+children. If they had been Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons
+plainly in need of relief! As it was, America would be likely, he
+feared, to consider that either Germany or England ought to be looking
+after them, and might conceivably remain chilly and uninterested.
+
+Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn't many friends in America, and those he
+had didn't like him. At least that was what Mr. Twist gathered from the
+conversation of Anna-Rose. She didn't positively assert but she very
+candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite believe that Uncle
+Arthur's friends wouldn't be warm ones. Their hospitality he could
+imagine fleeting and perfunctory. They would pass on the Twinklers as
+soon as possible, as indeed why should they not? And presently some
+dreary small job would be found for them, some job as pupil-teacher or
+girls' companion in the sterile atmosphere of a young ladies' school.
+
+As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike, Mr.
+Twist disliked Uncle Arthur. Patriotism was nothing at any time to Mr.
+Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur's particular kind of
+patriotism was very odious to him. To wreak it on these two poor aliens!
+Mr. Twist had no words for it. They had been cut adrift at a tender age,
+an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American son and brother, was unable
+to regard unmoved, and packed off over the sea indifferent to what might
+happen to them so long as Uncle Arthur knew nothing about it. Having
+flung these kittens into the water to swim or drown, so long as he
+didn't have to listen to their cries while they were doing it, Uncle
+Arthur apparently cared nothing.
+
+All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose up
+within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and ask him
+what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him whether he
+called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do this, being on a
+ship heading for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of
+the ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,--but the right sort
+of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards you as a
+sacred and precious charge.
+
+In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying,
+red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured him under-sized
+and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields
+of England to his trembling household. He was quite disconcerted one day
+to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and
+not fat at all, except in one place.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye view of
+Uncle Arthur.
+
+"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of her
+dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck when it got
+to his waistcoat."
+
+"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to explain and
+describe further if required.
+
+But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of Uncle
+Arthur, and this time got him right,--the tall, not bad-looking man,
+clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than he, Mr. Twist, had. He
+had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now perceived that he could be
+hardly more than middle-aged and that Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he
+felt an almost painful sympathy, had a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get
+through before she was done.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word middle-aged as correct.
+"Neither of his ends looks much older than yours do. He's aged in the
+middle. That's the only place. Where the bomb is."
+
+"I suppose that's why it's called middle-aged," said Anna-Felicitas
+dreamily. "One middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It
+must be queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself gradually
+rotting."
+
+These were the sorts of observations, Mr. Twist felt, that might
+prejudice his mother against the twins If they could be induced not to
+say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he felt that
+his house, of all houses in America, should be offered them as a refuge
+whenever they were in need of one. But his mother was not, he feared,
+very adaptable. In her house--it was legally his, but it never felt as
+if it were--people adapted themselves to her. He doubted whether the
+twins could or would. Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was
+candour. They had no _savoir faire_. They seemed incapable of anything
+but naturalness, and their particular type of naturalness was not one,
+he was afraid, that his mother would understand.
+
+She had not been out of her New England village, a place called briefly,
+with American economy of time, Clark, for many years, and her ideal of
+youthful femininity was still that which she had been herself. She had,
+if unconsciously, tried to mould Mr. Twist also on these lines, in spite
+of his being a boy, and owing to his extreme considerateness had not yet
+discovered her want of success. For years, indeed, she had been
+completely successful, and Mr. Twist arrived at and embarked on
+adolescence with the manners and ways of thinking of a perfect lady.
+
+Till he was nineteen he was educated at home, as it were at his mother's
+knee, at any rate within reach of that sacred limb, and she had taught
+him to reverence women; the reason given, or rather conveyed, being that
+he had had and still was having a mother. Which he was never to forget.
+In hours of temptation. In hours of danger. Mr. Twist, with his virginal
+white mind, used to wonder when the hours of temptation and of danger
+would begin, and rather wish, in the elegant leisure of his
+half-holidays, that they soon would so that he might show how determined
+he was to avoid them.
+
+For the ten years from his father's death till he went to Harvard, he
+lived with his mother and sister and was their assiduous attendant. His
+mother took the loss of his father badly. She didn't get over it, as
+widows sometimes do, and grow suddenly ten years younger. The sight of
+her, so black and broken, of so daily recurring a patience, of such
+frequent deliberate brightening for the sake of her children, kept Mr.
+Twist, as he grew up, from those thoughts which sometimes occur to young
+men and have to do with curves and dimples. He was too much absorbed by
+his mother to think on such lines. He was flooded with reverence and
+pity. Through her, all women were holy to him. They were all mothers,
+either actual or to be--after, of course, the proper ceremonies. They
+were all people for whom one leapt up and opened doors, placed chairs
+out of draughts, and fetched black shawls. On warm spring days, when he
+was about eighteen, he told himself earnestly that it would be a
+profanity, a terrible secret sinning, to think amorously--yes, he
+supposed the word was amorously--while there under his eyes, pervading
+his days from breakfast to bedtime, was that mourning womanhood, that
+lopped life, that example of brave doing without any hope or expectation
+except what might be expected or hoped from heaven. His mother was
+wonderful the way she bore things. There she was, with nothing left to
+look forward to in the way of pleasures except the resurrection, yet
+she did not complain.
+
+But after he had been at Harvard a year a change came over Mr. Twist.
+Not that he did not remain dutiful and affectionate, but he perceived
+that it was possible to peep round the corners of his mother, the
+rock-like corners that had so long jutted out between him and the view,
+and on the other side there seemed to be quite a lot of interesting
+things going on. He continued, however, only to eye most of them from
+afar, and the nearest he got to temptation while at Harvard was to read
+"Madame Bovary."
+
+After Harvard he was put into an engineering firm, for the Twists only
+had what would in English money be five thousand pounds a year, and
+belonged therefore, taking dollars as the measure of standing instead of
+birth, to the middle classes. Aunt Alice would have described such an
+income as ample means; Mrs. Twist called it straitened circumstances,
+and lived accordingly in a condition of perpetual self-sacrifice and
+doings without. She had a car, but it was only a car, not a
+Pierce-Arrow; and there was a bathroom to every bedroom, but there were
+only six bedrooms; and the house stood on a hill and looked over the
+most beautiful woods, but they were somebody else's woods. She felt, as
+she beheld the lives of those of her neighbours she let her eyes rest
+on, who were the millionaires dotted round about the charming environs
+of Clark, that she was indeed a typical widow,--remote, unfriended,
+melancholy, poor.
+
+Mrs. Twist might feel poor, but she was certainly comfortable. It was
+her daughter Edith's aim in life to secure for her the comfort and
+leisure necessary for any grief that wishes to be thorough. The house
+was run beautifully by Edith. There were three servants, of whom Edith
+was one. She was the lady's maid, the head cook, and the family butler.
+And Mr. Twist, till he went to Harvard, might be described as the
+page-boy, and afterwards in his vacations as the odd man about the
+house. Everything centred round their mother. She made a good deal of
+work, because of being so anxious not to give trouble. She wouldn't get
+out of the way of evil, but bleakly accepted it. She wouldn't get out of
+a draught, but sat in it till one or other of her children remembered
+they hadn't shut the door. When the inevitable cold was upon her and she
+was lamentably coughing, she would mention the door for the first time,
+and quietly say she hadn't liked to trouble them to shut it, they had
+seemed so busy with their own affairs.
+
+But after he had been in the engineering firm a little while, a further
+change came over Mr. Twist. He was there to make money, more money, for
+his mother. The first duty of an American male had descended on him. He
+wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in spite of his own tastes
+being so simple that his income of ÂŁ5000--it was his, not his mother's,
+but it didn't feel as if it were--would have been more than sufficient
+for him. Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that
+might comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined
+an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made
+to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether
+beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for him, and
+definitely grew up.
+
+The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him to be at
+home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board with her brother
+Charles, a clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic Refreshment
+at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of which Uncle Charles
+poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable meals--for he practised
+the austerities and had no wife--dribbled at its spout. Hold it as
+carefully as one might it dribbled at its spout, and added to the
+confused appearance of the table by staining the cloth afresh every time
+it was used.
+
+Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and generosity,
+his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth, being all amiability
+and affection, above the nose was quite different. In the middle came
+his nose, a nose that led him to improve himself, to read and meditate
+the poets, to be tenacious in following after the noble; and above were
+eyes in which simplicity sat side by side with appreciation; and above
+these was the forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were
+inventions.
+
+He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he came into
+daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood he had often
+fixed up little things for Edith,--she was three years older than he,
+and was even then canning and preserving and ironing,--little
+simplifications and alleviations of her labour; but they had been just
+toys, things that had amused him to put together and that he forgot as
+soon as they were done. But the teapot revealed to him clearly what his
+forehead was there for. He would not and could not continue, being the
+soul of considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
+every meal--they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
+supper--and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at every
+meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful with it.
+He handled it with the most delicate precision. He gave it time. He
+never hurried it. He never filled it more than half full. And yet at the
+end of every pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the
+cloth.
+
+Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different pattern,
+with a curved spout instead of a straight one.
+
+The same thing happened.
+
+Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot section
+trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring water, provided by
+a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant, out of each different
+make of teapot into cups.
+
+They all dribbled.
+
+Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought and
+thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin hand; and
+what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it as complete in
+every detail as Pallas Athene when she very similarly sprang, was that
+now well-known object on every breakfast table, Twist's Non-Trickler
+Teapot.
+
+In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His mother
+passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still would only
+call a modest competence, but what in England would have been regarded
+as wallowing in money. She left off being middle-class, and was received
+into the lower upper-class, the upper part of this upper-class being
+reserved for great names like Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With
+these Mrs. Twist could not compete. She would no doubt some day, for
+Edward was only thirty and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was
+able to add to the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss
+of the elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. It was as
+though an east wind veered round for a brief space a little to the
+south.
+
+Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every other
+reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she once more
+sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist, and hung her
+cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a peg. When the
+novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of six, and a great deal
+of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten times of everything else
+instead of only once, began to wear off, Mrs. Twist drooped again, and
+pulled the departed Twist out of the decent forgetfulness of the past,
+and he once more came to dinner in the form of his favourite dishes, and
+assisted in the family conversations by means of copious quotations from
+his alleged utterances.
+
+Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy thousand
+pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having invented and
+patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths of America, and
+indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to receive his
+percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But so much had he
+changed since his adolescence that he preferred to stick to his
+engineering and his office in New York rather than go home and be happy
+with his mother.
+
+She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She understood his
+behaviour still less when he went off to France in 1915, himself
+equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.
+
+For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided Mrs.
+Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an only son in
+danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was never so much
+called upon as during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest,
+and there was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of
+the funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.
+
+While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the Twinklers--this
+was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she tried Anna-Rose's patience
+severely by asking her not once but several times whether she didn't
+think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose disliked it from the first because of
+the suggestion it contained that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them
+as works of mercy--while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at
+his home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
+to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense slaughtering
+of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being now the head
+servant of many instead of three was more than double as hard-worked as
+she used to be, was on her feet those last few days without stopping.
+And she had to go and meet Edward in New York as well. Whether Mrs.
+Twist feared that he might not come straight home or whether it was what
+she said it was, that dear Edward must not be the only person on the
+boat who had no one to meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that
+when it came to the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had
+difficulty in maintaining her usual brightness.
+
+Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the _St. Luke_
+got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey from New York, and
+during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared for. She thought Edith
+surprisingly thoughtless to be so much pleased to go. She examined her
+flat and sinewy form with disapproval when she came in hatted and booted
+to say good-bye. No wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't
+help her either now--she was too old. She had missed her chances, poor
+thing.
+
+Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years before, when
+Edward was still in the school room, who had almost married Edith. He
+was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had come to Clark to stay
+with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to do through a long vacation,
+and had taken to dropping in at all hours and interrupting Edith in her
+housekeeping; and Edith, even then completely flat but of a healthy
+young uprightness and bright of eyes and hair, had gone silly and
+forgotten how to cook, and had given her mother, who surely had enough
+sorrows already, an attack of indigestion.
+
+Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
+necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith. And
+besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry. She told
+herself that she could not bear the thought of poor Edith's running the
+risk of an affliction similar to her own. If one hasn't a husband one
+cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw. If Edith married she would
+certainly lose him unless he lost her. Marriage had only two solutions,
+she explained to her silent daughter,--she would not, of course, discuss
+with her that third one which America has so often flown to for solace
+and relief,--only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either one
+died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other one did.
+It was only a question of time before one of the married was left alone
+to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it always ended black.
+"And think of my having to see you like _this_" she said, with a gesture
+indicating her sad dress.
+
+Edith was intimidated; and the young man presently went away whistling.
+He was the only one. Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely
+from her mind; and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet
+Edward in the clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she
+unconsciously felt a faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time
+to get married in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been
+married at twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone
+through, was hardly more gray than Edith's.
+
+"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself after
+bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable to bear
+the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased face, went
+off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked her, if she
+still had a minute to spare, to help her to the sofa, because she felt
+faint.
+
+"I expect the excitement has been too much for me," she murmured, lying
+down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined in affection and
+attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and settled down to getting
+her mother well again in time for Edward.
+
+Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York, and he
+accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he mightn't otherwise
+have done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the _St. Luke_ was so near its journey's end that people were
+packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the scraps of talk
+the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried condition of mind Mr.
+Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of the days had produced in
+them, and began to consider their prospects with more attention. This
+attention soon resulted in anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being
+irritable. Anna-Felicitas didn't show hers at all.
+
+It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America and
+never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future for them
+once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about a new life and
+a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer it; but when the new
+world was really upon them, and the new life, with all the multitudinous
+details that would have to be tackled, going to begin in a few hours,
+their hearts became uneasy and sank within them. England hadn't liked
+them. Suppose America didn't like them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked
+them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's friends didn't like them either? Their
+hearts sank to, and remained in, their boots.
+
+Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from what
+Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their fellow-passengers,
+was a chamois-leather bag containing their passports, a letter to the
+bank where their ÂŁ200 was, a letter to those friends of Uncle Arthur's
+who were to be tried first, a letter to those other friends of his who
+were to be the second line of defence supposing the first one failed,
+and ten pounds in two ÂŁ5 notes.
+
+Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used in bed
+most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so miserable, had given
+Anna-Rose one of the ÂŁ5 notes for the extra expenses of the journey
+till, in New York, she should be able to draw on the ÂŁ200, though what
+expenses there could be for a couple of girls whose passage was paid
+Uncle Arthur was damned, he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had
+secretly added the other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it
+would have to be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to
+be ready for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing
+restlessness of the passengers that it would soon be time to go and
+change it. How many dollars ought she to get?
+
+Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have asked him
+long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the end of their
+journey. Only yesterday there was the same old limitless sea everywhere,
+the same old feeling that they were never going to arrive. Now the waves
+had all gone, and one could actually see land. The New World. The place
+all their happiness or unhappiness would depend on.
+
+She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as if she
+had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and was going to
+say something appropriate and encouraging on the Christopher and
+Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been pondering the ÂŁ5 notes
+problem, wouldn't listen.
+
+"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, "isn't like a
+shilling or a mark, but on the other hand neither is it like a pound."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate business.
+
+"It's four times more than one, and five times less than the other,"
+said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how you've got to count. That's what Aunt
+Alice said."
+
+"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said Anna-Rose, frowning. "As if
+it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange. Uncle Arthur
+said we weren't to forget that."
+
+Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange, and
+Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who had to be
+kept in her proper place, especially when one was just getting to
+America and she might easily become above herself, said that it was
+something that varied. ("The exchange, you know, varies," Uncle Arthur
+had said when he gave her the ÂŁ5 note. "You must keep your eye on the
+variations." Anna-Rose was all eagerness to keep her eye on them, if
+only she had known what and where they were. But one never asked
+questions of Uncle Arthur. His answers, if one did, were confined to
+expressions of anger and amazement that one didn't, at one's age,
+already know.)
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose out of the
+corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her further.
+
+"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking in the
+direction he usually appeared from.
+
+"We won't always have _him_" remarked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.
+
+The young lady of the nails appeared at that moment in a hat so
+gorgeous that the twins stopped dead to stare. She had a veil on and
+white gloves, and looked as if she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue
+the very next minute.
+
+"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come--"
+
+"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist," said
+Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody specially and means nothing
+in particular.
+
+"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you," said Anna-Rose.
+"There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now, remember. I won't."
+
+"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+"I shall be walking about New York."
+
+"Oh, _you'll_ see," said Anna-Rose irritably.
+
+She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the tipping,
+and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's friends, whose
+names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so naturally she was
+irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood this better than
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she said, after a moment's
+pause during which she wondered whether, in the interests of Anna-Rose's
+restoration to calm, she mightn't have to be sick again. She did hope
+she wouldn't have to. She had supposed she had done with that. It is
+true there were now no waves, but she knew she had only to go near the
+engines and smell the oil. "Let's go and put on our hats," she
+suggested, slipping her hand through Anna-Rose's arm.
+
+Anna-Rose let herself be led away, and they went to their cabin; and
+when they came out of it half an hour later, no longer with that bald
+look their caps had given them, the sun catching the little rings of
+pale gold hair that showed for the first time, and clad, instead of in
+the disreputable jerseys that they loved, in neat black coats and
+skirts--for they still wore mourning when properly dressed--with
+everything exactly as Aunt Alice had directed for their arrival, the
+young men of the second class could hardly believe their eyes.
+
+"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to Anna-Felicitas as she
+passed him, "but you're looking very well to-day."
+
+"I expect that's because I _am_ well," said Anna-Felicitas amiably.
+
+Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated "My!"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by the difference
+the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid days of cap and
+jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do somehow seem very splendid."
+
+"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd make the very angels jealous,
+and get pulling off their haloes and kicking them over the edge of
+heaven."
+
+"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have squeezed them
+out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing lost in admiration at
+Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge nice hats easily at all."
+
+And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye fell on
+Anna-Felicitas, "_Ja, ja, die hat Rasse._"
+
+And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair that spent
+the night in a different part of the cabin from her head and had been
+seen doing it by Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and was grudging.
+"_Gewiss_," she muttered back, "_bis auf der Nase. Die Nase aber
+entfremdet mich. Die ist keine echte Junkernase_."
+
+So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came a
+little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for there were
+the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives every minute now.
+
+Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say, that does
+make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light lay over New
+York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air, a delicate dry
+crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got close, were delicate
+too--delicate pale gold, and green, and brown, and they seemed so
+composed and calm, the twins thought, standing there quietly after the
+upheavals and fidgetiness of the Atlantic. New York was well into the
+Fall, the time of year when it gets nearest to beauty. The beauty was
+entirely in the atmosphere, and the lights and shadows it made. It was
+like an exquisite veil flung over an ugly woman, hiding, softening,
+encouraging hopes.
+
+Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides. Everybody was
+exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly and talkative. They
+all waved whenever another boat passed. Those who knew America pointed
+out the landmarks to those who didn't. Mr. Twist pointed them out to the
+twins, and so did the young man who had remarked favourably on
+Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as they did it simultaneously and there was
+so much to look at and so many boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had
+actually got to the statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her ÂŁ10
+and the dollars.
+
+The young man was saying how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and
+the word dollars made Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where it very
+visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I forgot--I must get change.
+And how much do you think we ought to tip the stewardess? I've never
+tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish--I wish I hadn't to."
+
+She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to someone
+so much older than herself and who till almost that very morning had
+treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of tiresome children.
+Surely she would be most offended at being tipped by people such years
+younger than herself?
+
+Mr. Twist thought not.
+
+"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar. That's the figure. Not a
+cent more, or you girls'll get inflating prices and Wall Street'll bust
+up."
+
+Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place where her
+bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't seemed to mind them
+quite so much last night, and still less that morning, and perhaps some
+little memento--something that wasn't money--
+
+"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man, bursting into
+hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he was a low young man.
+
+Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
+shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also stewards,
+softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it didn't mean they
+wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he would do the tipping for her
+if she liked.
+
+Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess had haunted her
+at intervals throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night. She
+felt that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard
+that she couldn't begin with somebody more her own size.
+
+"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel," she said, "I can give
+you my ÂŁ5 notes, and perhaps you would get them changed for me and
+deduct what you think the stewardess ought to have."
+
+Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to stay behind
+with the exuberant young man though she was quite unconscious of his
+presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel, where after a great
+deal of private fumbling, her back turned to them, she produced the two
+much-crumpled ÂŁ5 notes.
+
+"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well," said Anna-Rose eagerly. "I
+don't think I _could_ offer him a tip. He has been so fatherly to us.
+And imagine offering to tip one's father."
+
+Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in time. He
+promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that the tips he
+bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back with messages of
+thanks from the tipped--such polite ones from the stewardess that the
+twins were astonished--and gave Anna-Rose a packet of very dirty-looking
+slices of green paper, which were dollar bills, he said, besides a
+variety of strange coins which he spread out on a ledge and explained to
+her.
+
+"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr. Twist, counting
+out the money.
+
+"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did you keep your eye on
+its variations?" she added a little loudly, with a view to rousing
+respect in Anna-Felicitas who was lounging against a seat and showing a
+total absence of every kind of appropriate emotion.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause. "I kept both my eyes
+on all of them."
+
+Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess each
+with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because the exchange
+was so favourable this had made no difference to the ÂŁ5 notes. Reducing
+each ÂŁ5 note into German marks, which was the way the Twinklers, in
+spite of a year in England, still dealt in their heads with money before
+they could get a clear idea of it, there would have been two hundred
+marks; and as it took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two
+hundred marks would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside
+that extra complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the
+exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping
+quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said
+Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end of her
+calculation, fifty dollars.
+
+"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with respectful attention.
+"Here they are."
+
+"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't be _exactly_ fifty dollars.
+The tips anyhow would alter that."
+
+"Yes, but you forget the exchange."
+
+Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
+Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
+sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as Anna-Rose
+industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was the better of
+the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to authority on the
+subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations
+roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for
+withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might
+have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on
+and was unable to respect her.
+
+Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to rejoice
+in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from asking
+questions.
+
+"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a little.
+
+She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her bag.
+They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into her pocket,
+for which also there were too many; but she refused Anna-Felicitas's
+offer to put some of them in hers on the ground that sooner or later she
+would be sure to forget they weren't her handkerchief and would blow her
+nose with them.
+
+"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to Mr. Twist, as she
+stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous patting to get it to look
+inconspicuous. "We're never going to forget you, Anna-F. and me. We'll
+write to you often, and we'll come and see you as often as you like."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched the shore of Long
+Island sliding past. "Of course you've got your relations, but relations
+soon pall, and you may be quite glad after a while of a little fresh
+blood."
+
+Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several other things
+Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said about relations,
+again with that air of addressing nobody specially and meaning nothing
+in particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with the obesity of her pocket.
+
+"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist, whose misgivings as
+to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother grew rather than subsided,
+"I shall certainly come to see you."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes
+far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't. He wouldn't let the maids have any, so
+they had to go out and do the following themselves. We had a follower
+once, didn't we, Anna-R.?" she continued her voice pensive and
+reminiscent. "He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite old. At least
+thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he _could_ follow. But he did.
+And he used to come home to tea with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of
+chocolate for us out of his pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We
+ate them and felt perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he
+tried to kiss one of us--I forget which. And that, combined with the
+chocolates, revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we told
+him they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to some place
+where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by Uncle Arthur's
+vengeance, and we said how surprised we were, because he was so old and
+we didn't know followers were as old as that ever."
+
+"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having subdued the
+swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates and then not want to
+kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing, Anna-F. and me. Still, we were
+full of his chocolates; there was no getting away from that. So we
+talked it over after he had gone, and decided that next day when he came
+we'd tell him he might kiss one of us if he still wanted to, and we drew
+lots which it was to be, and it was me, and I filled myself to the brim
+with chocolates so as to feel grateful enough to bear it, but he didn't
+come."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come again for a long while, and
+when he did there was no follow left in him. Quite the contrary."
+
+Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because it was
+the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her. He was used
+to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of Anna-Rose who had looked
+upon him as her best friend since the day he had wiped up her tears; but
+Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell to talk. She had uttered languid and
+brief observations from time to time with her eyes shut and her head
+lolling loosely on her neck, but this was the first time she had been,
+as it were, an ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet,
+walking about, looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in
+a condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.
+
+Mr. Twist was a born mother. The more trouble he was given the more
+attached he became. He had rolled Anna-Felicitas up in rugs so often
+that to be not going to roll her up any more was depressing to him. He
+was beginning to perceive this motherliness in him himself, and he gazed
+through his spectacles at Anna-Felicitas while she sketched the rise and
+fall of the follower, and wondered with an almost painful solicitude
+what her fate would be in the hands of the Clouston Sacks.
+
+Equally he wondered as to the other one's fate; for he could not think
+of one Twinkler without thinking of the other. They were inextricably
+mixed together in the impression they had produced on him, and they
+dwelt together in his thoughts as one person called, generally,
+Twinklers. He stood gazing at them, his motherly instincts uppermost,
+his hearty yearning over them now that the hour of parting was so near
+and his carefully tended chickens were going to be torn from beneath his
+wing. Mr. Twist was domestic. He was affectionate. He would have loved,
+though he had never known it, the sensation of pattering feet about his
+house, and small hands clinging to the apron he would never wear. And it
+was entirely characteristic of him that his invention, the invention
+that brought him his fortune, should have had to do with a teapot.
+
+But if his heart was uneasy within him at the prospect of parting from
+his charges their hearts were equally uneasy, though not in the same
+way. The very name of Clouston K. Sack was repugnant to Anna-Rose; and
+Anna-Felicitas, less quick at disliking, turned it over cautiously in
+her mind as one who turns over an unknown and distasteful object with
+the nose of his umbrella. Even she couldn't quite believe that any good
+thing could come out of a name like that, especially when it had got
+into their lives through Uncle Arthur. Mr. Twist had never heard of the
+Clouston Sacks, which made Anna-Rose still more distrustful. She wasn't
+in the least encouraged when he explained the bigness of America and
+that nobody in it ever knew everybody--she just said that everybody had
+heard of Mr. Roosevelt, and her heart was too doubtful within her even
+to mind being told, as he did immediately tell her within ear-shot of
+Anna-Felicitas, that her reply was unreasonable.
+
+Just at the end, as they were all three straining their eyes, no one
+with more anxiety than Mr. Twist, to try and guess which of the crowd on
+the landing-stage were the Clouston Sacks, they passed on their other
+side the _Vaterland_, the great interned German liner at its moorings,
+and the young man who had previously been so very familiar, as Anna-Rose
+said, but who was only, Mr. Twist explained, being American, came
+hurrying boldly up.
+
+"You mustn't miss this," he said to Anna-Felicitas, actually seizing her
+by the arm. "Here's something that'll make you feel home-like right
+away."
+
+And he led her off, and would have dragged her off but for
+Anna-Felicitas's perfect non-resistance.
+
+"He _is_ being familiar," said Anna-Rose to Mr. Twist, turning very red
+and following quickly after him. "That's not just being American.
+Everybody decent knows that if there's any laying hold of people's arms
+to be done one begins with the eldest sister."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't realize that you _are_ the elder," said Mr. Twist.
+"Strangers judge, roughly, by size."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not
+heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left
+sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the
+worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come
+to the end of what she can do in that direction. I see it growing on
+her. Every Sunday she's inches prettier than she was the Sunday before.
+And wherever I take her to live, and however out of the way it is, I'm
+sure the path to our front door is going to be black with suitors."
+
+This dreadful picture so much perturbed her, and she looked up at Mr.
+Twist with such worried eyes, that he couldn't refrain from patting her
+on her shoulder.
+
+"There, there," said Mr. Twist, and he begged her to be sure to
+let him know directly she was in the least difficulty, or even
+perplexity,--"about the suitors, for instance, or anything else.
+You must let me be of some use in the world, you know," he said.
+
+"But we shouldn't like it at all if we thought you were practising being
+useful on us," said Anna-Rose "It's wholly foreign to our natures to
+enjoy being the objects of anybody's philanthropy."
+
+"Now I just wonder where you get all your long words from," said Mr.
+Twist soothingly; and Anna-Rose laughed, and there was only one dimple
+in the Twinkler family and Anna-Rose had got it.
+
+"What do you want to get looking at _that_ for?" she
+asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd
+staring at the _Vaterland_, and got to where Anna-Felicitas
+stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang
+the young man was treating her to,--that terse, surprising, swift
+hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was
+hearing in such abundance for the first time.
+
+The American passengers appeared one and all to be rejoicing over the
+impotence of the great ship. Every one of them seemed to be violently
+pro-Ally, derisively conjecturing the feelings of the _Vaterland_ as
+every day under her very nose British ships arrived and departed and
+presently arrived again,--the same ships she had seen depart coming back
+unharmed, unhindered by her country's submarines. Only the two German
+ladies, once more ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It
+was incredible to them, simply _unfassbar_ as they said in their
+thoughts, that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare
+lay a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything
+belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. Well, these Americans,
+these dollar-grubbing Yankees, would soon get taught a sharp, deserved
+lesson--but at this point they suddenly remembered they were Americans
+themselves, and pulled up their thoughts violently, as it were, on their
+haunches.
+
+They turned, however, bitterly to the Twinkler girl as she pushed her
+way through to her sister,--those renegade Junkers, those contemptible
+little apostates--and asked her, after hearing her question to
+Anna-Felicitas, with an extraordinary breaking out of pent-up emotion
+where she, then, supposed she would have been at that moment if it
+hadn't been for Germany.
+
+"Not here I think," said Anna-Rose, instantly and fatally ready as she
+always was to answer back and attempt what she called reasoned
+conversation. "There wouldn't have been a war, so of course I wouldn't
+have been here."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't so much as have been born without Germany," said the
+lady whose hair came off, with difficulty controlling a desire to shake
+this insolent and perverted Junker who could repeat the infamous English
+lie as to who began the war. "You owe your very existence to Germany.
+You should be giving thanks to her on your knees for her gift to you of
+life, instead of jeering at this representative--" she flung a finger
+out toward the _Vaterland_--"this patient and dignified-in
+-temporary-misfortune representative, of her power."
+
+"I wasn't jeering," said Anna-Rose, defending herself and clutching at
+Anna-Felicitas's sleeve to pull her away.
+
+"You wouldn't have had a father at all but for Germany," said the other
+lady, the one whose hair grew.
+
+"And perhaps you will tell me," said the first one, "where you would
+have been _then_."
+
+"I don't believe," said Anna-Rose, her nose in the air, "I don't
+believe I'd have ever been at a loss for a father."
+
+The ladies, left speechless a moment by the arrogance as well as several
+other things about this answer gave Anna-Rose an opportunity for further
+reasoning with them, which she was unable to resist. "There are lots of
+fathers," she said, "in England, who would I'm sure have been delighted
+to take me on if Germany had failed me."
+
+"England!"
+
+"Take you on!"
+
+"An English father for you? For a subject of the King of Prussia?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid I--I'm going to be sick," gasped Anna-Felicitas suddenly.
+
+"You're never going to be sick in this bit of bathwater, Miss Twinkler?"
+exclaimed the young man, with the instant ungrudging admiration of one
+who is confronted by real talent. "My, what a gift!"
+
+Anna-Rose darted at Anna-Felicitas's drooping head, that which she had
+been going to say back to the German ladies dissolving on her tongue.
+"Oh no--_no_--" she wailed. "Oh _no_--not in your best hat, Columbus
+darling--you can't--it's not done--and your hat'll shake off into the
+water, and then there'll only be one between us and we shall never be
+able to go out paying calls and things at the same time--come away and
+sit down--Mr. Twist--Mr. Twist--oh, please come--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas allowed herself to be led away, just in time as she
+murmured, and sat down on the nearest seat and shut her eyes. She was
+thankful Anna-Rose's attention had been diverted to her so instantly,
+for it would have been very difficult to be sick with the ship as quiet
+as one's own bedroom. Nothing short of the engine-room could have made
+her sick now. She sat keeping her eyes shut and Anna-Rose's attention
+riveted, wondering what she would do when there was no ship and
+Anna-Rose was on the verge of hasty and unfortunate argument. Would she
+have to learn to faint? But that would terrify poor Christopher so
+dreadfully.
+
+Anna-Felicitas pondered, her eyes shut, on this situation. Up to now in
+her life she had always found that situations solved themselves. Given
+time. And sometimes a little assistance. So, no doubt, would this one.
+Anna-Rose would ripen and mellow. The German ladies would depart hence
+and be no more seen; and it was unlikely she and Anna-Rose would meet at
+such close quarters as a ship's cabin any persons so peculiarly and
+unusually afflicting again. All situations solved themselves; or, if
+they showed signs of not going to, one adopted the gentle methods that
+helped them to get solved. Early in life she had discovered that objects
+which cannot be removed or climbed over can be walked round. A little
+deviousness, and the thing was done. She herself had in the most
+masterly manner when she was four escaped church-going for several years
+by a simple method, that seemed to her looking back very like an
+inspiration, of getting round it. She had never objected to going, had
+never put into words the powerful if vague dislike with which it filled
+her when Sunday after Sunday she had to go and dangle her legs
+helplessly for two hours from the chair she was put on in the enclosed
+pew reserved for the _hohe gräfliche Herrschaften_ from the Slosh.
+
+Her father, a strict observer of the correct and a pious believer in
+God for other people, attended Divine Service as regularly as he wound
+the clocks and paid the accounts. He _repräsentierte_, as the German
+phrase went; and his wife and children were expected to _repräsentieren_
+too. Which they did uncomplainingly; for when one has to do with
+determined husbands and fathers it is quickest not to complain. But the
+pins and needles that patient child endured, Anna-Felicitas remembered,
+looking back through the years at the bunched-up figure on the chair as
+at a stranger, were something awful. The edge of the chair just caught
+her legs in the pins and needles place. If she had been a little bigger
+or a little smaller it wouldn't have happened; as it was, St. Paul
+wrestling with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas
+perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after Sunday
+bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside her, and she
+heard her own voice floating out into the void above the heads of the
+mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible distinctness in a sort
+of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a
+second time, in the breathless suspension of mumbling that followed upon
+this: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a third time she
+opened her mouth to repeat the outrageous statement, regardless of her
+mother's startled hand laid on her arm, and of Anna-Rose's petrified
+stare, and of the lifted faces of the congregation, and of the bent,
+scandalized brows of the pastor,--impelled by something that possessed
+her, unable to do anything but obey it; but her father, a man of deeds,
+rose up in his place, took her in his arms, and carried her down the
+stairs and out of the church. And the minute she found herself really
+rescued, and out where the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
+larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as affectionately
+against her father's head as if she were a daughter to be proud of, and
+would have purred if she had had had a purr as loudly as the most
+satisfied and virtuous of cats.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, standing her up on a convenient tomb so
+that her eyes were level with his, "is it then true about the cold
+potato?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her legs
+were feeling like again.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, "do you not know it is wrong to lie?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her eyes,
+gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the trees.
+
+"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, _Kind_, you know what a
+lie is?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her satisfaction at
+being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he still stood staring
+at her she put her hands one on each of his cheeks and squeezed his face
+together and murmured, "Oh, I do _love_ you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat with her
+eyes shut long after she needn't have.
+
+She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the future
+so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of the Baltic
+again, where bits of amber where washed up after a storm, and the pale
+rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was hardly salt, and the air
+seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the cottage gardens in the little
+village that clustered round a clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in
+them, for there was something in the soil that made lilacs be more
+wonderful there than anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole
+forest as far as one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After
+rain on a May evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running
+down the black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to
+the shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
+the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that lifting of
+one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea smell and the
+lilac. And then there was home to come back to when the forest began to
+look too dark and its deep silence made one's flesh creep--home, and a
+light in the window where ones mother was. Incredible the security of
+those days, the safe warmth of them, the careless roominess....
+
+"You know if you _could_ manage to feel a little better, Anna-F.," said
+Anna-Rose's voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get
+off this ship."
+
+Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
+self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the deck
+except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last alongside
+the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was ashamed of
+herself for having wandered off so easily and comfortably into the past,
+and left poor Christopher alone in the difficult present.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her hat a
+tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for anything,
+especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep. Have you--" she
+hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are they--are the Clouston Sacks
+visible yet?"
+
+"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too, and
+looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here sooner to
+see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them, and they looked
+so like what I think they will look like that I went into our cabin
+again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them. They've found the people
+they were after, and have gone."
+
+"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and I think
+we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know what they're
+like and they don't know what you're like it may be difficult. Heaven
+forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you, but I have to catch a
+train if I'm to get home to-night, and I don't intend to catch it until
+I've handed you over safely to the Sacks."
+
+"Those Sacks--" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished irrelevantly by
+remarking that it was the details of life that were discouraging,--from
+which Anna Felicitas knew that Christopher's heart was once more in her
+boots.
+
+"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
+"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but at
+some time when we're more at leisure."
+
+It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks
+would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning
+that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their
+plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack
+lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they
+knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist
+knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet
+their young charges, stay that night in New York, and continue on to
+Boston next day. The twins were so certain they would be met that Mr.
+Twist was certain too. He had concluded, with a growingly empty feeling
+in his heart as the time of separation drew near, that all that now
+remained for him to do on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over
+to the Sacks. And then leave them. And then go home to that mother he
+loved but had for some time known he didn't like,--go home a bereft and
+lonely man.
+
+But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been Sacks for
+all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody in fact seemed
+to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said, "Are you the
+Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms; the air was full
+of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate kissing of relations; but
+nobody took any notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
+waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's luggage--only his
+was baggage--was examined, and the kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed
+hither and thither, and broke up into groups, and was shot through by
+interviewers, and got packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and
+thinner, and at last was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it
+was no longer possible.
+
+There were no Sacks.
+
+To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed hall
+piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly and asked
+if they were intending to meet some young ladies called Twinkler. His
+tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one of inquiry, it
+almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were cold. He wandered
+about uncertainly from group to group, his soft felt hat on the back of
+his head and his brow getting more and more puckered; and Anna-Rose,
+anxiously looking on from afar, became impatient at last of these
+refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and thought that perhaps Mr. Twist
+wasn't making himself clear.
+
+Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she approached a
+group on her own account and asked them, enunciating her words very
+clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack.
+
+The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at her in
+astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr. Twist being
+turned away for the fifth time in the distance a wave of red despair
+came over her, and she said, reproach in her voice and tears in her
+eyes, "But _somebody's_ got to be the Sacks."
+
+Upon which the group she was addressing stared at her in a more
+astonished silence than ever.
+
+Mr. Twist came up mopping his brow and took he arm and led her back to
+Anna-Felicitas, who was taking care of the luggage and had sat down
+philosophically to await developments on a bag of sulphur. She didn't
+yet know what sulphur looked like on one's clothes after one has sat on
+it, and smiled cheerfully and encouragingly at Anna-Rose as she came
+towards her.
+
+"There _are_ no Sacks," said Anna-Rose, facing the truth.
+
+"It's exactly like that Uncle Arthur of yours," said Mr. Twist, mopping
+his forehead and speaking almost vindictively. "Exactly like him. A man
+like that _would_ have the sort of friends that don't meet one."
+
+"Well, we must do without the Sacks," said Anna-Felicitas, rising from
+the sulphur bag with the look of serene courage that can only dwell on
+the face of one who is free from care as to what has happened to him
+behind. "And it isn't," she added sweetly to Mr. Twist, "as if we hadn't
+got _you_."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, suddenly seeing daylight. "Of course. What do
+Sacks really matter? I mean, for a day or two? You'll take us somewhere
+where we can wait till we've found them."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Some nice quiet old-fashioned coffee-house
+sort of place, like the one the Brontes went to in St. Paul's Churchyard
+the first time they were launched into the world."
+
+"Yes. Some inexpensive place."
+
+"Suited to the frugal."
+
+"Because although we've got ÂŁ200, even that will need watching or it
+will go."
+
+During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead. As often
+as he mopped it it broke out afresh and had to be mopped again. They
+were the only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He
+couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim,
+locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers attentively.
+
+Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her wharves and
+landing-places with officials specially appointed to guard the purity of
+family life. Family life obviously cannot be pure without a marriage
+being either in it or having at some time or other passed through it.
+The officials engaged in eyeing Mr. Twist and the twins were all married
+themselves, and were well acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the
+Twist and Twinkler party as they might, they could see no trace of
+marriage anywhere about it.
+
+On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it amounted
+to conscious illegality.
+
+"Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward abruptly.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead.
+
+"These here--" said the official, jerking his thumb at the twins. "They
+your sisters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like him?"
+
+"Daughters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of repudiation. "You
+_can't_ really think we look as much like him as all that?"
+
+"Wife and sister-in-law?"
+
+Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose
+forgetting her cares for a moment. But they were flattered, because it
+was at least a proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up.
+
+"Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters, and
+they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell me--"
+
+"These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said Mr.
+Twist vehemently.
+
+"Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out his jaw.
+"This is a free country, and I'll have no darned cheek."
+
+"These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more
+patiently. "They're my friends."
+
+"Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're going to
+do with them next."
+
+"Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered brow at
+the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew."
+
+The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant contempt. He
+had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed already. There had
+been a slump in sinners the past week, and he was as full of suppressed
+energy and as much tormented by it as an unexercised and overfed horse.
+"Step this way," he ordered curtly, waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden
+erection that was apparently an office. "Oh, don't you worry about the
+girls," he added, as his prey seemed disinclined to leave them.
+
+But Mr. Twist did worry. He saw Ellis Island looming up behind the two
+figures that were looking on in an astonishment that had not yet had
+time to turn into dismay as he was marched off out of sight. "I'll be
+back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.
+
+"That's as may be," remarked the official grimly.
+
+But he was back; if not in a minute in a little more than five minutes,
+still accompanied by the official, but an official magically changed
+into tameness and amiability, desirous to help, instructing his
+inferiors to carry Mr. Twist's and the young ladies' baggage to a taxi.
+
+It was the teapot that had saved him,--that blessed teapot that was
+always protruding itself benevolently into his life. Mr. Twist had
+identified himself with it, and it had instantly saved him. In the
+shelter of his teapot Mr. Twist could go anywhere and do anything in
+America. Everybody had it. Everybody knew it. It was as pervasive of
+America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly pervasive. It was only less
+visible because it stayed at home. It was more like a wife than Ford's
+cars were. From a sinner caught red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable
+creator, leapt to the position of one who can do no wrong, for he had
+not only placed his teapot between himself and judgment but had
+accompanied his proofs of identity by a suitable number of dollar bills,
+pressed inconspicuously into the official's conveniently placed hand.
+
+The twins found themselves being treated with distinction. They were
+helped into the taxi by the official himself, and what was to happen to
+them next was left entirely to the decision and discretion of Mr.
+Twist--a man so much worried that at that moment he hadn't any of
+either. He couldn't even answer when asked where the taxi was to go to.
+He had missed his train, and he tried not to think of his mother's
+disappointment, the thought was so upsetting. But he wouldn't have
+caught it if he could, for how could he leave these two poor children?
+
+"I'm more than ever convinced," he said, pushing his hat still further
+off his forehead, and staring at the back of the Twinkler trunks piled
+up in front of him next to the driver, while the disregarded official at
+the door still went on asking him where he wished the cab to go to,
+"that children should all have parents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The hotel they were finally sent to by the official, goaded at
+last by Mr. Twist's want of a made-up mind into independent
+instructions to the cabman, was the Ritz. He thought this very
+suitable for the evolver of Twist's Non-Trickler, and it was only
+when they were being rushed along at what the twins, used to the
+behaviour of London taxis and not altogether unacquainted with
+the prudent and police-supervised deliberation of the taxis of
+Berlin, regarded as a skid-collision-and-mutilation-provoking
+speed, that a protest from Anna-Rose conveyed to Mr. Twist where
+they were heading for.
+
+"An hotel called Ritz sounds very expensive," she said. "I've heard
+Uncle Arthur talk of one there is in London and one there is in Paris,
+and he said that only damned American millionaires could afford to stay
+in them. Anna-Felicitas and me aren't American millionaires--"
+
+"Or damned," put in Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--but quite the contrary," said Anna-Rose, "hadn't you better take us
+somewhere else?"
+
+"Somewhere like where the Brontes stayed in London," said Anna-Felicitas
+harping on this idea. "Where cheapness is combined with historical
+associations."
+
+"Oh Lord, it don't matter," said Mr. Twist, who for the first time in
+their friendship seemed ruffled.
+
+"Indeed it does," said Anna-Rose anxiously.
+
+"You forget we've got to husband our resources," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that because we've got ÂŁ200 we're
+the same as millionaires," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, "frequently told us that ÂŁ200 is a
+very vast sum; but he equally frequently told us that it isn't."
+
+"It was when he was talking about having given to us that he said it was
+such a lot," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He said that as long as we had it we would be rich," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "but directly we hadn't it we would be poor."
+
+"So we'd rather not go to the Ritz, please," said Anna-Rose, "if you
+don't mind."
+
+The taxi was stopped, and Mr. Twist got out and consulted the driver.
+The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for the twins
+floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle Charles would
+speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit, and approached
+those he did speak to with caution till they were sixty. He regarded
+them as one of the chief causes of modern unrest. He liked them so much
+that he hated them. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.
+Uncle Charles was no good as a refuge.
+
+"Well now, see here," said the driver at last, after Mr. Twist had
+rejected such varied suggestions of something small and quiet as the
+Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Biltmore, "you tell me where you want
+to go to and I'll take you there."
+
+"I want to go to the place your mother would stay in if she came up for
+a day or two from the country," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Get right in then, and I'll take you back to the Ritz," said the
+driver.
+
+But finally, when his contempt for Mr. Twist, of whose identity he was
+unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy pleasantries with
+him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in a street off the less
+desirable end of Fifth Avenue, and got rid of him.
+
+It was one of those quiet and cheap New York hotels that yet are both
+noisy and expensive. It was full of foreigners,--real foreigners, the
+twins perceived, not the merely technical sort like themselves, but
+people with yellow faces and black eyes. They looked very seedy and
+shabby, and smoked very much, and talked volubly in unknown tongues. The
+entrance hall, a place of mottled marble, with clerks behind a counter
+all of whose faces looked as if they were masks, was thick with them;
+and it was when they turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas
+passed and Anna-Rose was thinking proudly, "Yes, you don't see anything
+like that every day, do you," and herself looked fondly at her Columbus,
+that she saw that it wasn't Columbus's beauty at all but the sulphur on
+the back of her skirt.
+
+This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in the lift
+to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was trying to brush
+it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best one.
+
+"That's all your grips, ain't it?" said the youth in buttons who had
+come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom floor.
+
+"Our what?" said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. "Do you mean
+our bags?"
+
+"No. Grips. These here," said the youth.
+
+"Is that what they're called in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with the
+intelligent interest of a traveller determined to understand and
+appreciate everything, while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the
+condition of the best skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before
+the youth, continued to brush her down as best she could with her
+handkerchief.
+
+"I don't call them. It's what they are," said the youth. "What I want to
+know is, are they all here?"
+
+"How interesting that you don't drop your h's," said Anna-Felicitas,
+gazing at him. "The rest of you is so _like_ no h's."
+
+The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he didn't
+follow.
+
+"Those _are_ all our--grips, I think," said Anna-Rose counting them
+round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. "Thank you very much," she
+added after a pause, as he still lingered.
+
+But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in England.
+Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off the table, and
+shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle was empty. "Want some
+ice water?" he inquired.
+
+"What for?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What for?" echoed the youth.
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's manner
+which seemed to her familiar, "we don't want ice water, but we should be
+glad of a little hot water."
+
+"You'll get all you want of that in there," said the youth, jerking his
+head towards a door that led into a bathroom. "It's ice water and ink
+that you get out of me."
+
+"Really?" said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more intelligent
+interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being America, a country,
+she had heard, of considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his person
+bristling with taps which only needed turning.
+
+"We don't want either, thank you," said Anna-Rose.
+
+The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brushing began to grow vehement. Why
+didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and hurt his
+feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he? Anna-Felicitas, who was
+much too pleasantly detached, thought Anna-Rose, for such a situation,
+the door being wide open to the passage and the ungetridable youth
+standing there staring, was leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing
+her hair.
+
+"Suppose you're new to this country," said the youth after a pause.
+
+"Brand," said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Then p'raps," said the youth, "you don't know that the feller who
+brings up your grips gets a tip."
+
+"Of course we know that," said Anna-Rose, standing up straight and
+trying to look stately.
+
+"Then if you know why don't you do it?"
+
+"Do it?" she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into respectfulness by
+haughtily throwing back her head. "Of course we shall do it. At the
+proper time and place."
+
+"Which is, as you must have noticed," added Anna-Felicitas gently,
+"departure and the front door."
+
+"That's all right," said the youth, "but that's only one of the times
+and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is the first
+one."
+
+"Do I understand," said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified, while
+her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one offer people
+like this?--"that to America one tips at the beginning as well?"
+
+"Yep," said the youth. "And in the middle too. Right along through.
+Never miss an opportunity, is as good a slogan as you'll get when it
+comes to tipping."
+
+"I believe you'd have liked Kipps," said Anna-Felicitas meditatively,
+shaking some dust off her hat and remembering the orgy of tipping that
+immortal young man went in for at the seaside hotel.
+
+"What I like now," said the youth, growing more easy before their
+manifest youth and ignorance, "is tips. Guess you can call it Kipps if
+it pleases you."
+
+Anna-Rose began to fumble nervously in her purse "It's horrid, I think,
+to ask for presents," she said to the youth in deep humiliation, more on
+his account than hers.
+
+"Presents? I'm not asking for presents. I'm telling you what's done,"
+said the youth. And he had spots on his face. And he was repugnant to
+her.
+
+Anna-Rose gave him what looked like a shilling. He took it, and
+remarking that he had had a lot of trouble over it, went away; and
+Anna-Rose was still flushed by this encounter when Mr. Twist knocked and
+asked if they were ready to be taken down to tea.
+
+"He might have said thank you," she said indignantly to Anna-Felicitas,
+giving a final desperate brushing to the sulphur.
+
+"I expect he'll come to a bad end," said Anna-Felicitas soothingly.
+
+They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing such a
+thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables laid for
+dinner. It wasn't the custom much in America, explained Mr. Twist, to
+have tea, and no preparations were made for it in hotels of that sort.
+The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be discouraged, were showing
+their detachment from it by sitting in a corner of the room playing
+dominoes. It was a big room, all looking-glasses and windows, and the
+street outside was badly paved and a great noise of passing motor-vans
+came in and drowned most of what Mr. Twist was saying. It was an
+unlovely place, a place in which one might easily feel homesick and that
+the world was empty of affection, if one let oneself go that way. The
+twins wouldn't. They stoutly refused, in their inward recesses, to be
+daunted by these externals. For there was Mr. Twist, their friend and
+stand-by, still with them, and hadn't they got each other? But they felt
+uneasy all the same; for Mr. Twist, though he plied them with buttered
+toast and macaroons and was as attentive as usual, had a somnambulatory
+quality in his attention. He looked like a man who is doing things in a
+dream. He looked like one who is absorbed in something else. His
+forehead still was puckered, and what could it be puckered about, seeing
+that he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a clear
+and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a man?
+
+"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last, when he
+hadn't even heard a question she asked,--he, the polite, the interested,
+the sympathetic friend of the journey across.
+
+Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in his
+pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at and said,
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in my
+mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.
+
+"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "you've got the idea
+we want such a lot of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel
+quite comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant friends?"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.
+
+"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but as
+co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.
+
+"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said Anna-Rose,
+supporting Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas. "For
+instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we were on it
+so heavily and so long."
+
+"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're starting
+a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on _instantly_."
+
+"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What were we
+made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on our own feet?"
+
+"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends with
+everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and human
+flesh subsisting."
+
+"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it seems
+to give you a lot of satisfaction."
+
+"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such perfect
+equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as objects to be
+looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all be."
+
+"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed in her heart she
+loved and clung to Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all
+you've done for us and the way you were so kind to us on the
+boat,--we've been _most_ obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much
+indeed, I know."
+
+"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in Anna-Felicitas, "and
+we've got to start life now in earnest."
+
+"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me what it
+is you propose to do next?"
+
+"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."
+
+"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."
+
+"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved abominably,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+
+"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed to
+Boston."
+
+"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the really proper
+and natural course was for him to have been able to take them to his
+mother. Pity one's mother wasn't--
+
+He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on the verge
+of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of New York,
+this one evening, let us go and look at it."
+
+He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose pulled
+out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe determination.
+
+"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless to
+protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American manhood. I
+only listened with half an ear to all the things you both said in the
+taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise of finding myself
+still with you instead of on the train for Clark, and because you both
+of you do say so very many things. But understand once and for all that
+in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man. I'm
+that man till I've left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be
+Sack--confound him," finished Mr. Twist suddenly.
+
+And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
+indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet seen
+in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to put him
+to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an established custom,
+surely," he said more gently.
+
+So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
+Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy, while
+reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack, who was, in
+their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might
+be going to be mothers' helps in the Sack _ménage_ for all they
+knew,--they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured
+guests to typists.
+
+"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"No," said the twins.
+
+He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to
+the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting
+miles. The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a
+clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river. Lamps were
+being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air. Steep grass
+slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid
+that there were houses and a street above them on their right. Up and
+down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke
+hanging in the air long after they had gone their way. It was so great a
+joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the _St. Luke_ and to
+see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
+suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible not
+to be cheerful, translated from the _St. Luke_ into such a place,
+trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.
+
+The world seemed suddenly quite good,--the simplest, easiest of objects
+to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh
+rather than cry. They trotted along humming bits of their infancy's
+songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and
+macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still
+and didn't heave or lurch beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than
+he had been for some hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent
+a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in
+New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with
+her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the
+Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed
+them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind
+was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the
+Sacks. He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back
+to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from Boston.
+
+If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in
+Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he wouldn't have
+had the heart to press them to go; and then what would he have done with
+them? Their second and last line of defence, supposing they had
+considered the Sacks had failed and were to be ruled out, was in
+California, a place they spoke of as if it were next door to Boston and
+New York. How could he have let them set out alone on that four days'
+journey, with the possibility of once more at its end not being met? No
+wonder he had been abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of
+his forehead going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to
+the Sacks. For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without
+preparation and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York
+while he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist,
+the verb dropping into his mind with the _aplomb_ of an inspiration, are
+the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle. Already
+he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office
+down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had
+heard Mr. Twist's name, and because of, second, his politeness, his
+confidential manner as of an understanding sympathizer with a rich man's
+recreations, when he had. The tea, which he, had poured out of one of
+his own teapots, had been completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was
+only this teapot that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave
+Trafficker. He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the
+Twinklers, or into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a
+country, Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh
+from where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
+surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
+toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't be
+uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America
+untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected
+amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to
+buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to his private
+purities.
+
+He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
+pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist
+the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They walked along,
+talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did,
+especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because
+of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual
+kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when
+they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a
+restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had
+been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals.
+They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things
+to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness;
+heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class
+cooking on the _St. Luke_, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
+lives,--great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.
+
+Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
+advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of
+the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
+happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was
+quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other tables at
+the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the
+people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked. On the ship he had
+only sometimes been aware of it,--there would come a glint of sunshine
+and settle on Anna-Rose's little cheek where the dimple was, or he would
+lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness
+of Anna-Felicitas's eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now,
+dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation,
+he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas
+was more than very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most
+unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred
+pounds to support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them
+slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about,--go off without
+explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston
+Sacks,--but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life. A girl
+should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male
+relations. As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his
+spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two
+specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So were
+her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.
+
+And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten
+o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in
+little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish
+ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in
+with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous--a
+thing he particularly disliked--and handed him a letter.
+
+The twins had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they wrote,
+no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a discussion in
+their bedroom the night before when they got back in which Anna-Rose
+supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments, and it ended in
+Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to her original
+standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by the comfort and
+security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been inclined to slip.
+
+It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest. Anna-Felicitas
+had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently affectionate as a
+wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason into her husband.
+Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a husband, bristled at the
+mere breath of criticism of her superior intelligence and wisdom. She
+was the leader of the party, the head and guide, the one who had the
+dollars in her pocket, and being the eldest naturally must know best.
+Besides, she was secretly nervous about taking Anna-Felicitas about
+alone. She too had observed the stares of the public, and had never
+supposed that any of them might be for her. How was she to get to Boston
+successfully with so enchanting a creature, through all the
+complications of travel in an unknown country, without the support and
+counsel of Mr. Twist? Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents
+cowed her. The strangeness of everything, while it delighted her so
+long as she could peep at it from behind Mr. Twist, appalled her the
+minute she was left alone with it. America seemed altogether a foreign
+country, a strange place whose inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a
+strange language. They talked English; or rather what sounded like
+English till you found that it wasn't really.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn horror of
+accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right
+to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher,
+after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write
+the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's breakfast next morning, while
+Columbus slouched about the room suggesting sentences.
+
+It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for them,
+and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
+Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved long
+words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In rolling
+sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his concern, they
+pointed out that his first duty was to his mother, and his second was
+not to squander his possessions in paying the hotel and railway bills of
+persons who had no sort of claim on him, except those general claims of
+humanity which he had already on the _St. Luke_ so amply discharged.
+They would refrain from paying their hotel bill, remembering his words
+as to the custom of the country, though their instincts were altogether
+against this course, but they could and would avoid causing him the
+further expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
+taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without him.
+They promised to write from the Sacks and let him know of their arrival
+to the address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget
+him as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
+A.-F. Twinkler.
+
+Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.
+
+The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening before
+looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on the 8.15 for
+Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at seven o'clock, had
+asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to Boston, inquired about
+the station, etc., and had specially requested that Mr. Twist should not
+be disturbed.
+
+"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and didn't
+like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you knew all about
+it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.
+
+"So I did--so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go back to his
+breakfast for three.
+
+"So he did--so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to the other
+clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from the
+expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting things to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary intensity
+at the station in getting their tickets, trying to understand the black
+man who seized and dealt with their luggage, and closely following him
+wherever he went in case he should disappear, were sitting in a state of
+relaxation and relief in the Boston express, their troubles over for at
+least several hours.
+
+The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who had
+children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay behind
+the twins' assumption a of severe dignity, and took them in hand and
+got seats for them in the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars,
+parlour or otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to
+the booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
+third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the press
+and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as these
+dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in them some
+time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants offering them
+fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just as if they had been
+in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked admiringly, that counting their
+money they discovered what a hole the journey had made in it. But they
+were too much relieved at having accomplished so much on their own,
+quite uphelped for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it
+particularly to heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the
+ÂŁ200, and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train
+again for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
+they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr. Twist's
+purse.
+
+The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and privately in
+chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger should start staring
+at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her back altogether on him; to
+have one's feet on footstools when they were the sort of feet that don't
+reach the ground; to see the lovely autumn country flying past, hills
+and woods and fields and gardens golden in the October sun, while the
+horrible Atlantic was nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly
+reminiscent of English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a
+bit like either; to be able to have the window wide open without
+getting soot in one's eyes because one of the ministering angels--clad,
+this one, appropriately to heaven, in white, though otherwise
+black--pulled up the same sort of wire screen they used to have in the
+windows at home to keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve,
+when they grew bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers
+and cause the black angel to spread a little table between them and
+bring clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
+curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to have
+the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose mouth was
+full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee from his own
+private supply at last when they had refused regretfully a dozen
+suggestions to buy--"Have a bit," he said, thrusting it under their
+noses. "As a gentleman to ladies--no pecuniary obligations--come on,
+now;" all this was to the twins too interesting and delightful for
+words.
+
+They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered, and
+since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant in return,
+intermittent amenities passed between them and the young man as he
+journeyed up and down through the cars.
+
+"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some reluctance, for
+presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee
+didn't seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside
+them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they
+took some more.
+
+They nodded and smiled stickily.
+
+"English, I guess."
+
+They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of
+their toffee-filled jaws.
+
+Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had
+given the captain of the _St. Luke,_ and said, "Practically."
+
+"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in
+"practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but
+the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.
+
+"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws
+clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to be asked that
+the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us. We'd better
+decide what we're going to say, and practise saying it without
+hesitation."
+
+Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.
+
+"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
+swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it
+would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise, then
+reflection, and then suspicion."
+
+"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
+disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is German
+when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like Germans.
+Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In God's eye we're
+not, and that's the principal eye after all."
+
+Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that parents
+when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they're going to
+place their children in."
+
+"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I mean,"
+she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the
+perfect love and forethought of their mother, "fathers don't."
+
+They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to
+sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam
+broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the
+Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful
+security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and
+clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be
+clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was
+so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
+cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn't an
+idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now--Aunt Alice had said, "You
+must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and
+when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist's in her
+desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently
+to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what
+gentlewomen were instinctively.
+
+"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose
+repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time provided
+Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, "seeing that we're
+supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do is to behave according
+to our instincts."
+
+But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts, especially
+Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being older, but even
+hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions
+according to the other person's behaviour. Her instinct, for instance,
+when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit
+him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard
+that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant,
+teacher, visitor and relation--except her mother--in her Prussian home.
+Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman,
+for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
+drip tact.
+
+"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when
+the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, "says
+that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been there."
+
+"Sensitive--sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup.
+"Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they
+are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including
+sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really---" He
+raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. "You merely add half as much
+again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of
+their sensitiveness, and it's all right."
+
+"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.
+
+As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's recipe for
+social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the
+meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her
+cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have been tact. But it was
+instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took
+possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in
+the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to
+Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person's _morale_,
+but she did very much wish that principles weren't such important things
+and one needn't have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr.
+Twist.
+
+"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered severely to
+Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow
+passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.
+
+On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks,--certainly one
+Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their
+faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting. But once again no
+Sacks were there. The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of
+the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the
+Twinklers.
+
+"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when it was
+finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have acquired the
+meeting habit."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what Aunt Alice
+used to complain about the housemaids,--neither punctual nor
+methodical."
+
+"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not escape us.
+I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of not having them.
+We will now proceed to track them to their lair."
+
+For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was still
+there. It was going on further and further away from the Sacks. Happy
+train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But she resisted, and
+engaged a porter.
+
+Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they had been
+the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand, and they knew
+what an American porter looked like. The porter and a taxi were engaged
+with comparative ease and assurance, and on giving the porter, who had
+staggered beneath the number of their grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud
+on his face, they doubled it instantly sooner than have trouble, and
+trebled it equally quickly on his displaying yet further
+dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled up
+round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating themselves
+on how much easier it was to get away from a train than to get into one.
+
+But the minute their activities were over and they had time to think,
+silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They both composed
+their faces to indifference to hide that they were nervous, examining
+the streets they passed through with a calm and _blasé_ stare worthy of
+a lorgnette. It was the tact part of the coming encounter that was
+chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose, and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her
+conviction that nobody who was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly
+be agreeable. "By their friends ye shall know them," thought
+Anna-Felicitas, staring out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also
+the persistence of the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations
+was discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
+wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and Anna-Rose
+being German.
+
+This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
+particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
+little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a hurt
+finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being knocked.
+Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable behaviour of
+Providence which had led their mother, so safely and admirably English,
+to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry somebody who wasn't. Of
+course there was this to be said for it, that she wasn't their mother
+then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas felt sure she wouldn't have. Then,
+perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult to follow she gave
+them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's arm and gave it a
+squeeze.
+
+"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be very
+eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi stopped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and almost
+before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the intervening
+wide pavement and thrust his face through the window.
+
+"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.
+
+He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open; for it
+seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside it in a
+seething mass.
+
+"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
+grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."
+
+"They ain't," said the boy promptly.
+
+"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her surprise.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you my
+Sunday shirt they ain't."
+
+The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their conversations
+with the lower classes to be talked to about shirts.
+
+The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick that it
+flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going off.
+
+"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself. "We'll go up
+and see for ourselves."
+
+"You won't see," said the boy.
+
+"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.
+
+"You won't see," he said, pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do
+see Sacks up there I'm a Hun."
+
+The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas,
+two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to
+American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks,
+an _attaché_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.
+Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that
+they might almost as well have been grips themselves.
+
+"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
+difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and
+pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay
+and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was
+rolling.
+
+"In where?" crackled the boy.
+
+"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston
+Sack are."
+
+"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the boy,
+increasing the loudness of his crackling.
+
+"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
+disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
+immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
+_attaché_ case.
+
+"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
+One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
+said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."
+
+"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
+you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
+them is dead?"
+
+"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
+Left. Got," said the boy.
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
+meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
+You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
+all."
+
+Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
+to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.
+
+"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
+view. "Well, I don't know about that--"
+
+"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
+Sack who is here?"
+
+"Mr.," said the boy.
+
+"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
+followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.
+
+The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
+the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
+them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
+the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
+to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.
+
+"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
+inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
+Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
+up, "when it is really a lift?"
+
+"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.
+
+"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
+a lift."
+
+The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
+but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
+stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
+then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
+obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an
+idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
+entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life of
+the Sacks.
+
+The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the door of
+a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered, the actual
+door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they wished to commit
+suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of their own front door.
+They would then fall, infinitely far, on to the roof of the lift lurking
+at the bottom.
+
+The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once exposed
+to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a manservant
+standing in it staring at them.
+
+Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of his lift,
+approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him by saying,
+"Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and whispered in his
+ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who, however, regarded it as
+some expression peculiarly American and were left unmoved by it, "The
+co-respondents."
+
+The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only been gone
+a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and
+authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to
+be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she
+wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole possession now. Nobody knew where
+Mrs. Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
+among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his
+heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
+servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was
+all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins,
+his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there
+before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were,
+cold.
+
+"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear little
+voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open
+and the gentleman himself appeared.
+
+"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping suddenly when he saw
+them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's voice--"
+
+"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright
+conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"
+
+She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to him and
+held out their hands.
+
+"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have noticed it.
+
+Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like
+a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and
+shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about
+him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder,
+and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of
+his collar.
+
+"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I wonder?"
+
+"There hasn't been much time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
+less than two months since there were all those letters."
+
+"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"
+
+"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was
+unnerved.
+
+"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.
+
+Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last
+few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of the lift-boy,
+lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant's face Even
+to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.
+
+Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room.
+"Come in, come in," he said distractedly.
+
+They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant lingered a
+moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his
+lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen. "I'm darned," was all he
+could articulate. "I'm darned."
+
+"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on getting
+inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her determined
+cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"
+
+"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse
+me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day--it makes me stupid--"
+
+"Oh, I'm _very_ sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.
+
+"And so am I--_very_," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous. "Have
+you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like that--"
+
+"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you. The effect, you see,
+is that I can't think very clearly. But do tell me--why luggage?
+Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."
+
+"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't there--isn't there
+always luggage in America too when people come to stay with one?"
+
+"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
+forehead again.
+
+"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."
+
+"So naturally we've come."
+
+"But _is_ it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them distractedly.
+
+"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs. Sack,
+which is the same thing--"
+
+"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it were. It
+ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here--"
+
+"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to meet us in New
+York, or where?"
+
+"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's--gone."
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh," he went
+on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him, he fought with
+and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in the hall I
+thought--I had a moment's hope--for a minute I believed--she had come
+back. So I went out. Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
+strangers--"
+
+The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice, were so
+much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile that the
+twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion
+and passed no judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an
+American one naturally behaved like that.
+
+"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call us
+strangers. We're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said Mr. Sack. "But I
+can't call to mind--"
+
+"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're the
+nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit--as I'm sure,"
+Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for being."
+
+Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty
+girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.
+
+"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile all
+over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly unvain as a
+person intent on something else would be.
+
+"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she continued,
+"because he showed us your answers back. You invited us to come and stay
+with you. And, as you perceive, we've done it."
+
+"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said Mr. Sack, "before
+all this--do I remember something about it? I've had such trouble
+since--I've been so distracted one way and another--it may have slipped
+away out of my memory under the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and
+looked round the room helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
+now."
+
+"We're _very_ sorry you've had trouble," said Anna-Felicitas
+sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though. Man that is born of
+woman is full of misery. That's what the Burial Service says, and it
+ought to know."
+
+Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
+pretty--" he again began.
+
+"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted Anna-Rose.
+
+"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for a long while,
+I'm afraid--"
+
+"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said miserably.
+
+There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each other.
+
+"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a little pull.
+
+"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
+warning.
+
+Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind his
+back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas, forgetful of
+what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge of the table and
+began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.
+
+"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with friendly and
+interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's
+wife, the one we're the nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost
+contumely from their husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been
+something awful to yours."
+
+"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her. I do
+worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in Boston. I was as
+proud of her as any man has ever been of his wife."
+
+"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and I'm
+interested."
+
+"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so constructed--that I could
+be fond of other people as well as of her," said Mr. Sack.
+
+"Well, _that's_ nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."
+
+"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very politely
+indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to
+like other people as well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"
+
+"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
+about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
+"but that I liked other people so _much_."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
+whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
+ache."
+
+"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"
+
+"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
+of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"
+
+"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."
+
+"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
+against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
+know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"
+
+Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
+with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
+Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.
+
+"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
+situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
+people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
+other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
+it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
+afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
+beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
+have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
+with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."
+
+"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
+to her. "Were you going to?"
+
+"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
+can produce a mother--"
+
+"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
+it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
+the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
+of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
+wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to
+her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her
+own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
+caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while
+she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on
+his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting
+and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only, her Irish terrier
+hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had looked much more efficient.
+
+"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances--"
+
+"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more turns in
+front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect his thoughts,
+"that I--that we--had arranged to look after you?"
+
+"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of
+course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us
+welcome. He showed us the letter."
+
+"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--_that_ man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.
+
+"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.
+
+"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly quite clear, "you
+must be--why, you _are_ the Twinklers."
+
+"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals since
+we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said Anna-Rose
+with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say good-bye."
+
+"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas, "but
+where are we to go to?"
+
+"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of her size,
+"Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's other friends.
+But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train and go to Clark, to
+Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother, son and
+daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired after a long
+afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to strike and, with
+the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and announce supper, but
+waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet recovered from an elaborate
+welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the lovely twilight of a golden day,
+were hastening up the winding road from the station towards them.
+Silent, and a little exhausted, the unconscious Twists sat in their
+drawing-room, a place of marble and antimacassars, while these light
+figures, their shoes white with the dust of a country-side that had had
+no rain for weeks, sped every moment nearer.
+
+The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through quiet,
+delicious evening country, and there was one little star twinkling
+encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed Clark would be.
+At the station there had been neither porter nor conveyance, nor indeed
+anybody or anything at all except themselves, their luggage, and a thin,
+kind man who represented authority. Clark is two miles away from its
+station, and all the way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a
+cluster of those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way
+places till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
+immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening sky.
+
+"You can't miss it," encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along
+after your noses till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate.
+I'll look after the menagerie--" thus did he describe the Twinkler
+luggage. "Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get
+there. Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
+arriving this very day. _I_ wouldn't have forgotten you. No, not for a
+dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.
+
+"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas, "when he
+isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."
+
+"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as they
+walked off. "He's a _great_ friend of ours."
+
+"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum; and as
+the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he had been
+interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the train.
+
+"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road does. Give
+yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about stick to it. You'll
+meet other roads, but don't you take any notice of them."
+
+Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the twins went
+up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be going to see
+their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had, ever since the
+collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him very much. As they
+hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet fields, between
+yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing duskier and the beckoning
+star lighter, they remembered Mr. Twist's extraordinary kindness, his
+devoted and unfailing care, with the warmest feelings of gratitude and
+affection. Even Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often had he rearranged
+her head when it was hopelessly rolling about; how often had he fed her
+when she felt better enough to be hungry. Anna-Felicitas was very
+hungry. She still thought highly of pride and independence, but now
+considered their proper place was after a good meal. And Anna-Rose, with
+all the shameless cheerfulness of one who for a little has got rid of
+her pride and is feeling very much more comfortable in consequence
+remarked that one mustn't overdo independence.
+
+"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm so dreadfully hungry. I do so
+terribly want supper. And I'm sure it's supper-time, and the Twists will
+have finished and we mightn't get any."
+
+"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!" exclaimed Anna-Rose, proud
+and confident.
+
+But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they raced
+the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist doorstep
+panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head maid's surprised
+and ungarnished inquiry as to what they wanted, when she opened the door
+and found them there.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she could speak.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked, thinking perhaps
+they might be a deputation of elder school children sent to recite
+welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe return from the seat of war.
+Yet she knew all the school children and everybody else in Clark, and
+none of them were these.
+
+"No--from the station," panted Anna-Rose.
+
+"We didn't see any village," panted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling with her breath.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "Having supper," she said curtly.
+
+"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I hope he isn't eating it
+all."
+
+"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting on her dignity.
+"The Miss Twinklers."
+
+"The who?" said Amanda.
+
+"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still more dignity, for
+there was that in Amanda's manner which roused the Junker in her.
+
+"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda briefly.
+
+"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of conviction,
+"that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise he'll show no
+resentment whatever."
+
+Amanda half shut the door.
+
+"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into what was
+left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that we're totally
+unaccustomed to the doorstep?"
+
+Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
+herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and equal
+America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but taken
+aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that did it. She
+wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except on Sundays when
+the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she wasn't used to
+politeness. That so much of it should come out of objects so young
+rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.
+
+She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through it;
+instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.
+
+"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have arrived," said
+Anna-Rose, looking every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of
+Anna-Rose, but every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want
+of discipline, was sheer Junker.
+
+Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life, was
+stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was about to
+fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and ill-considered
+assertion that if he was her master she was his mistress and so there
+now, when the bell which had rung once already since they had been
+standing parleying rang again and more impatiently, and the dining-room
+door opened and a head appeared. The twins didn't know that it was
+Edith's head, but it was.
+
+"Amanda--" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the nearest
+she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice; but she
+stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked like a crowd.
+"Oh--" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh--" And was for withdrawing her head
+and shutting the door.
+
+But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light shining
+behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with outstretched
+hands.
+
+"How do you do," they both said cordially. "_Don't_ go away again."
+
+Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly feeding
+mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held it to behind
+her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was taken and shaken even
+as Mr. Sack's had been.
+
+"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively moving her nose,
+a particularly delicate instrument, round among the various really
+heavenly smells that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them
+out and guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed
+into her mouth.
+
+The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr. Twist
+suddenly appeared in the doorway.
+
+"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.
+
+Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances changed
+colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was stirred, and
+they were red now, and seemed translucent with the bright light behind
+him shining through them.
+
+The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they were to
+see him again. It was as if for years they had been separated from their
+dearest friend. The few hours since the night before had been enough to
+turn their friendship and esteem for him into a warm proprietary
+affection. They felt that Mr. Twist belonged to them. Even
+Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she beheld him were bright with
+pleasure.
+
+"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in her
+voice, and catching hold of his arm.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of his
+other arm.
+
+"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"They weren't our difficulties--"
+
+"They were the Sacks'--"
+
+"But they reacted on us--"
+
+"And so here we are."
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" asked the voice inside.
+
+"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose eagerly.
+
+"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got there,"
+said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they did
+that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas
+
+"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we turned
+straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.
+
+"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in that
+moment of excitement not without complacency at her own aptness.
+
+"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.
+
+"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas, "because of
+perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten it all, and we so
+dreadfully hungry--"
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and more
+insistently.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the situation in
+his mind.
+
+He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have been
+natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her, if she
+hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to his
+fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined to the
+first-class passengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he had hardly
+spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the women.
+
+Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's
+becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled with ladies. Sin would be
+bad enough--for Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even
+with ladies it is possible to sin--but marriage for Edward would be even
+worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had at
+least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and done
+with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but there was
+no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy thing, and you
+don't repent of holy things,--at least, you oughtn't to. If, as
+ill-advised young men so often would, Edward wanted as years went on to
+marry in spite of his already having an affectionate and sympathetic
+home with feminine society in it, then it seemed to Mrs. Twist most
+important, most vital to the future comfort of the family, that it
+should be someone she had chosen herself. She had observed him from
+infancy, and knew much better than he what was needed for his happiness;
+and she also knew, if there must be a wife, what was needed for the
+happiness of his mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about
+the second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of
+hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the slums of
+a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the Twinklers into
+her mental range. Not during those first hours, anyhow. There would be
+plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient unto the day would be the
+Twinklers thereof.
+
+But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had said
+nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his mother
+asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained him, he said
+as many another honest man, pressed by the searching affection of
+relations, has said before him, that it was business. Now it appeared
+that he would have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't
+business. It was these."
+
+His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially he hated
+to have lied,--at the moment, one plunged in spurred by sudden
+necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating one's
+degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his mother, he
+well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her. She had been so
+terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh from praying,--for
+before he went to Harvard he used to pray--he had on one or two
+occasions for a few minutes endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer
+fright at the effect of his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her
+to forget it and forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded
+by his having lied.
+
+The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with a
+sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in France, to
+come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling one's way about
+among tender places ...
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third time.
+
+"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to know who
+we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"
+
+"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full
+satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't run
+anywhere.
+
+"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.
+
+"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.
+
+Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed out. She
+was gazing at the Twinklers with the same kind eyes her brother had,
+but without the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and
+anxiety were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the
+twins hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually
+have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.
+
+"Edith--Edward--Amanda," called the voice, this time with unmistakable
+anger.
+
+For one more moment Mr. Twist stood uncertain, looking down at the happy
+confident faces turned up to him exactly, as Anna-Felicitas had just
+said, like flowers turning to the sun. Visions of France flashed before
+him, visions of what he had known, what he had just come back from. His
+friends over there, the gay courage, the helpfulness, the ready,
+uninquiring affection, the breadth of outlook, the quick friendliness,
+the careless assumption that one was decent, that one's intentions were
+good,--why shouldn't he pull some of the splendid stuff into his poor,
+lame little home? Why should he let himself drop back from heights like
+those to the old ridiculous timidities, the miserable habit of avoiding
+the truth? Rebellion, hope, determination, seized Mr. Twist. His eyes
+shone behind his spectacles. His ears were two red flags of revolution.
+He gripped hold of the twins, one under each arm.
+
+"You come right in," he said, louder than he had ever spoken in his
+life. "Edith, see these girls? They're the two Annas. Their other name
+is Twinkler, but Anna'll see you through. They want supper, and they
+want beds, and they want affection, and they're going to get it all. So
+hustle with the food, and send the Cadillac for their baggage, and fix
+up things for them as comfortably as you know how. And as for Mrs.
+Sack," he said, looking first at one twin and then at the other, "if it
+hadn't been for her running away from her worthless husband--I'm
+convinced that fellow Sack is worthless--you might never have come here
+at all. So you see," he finished, laughing at Anna-Rose, "how good comes
+out of evil."
+
+And with the sound of these words preceding him he pushed open the
+dining-room door and marched them in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+At the head of the table sat his mother; long, straight, and grave. She
+was in the seat of authority, the one with its back to the windows and
+its face to the door, from whence she could see what everybody did,
+especially Amanda. Having seen what Amanda did, she then complained to
+Edith. She didn't complain direct to Amanda, because Amanda could and
+did give notice.
+
+Her eyes were fixed on the door. Between it and her was the table,
+covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and therefore,
+according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious days, all the
+food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in together, and
+Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten oyster patties lay on
+Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected champagne had bubbled itself
+flat. Her hand still held her fork, but loosely, as an object that had
+lost its interest, and her eyes and ears for the last five minutes had
+not departed from the door.
+
+At first she had felt mere resigned annoyance that Amanda shouldn't have
+answered the bell, but she didn't wish to cast a shadow over Edward's
+homecoming by drawing poor Edith's attention before him to how very
+badly she trained the helps, and therefore she said nothing at the
+moment; then, when Edith, going in search of Amanda, had opened the door
+and let in sounds of argument, she was surprised, for she knew no one so
+intimately that they would be likely to call at such an hour; but when
+Edward too leapt up, and went out and stayed out and failed to answer
+her repeated calls, she was first astonished, then indignant, and then
+suddenly was overcome by a cold foreboding.
+
+Mrs. Twist often had forebodings, and they were always cold. They seized
+her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief functions was to
+comfort and reassure her for as long a while each time as was required
+to reach the stage of being able to shake them off. Here was one,
+however, too icily convincing to be shaken off. It fell upon her with
+the swiftness of a revelation. Something unpleasant was going to happen
+to her; something perhaps worse than unpleasant,--disastrous. And
+something immediate.
+
+Those excited voices out in the hall,--they were young, surely, and they
+were feminine. Also they sounded most intimate with Edward. What had he
+been concealing from her? What disgracefulness had penetrated through
+him, through the son the neighbourhood thought so much of, into her very
+home? She was a widow. He was her only son. Impossible to believe he
+would betray so sacred a position, that he whom she had so lovingly and
+proudly welcomed a few hours before would allow his--well, she really
+didn't know what to call them, but anyhow female friends of whom she had
+been told nothing, to enter that place which to every decent human being
+is inviolable, his mother's home. Yet Mrs. Twist did instantly believe
+it.
+
+Then Edward's voice, raised and defiant--surely defiant?--came through
+the crack in the door, and every word he said was quite distinct. Anna;
+supper; affection ... Mrs. Twist sat frozen. And then the door was
+flung open and Edward tumultuously entered, his ears crimson, his face
+as she had never seen it and in each hand, held tightly by the arm, a
+girl.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her.
+
+"Mother--" he began.
+
+"How do you do," said the girls together, and actually with smiles.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her. That whole afternoon how quiet he had
+been, how listless. Quite gentle, quite affectionate, but listless and
+untalkative. She had thought he must be tired; worn out with his long
+journey across from Europe. She had made allowances for him; been
+sympathetic, been considerate. And look at him now. Never had she seen
+him with a face like that. He was--Mrs. Twist groped for the word and
+reluctantly found it--rollicking. Yes; that was the word that exactly
+described him--rollicking. If she hadn't observed his languor up to a
+few minutes ago at supper, and seen him with her own eyes refuse
+champagne and turn his back on cocktails, she would have been forced to
+the conclusion, dreadful though it was to a mother, that he had been
+drinking. And the girls! Two of them. And so young.
+
+Mrs. Twist had known Edward, as she sometimes informed Edith, all his
+life, and had not yet found anything in his morals which was not
+blameless. Watch him with what loving care she might she had found
+nothing; and she was sure her mother's instinct would not have failed
+her. Nevertheless, even with that white past before her--he hadn't told
+her about "Madame Bovary"--she now instantly believed the worst.
+
+It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst. Clark was very small,
+and therefore also very virtuous. Each inhabitant was the careful
+guardian of his neighhour's conduct. Nobody there ever did anything
+that was wrong; there wasn't a chance. But as Nature insists on a
+balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil. They were minds
+active in suspicion. They leapt with an instantaneous agility at the
+worst conclusions. Nothing was ever said in Clark, but everything was
+thought. The older inhabitants, made fast prisoners in their mould of
+virtue by age, watched with jealous care the behaviour of those still
+young enough to attract temptation. The younger ones, brought up in
+inhibitions, settled down to wakefulness in regard to each other.
+Everything was provided and encouraged in Clark, a place of pleasant
+orchards and gentle fields, except the things that had to do with love.
+Husbands were there; and there was a public library, and social
+afternoons, and an Emerson society. The husbands died before the wives,
+being less able to cope with virtue; and a street in Clark of smaller
+houses into which their widows gravitated had been christened by the
+stationmaster--a more worldly man because of his three miles off and all
+the trains--Lamentation Lane.
+
+In this village Mrs. Twist had lived since her marriage, full of dignity
+and honour. As a wife she had been full of it, for the elder Mr. Twist
+had been good even when alive, and as a widow she had been still fuller,
+for the elder Mr. Twist positively improved by being dead. Not a breath
+had ever touched her and her children. Not the most daring and
+distrustful Clark mind had ever thought of her except respectfully. And
+now here was this happening to her; at her age; when she was least able
+to bear it.
+
+She sat in silence, staring with sombre eyes at the three figures.
+
+"Mother--" began Edward again; but was again interrupted by the
+twins, who said together, as they had now got into the habit of saying
+when confronted by silent and surprised Americans, "We've come."
+
+It wasn't that they thought it a particularly good conversational
+opening, it was because silence and surprise on the part of the other
+person seemed to call for explanation on theirs, and they were
+constitutionally desirous of giving all the information in their power.
+
+"How do you do," they then repeated, loosening themselves from Mr. Twist
+and advancing down the room with outstretched hands.
+
+Mr. Twist came with them. "Mother," he said, "these are the Twinkler
+girls. Their name's Twinkler. They---"
+
+Freed as he felt he was from his old bonds, determined as he felt he was
+on emulating the perfect candour and simplicity of the twins and the
+perfect candour and simplicity of his comrades in France, his mother's
+dead want of the smallest reaction to this announcement tripped him up
+for a moment and prevented his going on.
+
+But nothing ever prevented the twins going on. If they were pleased and
+excited they went on with cheerful gusto, and if they were unnerved and
+frightened they still went on,--perhaps even more volubly, anxiously
+seeking cover behind a multitude of words.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not yet unnerved and frightened them, because they were
+too much delighted that they had got to her at all. The relief Anna-Rose
+experienced at having safely piloted that difficult craft, the clumsy if
+adorable Columbus, into a respectable Port was so immense that it
+immediately vented itself in words of warmest welcome to the lady in the
+chair to her own home.
+
+"We're _so_ glad to see you here," she said, smiling till her dimple
+seemed to be everywhere at once hardly able to refrain from giving the
+lady a welcome hug instead of just inhospitably shaking her hand. She
+couldn't even shake her hand, however, because it still held, immovably,
+the fork. "It would have been too awful," Anna-Rose therefore finished,
+putting the heartiness of the handshake she wanted to give into her
+voice instead, "if _you_ had happened to have run away too."
+
+"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband," Anna-Felicitas explained,
+smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who actually having got
+oyster patties on her plate hadn't bothered to eat them. "But of course
+you couldn't," she went on, remembering in time to be tactful and make a
+Sympathetic reference to the lady's weeds; which, indeed, considering
+Mr. Twist had told her and Anna-Rose that his father had died when he
+was ten, nearly a quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their
+heads up astonishingly and stayed very fresh. And true to her German
+training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose in her
+contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's right hand, fork
+and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious kiss of a well
+brought up Junker.
+
+Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this empty of Junkers.
+She had never even heard of them till the war, and pronounced their
+name, and so did the rest of Clark following her lead, as if it had been
+junket, only with an r instead of a t at the end. She didn't therefore
+recognize the action; but even she, outraged as she was, could not but
+see its grace. And looking up in sombre hostility at the little head
+bent over her hand and at the dark line of eyelashes on the the flushed
+face, she thought swiftly, "_She's_ the one."
+
+"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously and
+sitting on it with determination, "it's like this. (Sit down, you two,
+and get eating. Start on anything you see in this show that hits your
+fancy. Edith'll be fetching you something hot, I expect--soup, or
+something--but meanwhile here's enough stuff to go on with.) You see,
+mother--" he resumed, turning squarely to her, while the twins obeyed
+him with immense alacrity and sat down and began to eat whatever
+happened to be nearest them, "these two girls--well, to start with
+they're twins--"
+
+Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She couldn't conceive
+why he should lie. Twins the world over matched in size and features; it
+was notorious that they did. Also, it was the custom for them to match
+in age, and the tall one of these was at least a year older than the
+other one. But still, thought Mrs. Twist, let that pass. She would
+suffer whatever it was she had to suffer in silence.
+
+The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating. Perfectly
+at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved with an easy
+naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous. But still--let that
+too pass. These strangers helped themselves and helped each other, as if
+everything belonged to them; and the tall one actually asked her--her,
+the mistress of the house--if she could get _her_ anything. Well, let
+that pass too.
+
+"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.
+
+He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous hold
+one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words;
+what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in
+one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her quickly
+wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could
+do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him
+till he was seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking
+off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's childhood.
+
+Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster
+himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to
+come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the
+sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he
+rejected that as priggish.
+
+"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across them--across these
+two girls--they're both called Anna, by the way, which seems confusing
+but isn't really--I came across them on the boat----"
+
+He again stopped dead.
+
+Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed on
+Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of oyster
+patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what Mrs. Twist was
+accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas was behaving badly
+with the patties, and not even attempting to conceal, as the decent do,
+how terribly they interested her.
+
+"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her eyes on her
+son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he had told her
+that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody except men. Another
+lie. Well, let that pass too ...
+
+Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming spectacles.
+He well knew the weakness of his position from his mother's point of
+view; but why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling,
+narrow one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
+stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the old
+system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid
+offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive. Let her for
+once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind thing. But as he
+stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't very well start
+moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their presence. He couldn't
+tell her they were orphans, alone in the world, helpless, poor, and so
+unfortunately German, with them sitting there. If he did, there would be
+trouble. The twins seemed absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he
+had no doubt their ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of
+sympathy being invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those
+things he was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand.
+Or, if she understood, appreciate.
+
+He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and then ask
+his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while Edith was
+looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot, explain them to
+his mother, describe their situation, commend them to her patience and
+her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing extraordinarily hard that
+Edith would be quick.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his mother's.
+"Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar gentleness, balancing
+a piece of patty on her fork, "that you haven't yet mentioned us to your
+mother?"
+
+And Anna-Rose, struck in her turn at such an omission, paused too with
+food on the way to her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"
+
+"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.
+
+"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to their
+mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her everything
+from the beginning."
+
+Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected support,
+bowed her head--it could hardly be called a nod--in her son's direction.
+"You see--" the movement seemed to say, "even these ..."
+
+"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
+addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last night,
+he has been what I think can be quite accurately described as our
+faithful two-footed companion."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends. Practically
+inseparable."
+
+"So that it really is _very_ surprising," said Anna-Felicitas to Mr.
+Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother about us."
+
+Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy in that
+room.
+
+He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very wise,
+you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded, "but you may
+take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the
+drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
+ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the door,
+"but confound it all, I've only been home about a couple of hours."
+
+"Five," said Mrs. Twist.
+
+"Five then. What's five? No time at all."
+
+"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say confound,
+Edward?"
+
+"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he broke
+loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the
+drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his
+bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white
+wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled
+together as tight as it would go.
+
+His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply
+not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak,
+after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an
+incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she
+hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him,
+but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their children. It was
+stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental
+rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross
+things--she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could
+remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such
+things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode.
+Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards
+admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment,
+and that it was evident these girls were not like that.
+
+But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he
+had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as
+if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the
+twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them,
+and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy,
+as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that
+moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had
+told his mother that here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful
+thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her
+side, to talk.
+
+She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only started
+when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came to offering
+her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to do something
+really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing nothing else but
+noble and beautiful things, and doing them with the most single-minded
+devotion to duty and the most consistent disregard of inclination, could
+keep silence no longer. Had she not borne her great loss without a
+murmur? Had she not devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a
+good man? Had she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her
+efforts to set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in
+misfortune? She began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at
+the things this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the
+manner of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
+unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their delivery.
+
+Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because for years,
+away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted his mother; for
+years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
+unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he had
+doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her honesty,
+her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately, before he went
+to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless
+this unexpected naked justification of his doubts was shattering to him.
+
+But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew him inside
+out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the long years of
+his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and rather disposed,
+also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for him, so easy had he
+been to manage, so ready to do everything she wished. Now it appeared
+that she no more knew Edward than if he had been a stranger in the
+street.
+
+The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible
+thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger
+generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his shoulder and take
+comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his
+mother's fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the
+belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black
+pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So
+naturally kind was he--weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at
+him--that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had
+been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and
+affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think
+it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only
+he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the
+painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
+humiliated.
+
+That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his
+room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen,
+trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the
+future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope for that yet. The future
+seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that
+he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the
+other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then
+turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of
+life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or
+they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and
+she had said, "I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
+she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much
+of it in him?
+
+Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could
+fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of
+suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through
+his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the
+twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and
+goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave
+them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an
+innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of
+his mother's age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his
+instinct knew it.
+
+The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, "You
+have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of
+those girls."
+
+And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find,
+search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point of view.
+It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.
+
+Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn't try
+to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this
+bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of
+the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she
+used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to
+herself she must leave her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And
+Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.
+
+Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her second
+great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful to feel, to
+resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she could from
+Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect him; but she would
+try to protect him even now, as she had always protected him, from
+earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however, surely know in time,
+protect as she might, and judge between her and Edward. God knew
+already, and was already judging. God and Clark.... Poor Edward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by Edith,
+in the happy conviction that they had settled down comfortably for some
+time, were surprised to find at breakfast that they hadn't.
+
+They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of restfulness
+on her part that struck them while they were finishing their supper, and
+to which at last they drew her attention. She was so kind, and so like
+Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with hospitable eyes and wore
+an expression of real benevolence, it didn't escape their notice that
+she seemed to be listening to something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and
+to be expecting something that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several
+times to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared,
+and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came
+back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.
+
+At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any
+real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was
+impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and
+inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the
+inhabitants of America, to keep on being somewhere else. Edith smiled
+abstractedly at them, said nothing, and went out again.
+
+She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other
+things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they
+hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those
+they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
+and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there
+weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring
+listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed
+murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you
+were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
+now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of them.
+
+Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very
+tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their
+rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she
+was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.
+
+The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to
+seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the
+ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were
+expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for
+them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that
+astonished Edith, who didn't know how naturally Junkers make speeches,
+she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it
+was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy
+indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr.
+Twist's voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately
+as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.
+
+Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.
+
+They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each
+bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and
+pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur's, and at
+home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all. The baths there had been
+vessels brought into one's bedroom every night, into which servants next
+morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water
+into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in
+possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and
+plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
+conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other
+countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from
+Pomerania.
+
+Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the
+ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she
+went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more thoughtful than
+ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it?
+Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if
+they didn't happen to be one's own dear brother's _protegees_. And when
+they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath,
+she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed
+them good-night.
+
+Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,--one of the
+satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with you.
+Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things,
+thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which,
+being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.
+
+"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as
+Edith tucked her up and kissed her.
+
+"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose, also
+sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite
+of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical
+faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the
+drawing-room door a little surprised.
+
+At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
+appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing was
+not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's lodging and
+breakfast between, as it were, two trains.
+
+Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins remarked
+solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced the fact.
+
+"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
+Edith--Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in bed--"Why, we've
+unpacked."
+
+"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.
+
+They found difficulty in believing their ears.
+
+"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished
+pause.
+
+"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own teapot. He had
+made up his mind to be very short with the Annas until they were safely
+out of the house, and not permit himself to be entangled by them in
+controversy. Also, he didn't want to look at them if he could help it.
+He was afraid that if he did he might be unable not to take them both in
+his arms and beg their pardon for the whole horridness of the world.
+
+But if he didn't look at them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly
+surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.
+
+"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
+troubled and upset.
+
+"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.
+
+"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for at all
+times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell us where you
+think we're going to."
+
+"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not only at the
+thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a sense of outraged
+faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have observed, is strictly
+limited."
+
+Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith, whose eyes
+were red, informed them that they were _en route_ for California.
+
+"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."
+
+She held her head up straight.
+
+"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after a
+silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her nose,
+because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or Anna-Felicitas, to notice
+that her eyes had gone and got tears in them. She angrily wished she
+hadn't got such damp eyes. They were no better than swamps, she
+thought--undrained swamps; and directly fate's foot came down a little
+harder than usual, up oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the
+leader of an expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original
+Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle
+was able to leave off looking down her nose.
+
+But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle dignity
+that he was obviously tired of them.
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said gently, "I'm
+afraid your denial carries no weight."
+
+"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining it with
+care, "are that I'm coming with you."
+
+"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was here
+that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.
+
+"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning his
+teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that I--well, I
+happen to have some business to do in California, and I may as well do
+it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a different route or train,
+so you see your theory _is_ rather dished, isn't it?"
+
+"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if you
+really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere
+else so soon?"
+
+Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of
+his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said shortly, "but
+you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts.
+I'm going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
+That's all you know, and all you need to know."
+
+"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose
+
+"And if our friends have run away?" suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with
+a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in America?"
+
+"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the
+Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if
+they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves
+to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth,
+almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left
+alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the
+mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war
+began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
+Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
+retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the
+days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in
+Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine
+trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at the elusiveness
+of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be caught up with and at the
+trouble it was giving them.
+
+They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to
+have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already
+however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other
+that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their
+real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their
+plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't even know it existed. It was a
+side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped
+in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there
+some time, perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their
+stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how
+new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go
+to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of
+Clark at a moment's notice.
+
+"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the train and
+have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as the car moved
+away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the
+doorstep.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent her many
+messages.
+
+"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.
+
+But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he really
+began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day, and the next
+morning in New York where he took them to the bank their ÂŁ200 was in and
+saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in
+the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California--Mr.
+Twist was taciturn.
+
+They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening with
+cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in their
+compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that their
+spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till breakfast next
+morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted a little; and as
+the day went on it lifted still more. They were going to be three days
+together in that train, and it would be impossible for Mr. Twist, they
+were sure, to go on being taciturn as long as that. It wasn't his
+nature. His nature was conversational. And besides, shut up like that in
+a train, the sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want
+to talk.
+
+So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
+observation car, though there was nothing to observe except limitless
+flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins suggested that he
+should now begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was
+bound to get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that
+his mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
+with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously long
+ago, when they landed in America.
+
+"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting another
+cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week yet."
+
+And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty serious
+havoc in America considering they had only been in it five days. He and
+his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at Clark sitting
+there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his return, with
+nothing at all that he could see to look forward to and live for except
+the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as duty; every plan upset;
+the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his sister and of himself
+completely altered,--it was a pretty big bag in the time, he thought,
+flinging the match back towards Chicago.
+
+Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad tumble, and
+is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that these great ruptures
+cannot take place without aches and doubts. He ached, and he doubted and
+he also knew through his aches and doubts that he was free at last from
+what of late years he had so grievously writhed under--the shame of
+pretence. And the immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely,
+the Annas.
+
+It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had happened; and
+who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark and the immediate
+effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn't have lapsed after all,
+in spite of the feelings and determinations he had brought back with
+him from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and
+gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when
+he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He might have
+trailed on like that for years--Mr. Twist didn't like the picture of his
+own weakness, but he was determined to look at himself as he
+was--trailed along languidly when he was at home, living another life
+when he was away, getting what he absolutely must have, the irreducible
+minimum of personal freedom necessary to sanity, by means of small and
+shabby deceits. My goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of
+the littleness of them!
+
+He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas sitting
+alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him. They had on the
+blue caps again which made them look so bald and cherubic, and their
+eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines of rails that went back
+and back to a point in the distance. The dear little things; the dear,
+dear little things,--so straightforward, so blessedly straight and
+simple, thought Mr. Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this.
+Fancy _anybody_, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
+opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.
+
+The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned and
+looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud had
+lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of welcome.
+
+"It's pleasant to see you back again," said Anna-Felicitas heartily, who
+was next to him.
+
+"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"It hasn't been like the same place, the world hasn't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been away."
+
+"Since you walked out of the dining-room that night at Clark," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course we know you can't always be with us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.
+
+"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas, "for these last few
+days, I would suggest that we should be happy. As happy as we used to be
+on the _St. Luke_ when we weren't being sea-sick." And she thought she
+might even go so far as to enjoy hearing the "Ode to Dooty," now.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three days we shall have
+disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let us be happy while we
+can. Who knows what their maw will be like? But whatever it's like," she
+added firmly, "we're going to stick in it."
+
+"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that you're a little restored
+to your normal condition, you'll tell us what has been the matter."
+
+"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that something _has_ been the
+matter."
+
+"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas, "and putting two and
+two together, and perhaps you'll tell us what it was, and then we shall
+know if we're right."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he continued
+benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see--" He hesitated, and pushed
+his hat off his forehead. "I wonder if you'd understand--"
+
+"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas assured him.
+
+"These caps make us look more stupid than we are," Anna-Rose assured
+him, deducing her own appearance from that of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Encouraged, but doubtful of their capabilities of comprehension on
+this particular point, Mr. Twist embarked rather gingerly on his
+explanations. He was going to be candid from now on for the rest of his
+days, but the preliminary plunges were, he found, after all a little
+difficult. Even with the pellucidly candid Annas, all ready with ears
+pricked up attentively and benevolently and minds impartial, he found it
+difficult. It was because, on the subject of mothers, he feared he was
+up against their one prejudice. He felt rather than knew that their
+attitude on this one point might be uncompromising,--mothers were
+mothers, and there was an end of it; that sort of attitude, coupled with
+extreme reprobation of himself for supposing anything else.
+
+He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly they got
+wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was very soon for
+they were giving their minds to it as they promised and Mr. Twist's
+hesitations were illuminating, they interrupted.
+
+"So we were right," they said to each other.
+
+"But you don't know yet what I'm going to say," said Mr. Twist. "I've
+only started on the preliminaries."
+
+"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding
+
+"We didn't think so at the time," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had
+happened."
+
+Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only say
+"Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly shocked, I suppose."
+
+"Oh no," they said airily and together.
+
+"No?"
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"You see, as a general principle," said Anna-Felicitas, "it's
+reprehensible to quarrel with one's mother."
+
+"But we've not been able to escape observing--" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"In the course of our brief and inglorious career," put in
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--that there are mothers and mothers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he presently added,
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily and together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+After this brief _Ă©claircissement_ the rest of the journey was happy.
+Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to California and not be
+happy.
+
+Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up or no
+break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant feeling of
+adventure. Every now and then the realization of this feeling gave his
+conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke. He was having the
+best of it in this business; he was the party in the quarrel who went
+away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its
+corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who
+had never heard of him. Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on
+to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there
+would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has
+burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side,
+naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was
+gone, and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel,
+thought Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the
+desert at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
+colours,--in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the best of
+it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who don't know
+him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are ready to be friendly.
+He must, of course, go far enough; not stay near at hand in some
+familiar place and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful. Well,
+he was going far enough. Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far
+as he could go. Certainly he was having the best of it in being the one
+in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself cynically
+thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then, take care to be
+the one who did go.
+
+But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in everywhere,
+and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper to one who has
+been cutting himself off for good and all from his early home. For the
+life of him he couldn't help feeling extraordinarily light and free.
+Edith--yes, there was Edith, but some day he would make up to Edith for
+everything. There was no helping her now: she was fast bound in misery
+and iron, and didn't even seem to know it. So would he have been, he
+supposed, if he had never left home at all. As it was, it was bound to
+come, this upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth would have
+burst the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of course, to have been
+any bands; or, there being bands, he ought long ago to have burst them.
+
+He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked determined.
+Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his own weak past.
+Well, it was done at last, and never again--never, never again, he said
+to himself, sniffing in through his open window the cold air of the
+desert at sunrise.
+
+By that route, the Santa FĂ©, it is not till two or three hours before
+you get to the end of the journey that summer meets you. It is waiting
+for you at a place called San Bernardino. There is no trace of it
+before. Up to then you are still in October; and then you get to the
+top of the pass, and with a burst it is June,--brilliant, windless,
+orange-scented.
+
+The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when the
+miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer, with a
+great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded by the scent
+of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and new and very
+aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the black waiters began
+to perspire, the passengers called for cold things to eat, and the twins
+pulled off their knitted caps and jerseys.
+
+From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the twins could
+only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light that did it, the
+extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there were orchards after
+orchards of orange trees covered with fruit, white houses smothered in
+flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall groups of eucalyptus trees
+giving an impression of elegant nakedness, long lines of pepper trees
+with frail fern-like branches, and these things continued for the rest
+of the way; but they would have been as nothing without that beautiful,
+great bland light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and
+their July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this.
+Here was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
+threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer as it
+might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm, and radiant.
+When the train stopped they could see how not a breath of wind stirred
+the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves of the magnolia trees
+glistened motionless in the sun. The train went slowly and stopped
+often, for there seemed to be one long succession of gardens and
+villages. After the empty, wind-driven plains they had come through,
+those vast cold expanses without a house or living creature in sight,
+what a laughing plenty, what a gracious fruitfulness, was here. And when
+they went back to their compartment it too was full of summer
+smells,--the smell of fruit, and roses, and honey.
+
+For the first time since the war began and with it their wanderings, the
+twins felt completely happy. It was as though the loveliness wrapped
+them round and they stretched themselves in it and forgot. No fear of
+the future, no doubt of it at all, they thought, gazing out of the
+window, the soft air patting their faces, could possibly bother them
+here. They never, for instance, could be cold here, or go hungry. A
+great confidence in life invaded them. The Delloggs, sun-soaked and
+orange-fed for years in this place, couldn't but be gentle too, and kind
+and calm. Impossible not to get a sort of refulgence oneself, they
+thought, living here, and absorb it and give it out again. They pictured
+the Delloggs as bland pillars of light coming forward effulgently to
+greet them, and bathing them in the beams of their hospitality. And the
+feeling of responsibility and anxiety that had never left Anna-Rose
+since she last saw Aunt Alice dropped off her in this place, and she
+felt that sun and oranges, backed by ÂŁ200 in the bank, would be
+difficult things for misfortune to get at.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he was even more entranced than the twins as he gazed
+out of the window, for being older he had had time to see more ugly
+things, had got more used to them and to taking them as principally
+making up life. He stared at what he saw, and thought with wonder of his
+mother's drawing-room at Clark, of its gloomy, velvet-upholstered
+discomforts, of the cold mist creeping round the house, and of that
+last scene in it, with her black figure in the middle of it, tall and
+thin and shaking with bitterness. He had certainly been in that
+drawing-room and heard her so terribly denouncing him, but it was very
+difficult to believe; it seemed so exactly like a nightmare, and this
+the happy normal waking up in the morning.
+
+They all three were in the highest spirits when they got out at Los
+Angeles and drove across to the Southern Pacific station--the name alone
+made their hearts leap--to catch the afternoon train on to where the
+Delloggs lived, and their spirits were the kind one can imagine in
+released souls on their first arriving in paradise,--high, yet subdued;
+happy, but reverential; a sort of rollicking awe. They were subdued, in
+fact, by beauty. And the journey along the edge of the Pacific to
+Acapulco, where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this kind
+of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran for miles
+close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand between it and the
+surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It happened to be even in
+that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually wonderful one, and none of
+the three had ever seen anything in the least like it. They could but
+sit silent and stare. The great sea, that little line of lovely islands
+flung down on it like a chain of amethysts, that vast flame of sky, that
+heaving water passionately reflecting it, and on the other side, through
+the other windows, a sharp wall of black mountains,--it was
+fantastically beautiful, like something in a poem or a dream.
+
+By the time they got to Acapulco it was dark. Night followed upon the
+sunset with a suddenness that astonished the twins, used to the
+leisurely methods of twilight on the Baltic; and the only light in the
+country outside the town as they got near it was the light from myriads
+of great stars.
+
+No Delloggs were at the station, but the twins were used now to not
+being met and had not particularly expected them; besides, Mr. Twist was
+with them this time, and he would see that if the Delloggs didn't come
+to them they would get safely to the Delloggs.
+
+The usual telegram had been sent announcing their arrival, and the
+taxi-driver, who seemed to know the Dellogg house well when Mr. Twist
+told him where they wanted to go, apparently also thought it natural
+they should want to go exactly there. In him, indeed, there did seem to
+be a trace of expecting them,--almost as if he had been told to look out
+for them; for hardly had Mr. Twist begun to give him the address than
+glancing at the twins he said, "I guess you're wanting Mrs. Dellogg";
+and got down and actually opened the door for them, an attention so
+unusual in the taxi-drivers the twins had up to then met in America that
+they were more than ever convinced that nothing in the way of
+unfriendliness or unkindness could stand up against sun and oranges.
+
+"Relations?" he asked them through the window as he shut the door gently
+and carefully, while Mr. Twist went with a porter to see about the
+luggage.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Relations of Delloggses?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "Friends."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the driver, leaning with both his arms on the window-sill in
+the friendliest possible manner, and chewing gum and eyeing them with
+thoughtful interest.
+
+Then he said, after a pause during which his jaw rolled regularly from
+side to side and the twins watched the rolling with an interest equal to
+his interest in them, "From Los Angeles?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "From New York."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Well I call that a real compliment," said the driver slowly and
+deliberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that way,
+and without being relations--I call that a real compliment, and a
+friendship that's worth something. Anybody can come along from Los
+Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come from New York," and he eyed
+them now with admiration.
+
+The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
+fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them quaint.
+
+"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.
+
+"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.
+
+The twins thought this over.
+
+The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out very
+white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before getting to Los
+Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in what Anna-Felicitas
+called their favourable-impression-on-arrival garments,--those garments
+Aunt Alice had bought for them on their mother's death, expressing the
+wave of sympathy in which she found herself momentarily engulfed by
+going to a very good and expensive dressmaker; and in the black
+perfection of these clothes the twins looked like two well-got-up and
+very attractive young crows. These were the clothes they had put on on
+leaving the ship, and had been so obviously admired in, to the
+uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it was in these clothes that
+they had arrived within range of Mr. Sack's distracted but still
+appreciative vision, and in them that they later roused the suspicions
+and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was in these clothes that they were now
+about to start what they hoped would be a lasting friendship with the
+Delloggs, and remembering they had them on they decided that perhaps it
+wasn't only sun and oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but
+also the effect on him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.
+
+This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old friends,
+then," he remarked, after a period of reflective jaw-rolling. "Must be,
+to come all that way."
+
+"Well--not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her respect for
+truth and her gratification at being thought old enough to be somebody's
+old friend.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in her
+respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."
+
+The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
+observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said, "You'll
+miss Mr. Dellogg."
+
+"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up her ears, "Shall we?"
+
+"We don't mind missing Mr. Dellogg," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's Mrs.
+Dellogg we wouldn't like to miss."
+
+The driver looked puzzled.
+
+"Yes--that would be too awful," said Anna-Rose, who didn't want a
+repetition of the Sack dilemma. "You did say," she asked anxiously,
+"didn't you, that we were going to miss Mr. Dellogg?"
+
+The driver, looking first at one of them and then at the other, said,
+"Well, and who wouldn't?"
+
+And this answer seemed so odd to the twins that they could only as they
+stared at him suppose it was some recondite form of American slang,
+provided with its own particular repartee which, being unacquainted with
+the language, they were not in a position to supply. Perhaps, they
+thought, it was of the same order of mysterious idioms as in England
+such sentences as I don't think, and Not half,--forms of speech whose
+exact meaning and proper use had never been mastered by them.
+
+"There won't be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many a
+year," said the driver, shaking his head. "Ah no. And that's so."
+
+"Isn't he coming back?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+The driver's jaws ceased for a moment to roll. He stared at Anna-Rose
+with unblinking eyes. Then he turned his head away and spat along the
+station, and then, again fixing his eyes on Anna-Rose, he said, "Young
+gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a table-turner, and a
+psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and anything else you please, and
+get what comfort you can out of your coming backs and the rest of the
+blessed truck, but I know better. And what I know, being a Christian, is
+that once a man's dead he's either in heaven or he's in hell, and
+whichever it is he's in, in it he stops."
+
+Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak. "Are we to understand," she
+inquired, "that Mr. Dellogg--" She broke off.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg is--" Anna-Rose continued for her, but broke off
+too.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg isn't--" resumed Anna-Felicitas with determination,
+"well, that he isn't alive?"
+
+"Alive?" repeated the driver. He let his hand drop heavily on the
+window-sill. "If that don't beat all," he said, staring at her. "What do
+you come his funeral for, then?"
+
+"His funeral?"
+
+"Yes, if you don't know that he ain't?"
+
+"Ain't--isn't what?"
+
+"Alive, of course. No, I mean dead. You're getting me all tangled up."
+
+"But we haven't."
+
+"But we didn't."
+
+"We had a letter from him only last month."
+
+"At least, an uncle we've got had."
+
+"And he didn't say a word in it about being dead--I mean, there was no
+sign of his being going to be--I mean, he wasn't a bit ill or anything
+in his letter--"
+
+"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice, "it ain't
+exactly usual is it--I put it to you squarely, and say it ain't
+_exactly_ usual (there may be exceptions, but it ain't exactly _usual_)
+to come to a gentleman's funeral, and especially not all the way from
+New York, without some sort of an idea that he's dead. Some sort of a
+_general_ idea, anyhow," he added still more sarcastically; for his
+admiration for the twins had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a
+suspicion was growing on him that with incredible and horrible levity,
+seeing what the moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up
+the time waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
+wreaths, by making game of him.
+
+"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his voice
+aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got down from his
+seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired white faces and helped
+them into his taxi,--only for genuine mourners, real sorry ones, going
+to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg, would he, a
+free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls, well-cared for
+gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all this way, I guess
+sent by your parents to represent them properly, and properly fitted out
+in nice black clothes and all, and you start making fun. Pretending.
+Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me about the funeral. Messing me up
+in a lot of words. I don't like it. I'm a father myself, and I don't
+like it. I don't like to see daughters going on like this when their
+father ain't looking. It don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you
+Easterners--"
+
+The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at each other
+in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way Uncle Arthur's
+friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's mere approach.
+People who had been living with their husbands all their lives ran away
+just as the twins came on the scene; people who had been alive all their
+lives went and died, also at that very moment. It almost seemed as if
+directly anybody knew that they, the Twinklers, were coming to stay with
+them they became bent on escape. They could only look at each other in
+stricken astonishment at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of
+what the driver said. They could only sit and look at each other.
+
+And then Mr. Twist came hurrying across from the baggage office, wiping
+his forehead, for the night was hot. Behind him came the porter,
+ruefully balancing the piled-up grips on his truck.
+
+"I'm sorry to have been so--" began Mr. Twist, smiling cheerfully: but
+he stopped short in his sentence and left off smiling when he saw the
+expression in the four eyes fixed on him. "What has happened?" he asked
+quickly.
+
+"Only what we might have expected," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's dead," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You don't say," said Mr. Twist; and after a pause he said again, "You
+don't say."
+
+Then he recovered himself. "I'm very sorry to hear it, of course," he
+said briskly, picking himself up, as it were, from this sudden and
+unexpected tumble, "but I don't see that it matters to you so long as
+Mrs. Dellogg isn't dead too."
+
+"Yes, but--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg isn't _very_ dead, you see," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist looked from them to the driver, but finding no elucidation
+there and only disapproval, looked back again.
+
+"He isn't dead and settled _down_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not _that_ sort of being dead," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's _just_
+dead."
+
+"Just got to the stage when he has a funeral," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"His funeral, it seems, is imminent," said Anna-Felicitas. "Did you not
+give us to understand," she asked, turning to the driver, "that it was
+imminent?"
+
+"I don't know about imminent," said the driver, who wasn't going to
+waste valuable time with words like that, "but it's to-morrow."
+
+"And you see what that means for us," said Anna-Felicitas, turning to
+Mr. Twist.
+
+Mr. Twist did.
+
+He again wiped his forehead, but not this time because the night was
+hot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into a house where there
+is going to be a funeral next day, even if one has come all the way from
+New York and has nowhere else to go. Equally manifestly it is impossible
+to thrust oneself into it after the funeral till a decent interval has
+elapsed. But what the devil, Mr. Twist asked himself in language become
+regrettably natural to him since his sojourn at the front, is a decent
+interval?
+
+This Mr. Twist asked himself late that night, pacing up and down the
+sea-shore in the warm and tranquil darkness in front of the Cosmopolitan
+Hotel, while the twins, utterly tired out by their journey and the
+emotions at the end of it, crept silently into bed.
+
+How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover, that
+is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning is it
+legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations incurred
+before she was a widow,--with, in fact, the Twinklers? Delicacy itself
+would shrink from doing it under a week thought Mr. Twist, or even under
+a fortnight, or even if you came to that, under a month; and meanwhile
+what was he to do with the Twinklers?
+
+Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he wouldn't
+have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he so passionately
+did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on to the tablecloth--was
+sometimes swept by brief but tempestuous revulsions of feeling, and
+though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment describe them
+mentally and without knowing it in the very words of Uncle Arthur, as
+those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he knew. They couldn't help
+the death of the man Dellogg. They were the victims, from first to last,
+of a cruel and pursuing fate; but it is natural to turn on victims, and
+Mr. Twist was for an instant, out of the very depth of his helpless
+sympathy, impatient with the Twinklers.
+
+He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth together,
+while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet. Across the road
+the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced by a thousand lights.
+Very few people were about and no one at all was on the sands. There was
+an immense noise of what sounded like grasshoppers or crickets, and also
+at intervals distant choruses of frogs, but these sounds seemed
+altogether beneficent,--so warm, and southern, and far away from less
+happy places where in October cold winds perpetually torment the world.
+Even in the dark Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was
+beautiful. He could imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed
+over the twins safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this
+place and seeing them every day,--perhaps even, as he had pictured to
+himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs. Now all
+that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg couldn't help
+being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help resenting it. It was
+so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was so like what one of that
+creature Uncle Arthur's friends would do.
+
+Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frankly unreasonable, but then he was
+very much taken aback and annoyed. What was he to do with the Annas? He
+was obviously not a relation of theirs--and indeed no profiles could
+have been less alike--and he didn't suppose Acapulco was behind other
+parts of America in curiosity and gossip. If he stayed on at the
+Cosmopolitan with the twins till Mrs. Dellogg was approachable again,
+whenever that might be, every sort of question would be being asked in
+whispers about who they were and what was their relationship, and
+presently whenever they sat down anywhere the chairs all round them
+would empty. Mr. Twist had seen the kind of thing happening in hotels
+before to other people,--never to himself; never had he been in any
+situation till now that was not luminously regular. And quite soon after
+this with the chairs had begun to happen, the people who created these
+vacancies were told by the manager--firmly in America, politely in
+England, and sympathetically in France--that their rooms had been
+engaged a long time ago for the very next day, and no others were
+available.
+
+The Cosmopolitan was clearly an hotel frequented by the virtuous rich.
+Mr. Twist felt that he and the Annas wouldn't, in their eyes, come under
+this heading, not, that is, when the other guests became aware of the
+entire absence of any relationship between him and the twins. Well, for
+a day or two nothing could happen; for a day or two, before his party
+had had time to sink into the hotel consciousness and the manager
+appeared to tell him the rooms were engaged, he could think things out
+and talk them over with his companions. Perhaps he might even see Mrs.
+Dellogg. The funeral, he had heard on inquiring of the hall porter was
+next day. It was to be a brilliant affair, said the porter. Mr. Dellogg
+had been a prominent inhabitant, free with his money, a supporter of
+anything there was to support. The porter talked of him as the
+taxi-driver had done, regretfully and respectfully; and Mr. Twist went
+to bed angrier than ever with a man who, being so valuable and so
+necessary, should have neglected at such a moment to go on living.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't sleep very well that night. He lay in his rosy room,
+under a pink silk quilt, and most of the time stared out through the
+open French windows with their pink brocade curtains at the great starry
+night, thinking.
+
+In that soft bed, so rosy and so silken as to have been worthy of the
+relaxations of, at least, a prima donna, he looked like some lean and
+alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business to. He hadn't
+thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of his teapot put him in
+the right position for doing so, because his soul was too simple for him
+to desire or think of anything less candid to wear in bed than flannel,
+and he still wore the blue flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In
+that beautiful bed his pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head,
+so frugal of hair, didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow
+prepared for the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And
+finding he couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
+spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as nobody
+was there to see him,--which, Mr. Twist sometimes thought when he caught
+sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time, is one of the comforts of
+being virtuously unmarried,--nobody minded.
+
+His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with and
+contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a difficult
+position who have Mr. Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
+dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer emotions,
+Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a detached and
+concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do with it; faced by
+the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness got in the ways of any
+clear vision.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and strewn
+with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he suddenly had an
+idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real good one. He would
+place the Annas in a school.
+
+Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
+answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school would
+give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought never to have
+left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and overflowing natures
+like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing as a finishing school
+for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas should go, and once in it
+there they should stay put, thought Mr. Twist in vigorous American,
+gathering up his mouth defiantly.
+
+Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily. He would
+seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his position to the twins
+by turning himself into their guardian, and then get them at once into
+the best school there was. As their guardian he could then pay all their
+expenses, and faced by this legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon
+persuaded of the propriety of his paying whatever there was to pay.
+
+Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go to
+sleep after that. Even three months' school--the period he gave Mrs.
+Dellogg for her acutest grief--would do. Tide them over. Give them room
+to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his spectacles,
+snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with the
+instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.
+
+But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure. The
+twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to school.
+They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one of the
+trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in honour of the
+heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of heliotrope that was in the
+warm air, had put on white summer frocks.
+
+Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and more
+angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out on to the
+great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at breakfast. They
+instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr. Twist had thought this
+wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now perceived his mistake. Not
+a head that wasn't turned to look at them, not a newspaper that wasn't
+lowered. They were immediate objects of interest and curiosity, entirely
+benevolent interest and curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about
+them, and the wives of the rich husbands--those halves of the
+virtuous-rich unions which provided the virtuousness--smiled as they
+passed, and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.
+
+Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins' chairs
+for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so respectful,
+and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done it that night in
+New York at supper, and at all the meals in the train in spite of the
+train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes one
+have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this agreeable
+practice in private.
+
+They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the properly
+treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous politeness on
+a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept. They themselves had
+obviously slept well, for their faces were cherubic in their bland
+placidity, and already after one night wore what Mr. Twist later came to
+recognize as the Californian look, a look of complete unworriedness.
+
+Yet they ought to have been worried. Mr. Twist had been terribly worried
+up to the moment in the night when he got his great idea, and he was
+worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts. They didn't look as
+though they would easily be put to school. His idea still seemed to him
+magnificent, a great solution, but would the Annas be able to see it?
+They might turn out impervious to it; not rejecting it, but simply
+non-absorbent. As they slowly and contentedly ate their grape-fruit,
+gazing out between the spoonfuls at the sea shining across the road
+through palm trees, and looking unruffled itself, he felt it was going
+to be rather like suggesting to two cherubs to leave their serene
+occupation of adoring eternal beauty and learn lessons instead. Still,
+it was the one way out, as far as Mr. Twist could see, of the situation
+produced by the death of the man Dellogg. "When you've done breakfast,"
+he said, pulling himself together on their reaching the waffle stage,
+"we must have a talk."
+
+"When we've done breakfast," said Anna-Rose, "we must have a walk."
+
+"Down there," said Anna-Felicitas, pointing with her spoon. "On the
+sands. Round the curve to where the pink hills begin."
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's death," said Mr. Twist, deciding it was necessary at once
+to wake them up out of the kind of happy somnolescence they seemed to be
+falling into, "has of course completely changed--"
+
+"How unfortunate," interrupted Anna-Rose, her eyes on the palms and the
+sea and the exquisite distant mountains along the back of the bay, "to
+have to be dead on a day like this."
+
+"It's not only his missing the fine weather that makes it unfortunate,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You mean," said Anna-Rose, "it's our missing him."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Well, we know that," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"We knew it last night, and it worried us," said Anna-Rose. "Then we
+went to sleep and it didn't worry us. And this morning it still
+doesn't."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist dryly. "You don't look particularly worried, I must
+say."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're not. People who find they've got to
+heaven aren't usually worried, are they."
+
+"And having got to heaven," said Anna-Rose, "we've thought of a plan to
+enable us to stay in it."
+
+"Oh have you," said Mr. Twist, pricking up his ears.
+
+"The plan seemed to think of us rather than we of it," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "It came and inserted itself, as it were, into our minds
+while we were dressing."
+
+"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist firmly, feeling sure
+that the twins' plan would be the sort that ought to be instantly nipped
+in the bud.
+
+He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have you? Is
+it about schools?"
+
+He stared at her in silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was
+very much surprised. "It is."
+
+"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it will tide
+us over."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect harmony
+of ideas.
+
+"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is---" began Anna-Rose in her clear
+little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables round them.
+
+Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of doors,"
+he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the other tables,
+and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say next.
+
+"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.
+
+On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the harmony of
+ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed, something very
+like heated argument began almost as soon as they were seated on some
+rocks round the corner of the shore to the west of the hotel and they
+became aware, through conversation, of the vital difference in the two
+plans.
+
+The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with a
+profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a school in
+the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go to it for three
+months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs. Dellogg wanted to recover
+in.
+
+Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could only nod
+approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared that the twins
+didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity except as teachers.
+Professors, they said; professors of languages and literatures. They
+could speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most
+people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an
+extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English and
+German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot about Heine,
+for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by heart and whose sad
+life in Paris--
+
+"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist. "You're not
+old enough."
+
+Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked at each
+other in surprised indignation.
+
+"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I don't see
+how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't grown up. And
+there can be no doubt as to which we are."
+
+And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their chairs
+for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things like that
+for children.
+
+"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing his hand
+down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words. "Nobody would take
+you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the pair of you--"
+
+"Perambulator--?"
+
+"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the same
+thing, anyway?"
+
+And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation became so
+heated that for a time it was molten.
+
+The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were outraged. Go to
+school? To a place they had never been to even in their suitable years?
+They, two independent grown-ups with ÂŁ200 in the bank and nobody with
+any right to stop their doing anything they wanted to? Go to school now,
+like a couple of little suck-a-thumbs?
+
+It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
+expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
+perambulator faces if he liked--they didn't care, but they did desire
+him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they would be now
+taking their proper place in society, that they had already done a
+course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not open to any but adults,
+and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not given them all that money to
+fritter away on paying for belated schooling.
+
+"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the
+discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how
+completely she had been stirred.
+
+"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose icily.
+
+"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and
+undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting chronologically
+confused as well?"
+
+Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the Twinklers
+when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his rock, his face
+supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while the twins watched
+him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he pushed his hat back
+and began slowly to rub his ear.
+
+"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said,
+continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.
+
+The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest against
+any necessity for such knowledge on his part, but he interrupted them.
+"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when
+you're both a little more composed."
+
+"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Less ruffled, then."
+
+"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as this is
+important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say, to-morrow. I
+suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood and steadying our
+minds--"
+
+"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."
+
+"--and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I haven't told
+you all my plan yet"--Mr. Twist hadn't had time to inform them of his
+wish to become their guardian, owing to the swiftness with which he had
+been engulfed in their indignation,--"but whether you approve of it or
+not, what is quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much
+longer."
+
+"Because it's so dear?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't so much _that_,--the proprietor is a friend of mine, or
+anyhow he very well might be--"
+
+"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid bedroom
+and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in silken beds, and
+the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be pure gold.
+
+"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending money,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find a salaried
+position in a school without loss of time."
+
+"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we ought to
+start looking for such a situation at once" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not to-day," said Mr. Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope
+of getting them, once they were used to it, to come round to his plan.
+"To-day, this one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us
+all good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And
+it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."
+
+He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off theirs.
+
+"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he added
+artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those hills."
+
+And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having spent the
+whole day exploring the charming environs of Acapulco,--having been seen
+at different periods going over the Old Mission in tow of a monk who
+wouldn't look at them but kept his eyes carefully fixed on the ground,
+sitting on high stools eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in
+the town that has the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at
+the foot of a cliff along the top of which a great hedge of
+rose-coloured geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove
+of ilexes on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from
+somewhere in the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through
+eucalyptus woods across the fields towards the foot of the
+mountains,--they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking of tea,
+to a delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round a restaurant
+and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one of the many
+American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people not living in the
+cottages can come and have meals at the restaurant, so we'll go right in
+and have tea."
+
+And it was just because they couldn't get tea--any other meal, the
+proprietress said, but no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help
+Eight Hours Bill which obliged her to do without domestics during the
+afternoon hours--that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+But she didn't come by it at once.
+
+They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the scented
+road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and they got
+into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for tea, and her
+brain was still unvisited by inspiration.
+
+They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being thwarted
+in their desire to sit at a little green table under whispering trees
+and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish to have it at the
+Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been corrupted by Europe, and
+the twins, who had the habits of their mother, couldn't imagine doing
+without it in the afternoon, and they would have it in the hotel sooner
+than not have it at all. It was brought to them after a long time of
+waiting. Nobody else was having any at that hour, and the waiter, when
+at last one was found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they
+were serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
+and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been breakfast.
+
+Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and distaste, as
+well as the place they were sitting in and its rocking-chairs and marble
+and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly smitten by her idea.
+
+It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were, between
+the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in the middle
+of a piece of toast and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
+eating and looked at her.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come off?"
+
+At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away, for
+experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came undone.
+
+"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said, mildly
+sarcastic.
+
+"_Ich gratuliere_," said Anna-Rose, also mildly sarcastic.
+
+"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous," she
+said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of course.
+That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering about schools."
+
+There was a new expression on her face that silenced the comments rising
+to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of whom had tired feet and
+were therefore disposed to sarcasm.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her face
+continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as if a
+curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in her
+usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight. She
+reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind, of Moses
+when he came down from receiving the Law on the mountain.
+
+"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking of
+Moses, "if it's only more commandments."
+
+Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding in her
+fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the rocks," she said
+getting up--"where we sat this morning." And she marched out, followed
+by the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any one
+who is thoroughly determined.
+
+It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
+Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock she
+had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and expounded her
+idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and listless, for once
+was shaken into burning activity. She threw off her hat directly she got
+on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if it were a pulpit, and with
+her hands clasped round her knees poured out her plan, the long shafts
+of the setting sun bathing her in bright flames and making her more like
+Moses than ever,--if, that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as
+Anna-F., thought Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and
+beard.
+
+It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration was. It
+reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of course, a far
+more complicated matter than that little device of his, and would have
+to be thought out very carefully and approached very judiciously, but
+the wealth of detail she was already ready with immensely impressed him.
+She even had a name for the thing; and it was when he heard this name,
+when it flashed into her talk with the unpremeditatedness of an
+inspiration, that Mr. Twist became definitely enthusiastic.
+
+He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in his
+blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the name. He saw
+what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it on hoarding-on
+signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching the public attention
+and sticking there.
+
+The idea, of course, was fantastic, unconventional, definitely outside
+what his mother and that man Uncle Arthur would consider proper, but it
+was outside the standards of such people that life and fruitfulness and
+interest and joy began. He had escaped from the death-like grip of his
+mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself forcibly expulsed the Annas from
+his, and now that they were all so far away, instead of still timorously
+trying to go on living up to those distant sterile ideas why shouldn't
+they boldly go out into the light and colour that was waiting everywhere
+for the free of spirit?
+
+Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to be said
+for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with no
+perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm, himself taking
+the very opposite view as to the proper thing for the twins to do from
+the one he had taken in the night and on the rocks that morning. School?
+Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright shoots of everlastingness--this is
+what they looked like to him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting
+sun--in such a place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of
+the Annas, were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by
+giving a big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He
+himself would hover beneficently in the background over the undertaking.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's idea was to use Uncle Arthur's ÂŁ200 in renting one of
+the little wooden cottages that seemed to be plentiful, preferably one
+about five miles out in the country, make it look inside like an English
+cottage, all pewter and chintz and valances, make it look outside like
+the more innocent type of German wayside inn, with green tables and
+spreading trees, get a cook who would concentrate on cakes, real lovely
+ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and start an inn for tea alone
+that should become the fashion. It ought to be so arranged that it
+became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose would do the waiting. The prices
+would be very high, indeed exorbitant--this Mr. Twist regarded as
+another inspiration,--so that it should be a distinction, give people a
+_cachet_, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position
+in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see
+it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England
+always have, with its name on it.
+
+"If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial arms of
+Germany and England emblazoned on it," interrupted Mr. Twist, "just to
+show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality."
+
+"We might call it The Christopher and Columbus," interrupted Anna-Rose,
+who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on Anna-Felicitas's words.
+
+"Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer," said Mr. Twist, "and have a
+big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on it--"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "It is The Open Arms. That is its name."
+
+And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed his
+head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.
+
+He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it that not
+a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a name. The whole
+thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while Anna-Felicitas still
+talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay little assault on the
+purses of millionaires, in whom the district abounded judging from the
+beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day,--but a joke and a
+gay assault that would at the same time employ and support the Annas;
+solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day long had been regarding
+them much as one does a difficult mathematical problem.
+
+It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to Anna-Felicitas's
+many, when at last she paused for want of breath. The inn, he said,
+should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was over after the
+expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved by the Annas as
+interest on their invested capital--they listened with eager respect to
+these business-like expressions--would be handed over to the American
+Red Cross. "That," explained Mr. Twist, "would seal the inn as both
+respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to make
+it."
+
+And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or questioning
+in the general excitement, that he would have himself appointed their
+legal guardian.
+
+They didn't go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there was so
+much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had to suppress
+them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting through into
+their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the tables round them
+were obviously trying to hear, they went out once again on to the
+sea-front and walked up and down till late continuing the discussion,
+mostly simultaneously as regards the twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in
+with practical suggestions whenever they stopped to take breath.
+
+He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were going
+out one by one in the Cosmopolitan bedroom windows, where the virtuous
+rich, exhausted by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with
+boredom and respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he
+stayed alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the
+next day.
+
+There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be found, and
+the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed, must be secured
+at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan and preside over the
+twins until they all proceeded in due season to The Open Arms. She must
+be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled
+in managing a cook, business-like, intellectual, and obedient. Her
+feminine tact would enable her to appear to preside while she was in
+reality obeying. She must understand that she was there for the Annas,
+and that the Annas were not there for her. She must approach the
+situation in the spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country,
+who receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight
+of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr. Twist
+didn't want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those blessed little
+girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon in their hands of
+being able to give her notice, and it would considerably dim the
+reputation of The Open Arms if there were a too frequent departure from
+it of middle-aged ladies.
+
+Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as he
+paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself. That
+youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament, which leaped
+about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy lamb when the
+sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great fun; and the
+business side of him was feeling that it was not only great fun but
+probably an extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.
+
+The ignorant Annas--bless their little hearts, he thought, he who only
+the night before on that very spot had been calling them
+accursed--believed that their ÂŁ200 was easily going to do everything.
+This was lucky, for otherwise there would have been some thorny paths of
+argument and convincing to be got through before they would have allowed
+him to help finance the undertaking; probably they never would have, in
+their scrupulous independence. Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on
+the usefulness of his teapot. At last he was going to be able to do
+something, thanks to it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to
+France--that was duty. His lavishness to his mother--that again was
+duty. But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
+always longed for,--a chance to help and make happy, and be with and
+watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet kind
+women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....
+
+It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by Nature to
+be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through him, forgot and
+turned him into a man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later
+they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted of course,
+for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is
+_exactly_, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and
+there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.
+
+It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its
+beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green
+fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards
+the sea. Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed
+of, were close up to a thick grove of eucalyptus which continued to the
+foot of the mountains. It had an overrun little garden in front,
+separated from the fields by a riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few
+orange, and lemon, and peach trees on its west side, the survivors of
+what had once been intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees
+on the other, between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge
+wistaria clambered over its dilapidated face. Somebody had once planted
+syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of
+pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable
+screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road.
+
+It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being
+made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms. Every
+motorist coming up that road would see the signboard outside the pepper
+trees, and would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and
+pass through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas,
+and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher
+class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the
+house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A
+farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of confining
+himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was the only
+appropriate drink for a farmer the agent maintained--he was the
+president of the local Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League--he put his
+money as he earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a
+bit was done for.
+
+The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in every way
+except situation; but situation being the first consideration, Mr. Twist
+agreed with the twins, who had fallen in love with the neglected little
+house whose shabbiness was being so industriously hidden by roses, that
+this was the place, and a week later it and its garden had been
+bought--Mr. Twist didn't tell the twins he had bought it, in order to
+avoid argument, but it was manifestly the simple thing to do--and over
+and round and through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many
+diligent and determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the
+middle-aged lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the
+matter of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide
+what it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.
+"And everything so cheap too!" exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose ÂŁ200
+was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow's cruse.
+
+This belief, however, received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist,
+who was too busy now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy
+chintzes, and it was finally shattered when the various middle-aged
+ladies who responded to Mr. Twist's cry for help in the advertising
+columns of the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as
+salary more than the whole Twinkler capital.
+
+The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then once
+more were saved by an inspiration,--this time Anna-Rose's.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed, her face clearing. "We'll make it
+Co-operative."
+
+Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to think out a
+way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly with his money,
+for in spite of his going to be their guardian they remained difficult
+on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn't, of course, tell what in
+Anna-Rose's mind the word co-operative stood for, but felt confident
+that whatever it stood for he could manipulate it into covering his
+difficulties.
+
+"What is co-operative?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect for a
+sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that and seem to
+know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but it sat very
+loosely in her head, at no point touching anything else.
+
+"Haven't you heard of Co-operative Stores?" inquired Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes but--"
+
+"Well, then."
+
+"Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?" persisted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"One run on co-operative lines, of course," said Anna-Rose grandly.
+"Everybody pays for everything, so that nobody particular pays for
+anything."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I mean," said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be clearer,
+"it's when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes and things
+out of what you get."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas. "And will they wait quite quietly till we've
+got it?"
+
+"Of course, if we're all co-operative."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but knew of
+old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.
+
+"See here now," said Mr. Twist weightily, "if that isn't an idea. Only
+you've got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is profit-sharing.
+And as this undertaking is going to be a big success there will be big
+profits, and any amount of cakes and salaries will be paid for as glibly
+and easily as you can say your ABC."
+
+And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going to stay
+in California, and that he intended during this time to be book-keeper,
+secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides Advertiser-in-Chief,
+which was, he said, the most important post of all; and if they would be
+so good as to leave this side of it unquestioningly to him, who had had
+a business training, he would undertake that the Red Cross, American or
+British, whichever they decided to support, should profit handsomely.
+
+Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial backer of
+The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the twins admirable.
+It cleared away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought
+chintzes and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even
+ceased to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their
+background,--indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for it gave
+them confidence that she must at such a price be the right one, because
+nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the right one would have
+the face to demand so much.
+
+This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course,
+she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard--the Miss Twinklers blushed and
+felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn't, and indistinctly
+murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt,
+though, and wouldn't he do--had a great deal of very beautiful
+snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged. She
+firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist's spectacles dwelling on
+her hair, that she wasn't yet forty, and her one fear was that she
+mightn't be middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly
+mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and
+fingers and feet couldn't possibly be described as coming under that
+heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as
+having overshot the mark. But its turning white had nothing to do with
+age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over. No hair could have
+stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step. She had
+been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every
+aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn't want to make a
+mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she
+had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and
+the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute
+average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she
+wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too
+much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle--it was a real
+sacrifice--and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers. She
+was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.
+She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her
+own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right
+balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.
+Thus she attained poise,--she was one of the most poised women her
+friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both
+philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they were war ones.
+
+Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long
+time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause in which one could
+do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored
+the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady,
+that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been
+personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping. It seemed
+years. The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but
+Mrs. Bilton's spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way
+it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and
+without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have
+dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last,
+in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist
+politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after
+lunch, and they were dying for some food.
+
+The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he knew she
+was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that
+hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield
+through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of
+purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate. He would have
+settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to
+listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to listen; and when it became
+clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the
+end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as
+it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words
+and convey to her as quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life
+against the stream, that she was engaged. "Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,"--he
+called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton's rushing
+words, "engaged." She would be expected at the Cosmopolitan, swiftly
+continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly anxious to have her at the
+Cosmopolitan as the twins were particularly anxious not to,--for for the
+life of them they couldn't see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up
+before they started inhabiting the cottage,--within three days--
+
+"Mr. Twist, it can't be done," broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and
+mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist's head. "It
+absolutely--"
+
+"Within a week, then," he called out quickly, holding up the breaking of
+the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened the door. "And
+goodmorning Mrs. Bilton--my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we
+have to hurry away--"
+
+The cook was engaged that afternoon. Mr. Twist appeared to have mixed up
+the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying the
+luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room, he found
+them waiting for him in the passage outside the door looking excited.
+
+"The cook's come," whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards the
+shut door. "She's a man."
+
+"She's a Chinaman," whispered Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist was surprised. He thought he had an appointment with a
+woman,--a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a specialist in
+pastries and had immaculate references, but the Chinaman assured him
+that he hadn't, and that his appointment was with him alone, with him,
+Li Koo. In proof of it, he said, spreading out his hands, here he was.
+"We make cakies--li'l cakies--many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo,
+observing doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his
+person he whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit
+out of a hat, and offered them to the twins.
+
+They ate. He was engaged. It took five minutes.
+
+After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her appointment, an
+over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that she was the coloured
+lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman had written.
+
+Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been clever.
+Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his cakes. Besides,
+they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently out of flowers and
+honey and cream,--cakes which, combined with Mrs. Bilton's hair, would
+make the fortune of The Open Arms.
+
+The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in spite of
+the _douceur_ and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and she was so much
+disappointed that they could hear her being it out loud all the way
+along the passage and down the stairs, and the nature of her expression
+of her disappointment was such that Mr. Twist, as he tried by animated
+conversation to prevent it reaching the twins' ears, could only be
+thankful after all that Li Koo had been so clever. It did, however,
+reach the twins' ears, but they didn't turn a hair because of Uncle
+Arthur. They merely expressed surprise at its redness, seeing that it
+came out of somebody so black.
+
+Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to creep
+over the countryside. They crept along the roads where motorists were
+frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners and over hedges. They
+were taciturn advertisements, and just said three words in big,
+straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue ground:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+
+People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it must be
+the name of a book. They had better get it. Other people would have got
+it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat, and was probably a
+religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were usually religious. A few
+considered it sounded a little improper, and as though the book, far
+from being religious, would not be altogether nice; but only very proper
+people who distrusted everything, even arms took this view.
+
+After a week the same advertisements appeared with three lines added:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+    YES
+    BUT
+WHY? WHERE? WHAT?
+
+and then ten days after that came fresh ones:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+  WILL OPEN
+    WIDE
+
+On November 20th at Four P.M.
+
+N.B. WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.
+
+And while the countryside--an idle countryside, engaged almost wholly in
+holiday-making and glad of any new distraction--began to be interested
+and asked questions, Mr. Twist was working day and night at getting the
+thing ready.
+
+All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging, hurrying,
+criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing. His heart and soul
+and brain was in this, his business instincts and his soft domestic
+side. His brain, after working at top speed during the day with the
+architect, the painter and decorator, the furnisher, the garden expert,
+the plumbing expert, the electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate
+agent, and numberless other persons, during the night meditated and
+evolved advertisements. There was to be a continual stream week by week
+after the inn was opened of ingenious advertisements. Altogether Mr.
+Twist had his hands full.
+
+The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually being
+the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort. It was to be as like
+an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be got to be going on
+his own and the twins' recollections and the sensationally coloured
+Elizabethan pictures in the architect's portfolio. It didn't disturb Mr.
+Twist's unprejudiced American mind that an English inn embowered in
+heliotrope and arum lilies and eucalyptus trees would be odd and
+unnatural, and it wouldn't disturb anybody else there either. Were not
+Swiss mountain chalets to be found in the fertile plains along the
+Pacific, complete with fir trees specially imported and uprooted in
+their maturity and brought down with tons of their own earth attached to
+their roots and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss
+rocks, so that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves
+was the next a bit of frowning northern landscape? And were there not
+Italian villas dotted about also? But these looked happier and more at
+home than the chalets. And there were buildings too, like small Gothic
+cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a woman who has
+come to a party in the wrong clothes. But no matter. Nobody minded. So
+that an English inn added to this company, with a little German
+beer-garden--only there wasn't to be any beer--wouldn't cause the least
+surprise or discomfort to anybody.
+
+In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English inn was
+the signboard out in the road. With the best will in the world, and the
+liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist, the architect couldn't
+in three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient
+red-brick Elizabethan pothouse. He got a thatched roof on to it by a
+miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a real
+antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads in a San
+Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a basis for any
+wished-for hark-back later on when there was more time to the old girl's
+epoch--thus did he refer to Great Eliza and her spacious days--and
+meanwhile it gave the building, he alleged, a considerable air; but as
+this door in that fine climate was hooked open all day long it didn't
+disturb the gay, the almost jocose appearance of the place when
+everything was finished.
+
+Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very much as
+people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the opening, as he sat
+astride a green chair at the bottom of the little garden, where a hedge
+of sweetbriar beautifully separated the Twinkler domain from the rolling
+fields that lay between it and the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork;
+and the conclusion was forced upon him--reluctantly, for it was the last
+thing he had wanted The Open Arms to do--that the thing looked as if it
+were winking at him.
+
+Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head, staring,
+that was what it seemed to be doing. How was that? He studied it
+profoundly, his head on one side. Was it that it was so very gay? He
+hadn't meant it to be gay like that. He had intended a restrained and
+disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness, with those sweet
+maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest doves in and out among
+its tea-tables; but one small thing had been added to another small
+thing at their suggestion, each small thing taken separately apparently
+not mattering at all and here it was almost--he hoped it was only his
+imagination--winking at him. It looked a familiar little house; jocular;
+very open indeed about the arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Various things had happened, however, before this morning of the great
+day was reached, and Mr. Twist had had some harassing experiences.
+
+One of the first things he had done after the visit to Los Angeles was
+to take steps in the matter of the guardianship. He had written to Mrs.
+Bilton that he was the Miss Twinklers' guardian, though it was not at
+that moment true. It was clear, he thought, that it should be made true
+as quickly as possible, and he therefore sought out a lawyer in Acapulco
+the morning after the interview. This was not the same lawyer who did
+his estate business for him; Mr. Twist thought it best to have a
+separate one for more personal affairs.
+
+On hearing Mr. Twist's name announced, the lawyer greeted him as an old
+friend. He knew, of course, all about the teapot, for the Non-Trickler
+was as frequent in American families as the Bible and much more
+regularly used; but he also knew about the cottage at the foot of the
+hills, what it had cost--which was little--and what it would cost--which
+was enormous--before it was fit to live in. The only thing he didn't
+know was that it was to be used for anything except an ordinary
+_pied-Ă -terre_. He had heard, too, of the presence at the Cosmopolitan
+of the twins, and on this point, like the rest of Acapulco, was a little
+curious.
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been able to give
+any accurate description of the relationship of the Twinklers to Mr.
+Twist. Its paragraph announcing his arrival had been obliged merely to
+say, while awaiting more detailed information, that Mr. Edward A. Twist,
+the well-known Breakfast Table Benefactor and gifted inventor of the
+famous Non-Trickler Teapot, had arrived from New York and was staying at
+the Cosmopolitan Hotel with _entourage_; and the day after this the
+lawyer, who got about a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging
+climate, happening to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a
+friend, had seen the _entourage_.
+
+It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way upstairs,
+followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even without the boy and
+the canary it was a conspicuous object. The lawyer asked his friend who
+the cute little girls were, and was interested to hear he was beholding
+Mr. Edward A. Twist's _entourage_. His friend told him that opinion in
+the hotel was divided about the precise nature of this _entourage_ and
+its relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally
+supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by
+parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put to
+one of the young ladies' finishing schools in that agreeable district.
+The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the Cosmopolitan
+mind with the Twinklers. Houses were always being taken in that paradise
+by wealthy persons from unkinder climates. He would live in it three
+months in the year, thought the Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep
+in this way an occasional eye on his charges. The hotel guests regarded
+the Twinklers at this stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill,
+for they had up to then only been seen and not heard; and as one of
+their leading characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if
+anybody looked a little surprised, which everybody usually did quite
+early in conversation with them, this was at that moment, the delicate
+moment before Mrs. Bilton's arrival, fortunate.
+
+The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much as other
+honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly congratulating
+him, when he heard what he had come for, on his taste in wards.
+
+Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a matter of
+taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans, and he had been
+asked--he cleared his throat--asked by their relatives, by, in fact,
+their uncle in England, to take over their guardianship and see that
+they came to no harm.
+
+The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had wards at all
+they might as well be cute wards.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he had had no
+choice.
+
+The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued to look at him
+intelligently.
+
+Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as might
+have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the purchase
+of the cottage because this was a private and personal matter--
+
+"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with really almost too
+much intelligence.
+
+Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified, but the
+lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness was natural to
+him when visited for the first time by a new client, and that there
+should be frankness between lawyers and clients he considered essential.
+If, he held, the client wouldn't be frank, then the lawyer must be; and
+he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.
+
+Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the lawyer
+cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that the
+_entourage_ must have some very weak spots about it somewhere.
+
+"There's another way out of it of course, Mr. Twist," he said, when he
+had done rapidly describing the different steps to be taken. There were
+not many steps. The process of turning oneself into a guardian was
+surprisingly simple and swift.
+
+"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking very big and
+astonished. "Out of what?"
+
+"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't occurred to you. Upon
+my word now, I do wonder."
+
+"But I'm not in any little diff--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"The elder of these two girls, now--"
+
+"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for him to be sensible.
+
+"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist, "They're twins."
+
+"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our twins better
+than that over here. But come now--hasn't it occurred to you you might
+marry one of them, and so become quite naturally related to them both?"
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.
+
+"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly opening.
+
+"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in free-and-easiness.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his mouth together, "cut
+that line of joke out. I'm here on serious business. I haven't come to
+be facetious. Least of all about those children--"
+
+"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer pleasantly. "Children, you
+call them. How old are they? Seventeen? My wife was sixteen when we
+married. Oh quite so, quite so. Certainly. By all means. Well then,
+they're to be your wards. And you don't want it known how recently
+they've become your wards--"
+
+"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it. The relationship is
+to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I shall be dumb of course, but
+most things get into the press here. Let me see--" He pulled a sheet
+of paper towards him and took up his fountain pen. "Just oblige me with
+particulars. Date of birth. Place of birth. Parentage--"
+
+He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.
+
+None came.
+
+"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist presently, his forehead
+puckered.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen. "Quite so. Not known your
+young friends long enough yet."
+
+"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr. Twist stiffly, "but we
+happen to have found more alive topics of conversation than dates and
+parents."
+
+"Ah. Parents not alive."
+
+"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor children wouldn't
+be knocking about in a strange country."
+
+"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his pen across his
+forefinger.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly he remembered his
+mother's peculiar horror when he told her the girls he was throwing away
+his home life for and breaking her heart over were Germans. It had acted
+upon her like the last straw. And since then he had felt everywhere,
+with every one he talked to, in every newspaper he read, the same strong
+hostility to Germans, so much stronger than when he left America the
+year before.
+
+Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this matter of
+the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He suddenly saw
+innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The Open Arms if it was
+known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the guardianship idea than
+that such difficulties should arise. He hadn't thought; he hadn't had
+time properly to think; he had been so hustled and busy the last few
+days....
+
+"They come from England," he said, looking at the lawyer very straight.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer.
+
+Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely, by evading,
+he hoped to put off the day when their nationality would be known.
+Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known later on when
+everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved them for themselves
+and accordingly wouldn't care.
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I asked because I overheard
+them talking the other day as they passed through the hall of your
+hotel. They were talking about a canary. The r in the word seemed a
+little rough. Not quite English, Mr. Twist? Not quite American?"
+
+"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been a good deal abroad."
+
+"Quite so. At school, no doubt."
+
+He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
+forefinger.
+
+"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at Mr. Twist,--"could
+you let me have them soon? I tell you what. You're in a hurry to fix
+this. I'll call round to-night at the hotel, and get them direct from
+your young friends. Save time. And make me acquainted with a pair of
+charming girls."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held out his hand. "Not
+to-night. We're engaged to-night. To-morrow will be soon enough. I'll
+send round. I'll let you know. I believe I'm going to think it over a
+bit. There isn't any such terrible hurry, anyhow."
+
+"There isn't? I understood--"
+
+"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in the long
+run."
+
+"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well, I'm always
+at your service, at any time." And he shook hands heartily with Mr.
+Twist and politely opened the door for him.
+
+Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever that
+there was something very weak somewhere about the _entourage_.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he gone to
+the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the world that he
+was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would have believed it
+if he had come in one day and said it was settled, and nobody outside
+would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After all, you couldn't see
+if a man was a guardian or not just by looking at him. Well, he would do
+no more about it, it was much too difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs. Bilton
+go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges. Anyway he had
+all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had been to go to the
+lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however distinctly and
+frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the Twinkler guardian, that
+he wasn't.
+
+It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with clearness,
+that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told them that evening
+that owing to technical difficulties, with the details of which he
+wouldn't trouble them, the guardianship was off, were pleased.
+
+"We want to be bound to you," said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very soft and
+her voice very gentle, "only by ties of affection and gratitude."
+
+And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were going to
+say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable after all to get
+it out, and only said, rather inaudibly, "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the end of
+that week.
+
+It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing should occur
+at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud; yet it did get under
+a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too, before Mrs. Bilton's
+arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her snowy-haired respectability
+would have spread over the twins like a white whig. They would have been
+safe. His party would have been unassailable. But no; those Twinklers,
+in spite of his exhortation whenever he had a minute left to exhort in,
+couldn't, it seemed, refrain from twinkling,--the word in Mr. Twist's
+mind covered the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of
+language, their affable desire to explain.
+
+He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the excited
+interest they took in the progress of the inn made them happy to hang
+about it most of the time of the delicate and dangerous week before Mrs.
+Bilton came; but they too had things to do,--shopping in Acapulco
+choosing the sea-blue linen frocks and muslin caps and aprons in which
+they were to wait at tea, and buying the cushions and flower-pots and
+canary that came under the general heading, in Anna-Rose's speech, of
+feminine touches. So they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go
+without a qualm.
+
+"Mind and not say anything to anybody about this, won't you," he would
+say hastily, making a comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they
+went.
+
+"Of course we won't."
+
+"I meant, nobody is to know what it's really going to be. They're to
+think it's just a _pied-Ă -terre._ It would most ruin my advertisement
+scheme if they--"
+
+"But of _course_ we won't. Have we ever?" the twins would answer,
+looking very smug and sure of themselves.
+
+"No. Not yet. But--"
+
+And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with
+whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as he
+needs must, to God and their own discretion.
+
+Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic.
+But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton's arrival grew near, and nothing had
+happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr. Twist, from the pleasant
+looks of the other guests when the twins went in and out of the
+restaurant to meals, that nothing had happened. His heart grew lighter.
+On the last afternoon, when Mrs. Bilton was actually due next day, his
+heart was quite light, and he saw them leave him to go back and rest at
+the hotel, because they were tired by the accumulated standing about of
+the week, altogether unconcernedly.
+
+The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was, indeed,
+one of complete benevolence. They didn't even mind the canary. Who would
+not be indulgent towards two such sweet little girls and their pet bird,
+even if it did sing all day and most of the night without stopping? The
+Twinkler girls were like two little bits of snapped-off sunlight, or
+bits of white blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their shining
+youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently. But if the
+guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive. Everybody knew who
+Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers? Were they relations of
+his? _Protégées_? Charges?
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which information as
+to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in its embarrassment
+at being ignorant to take refuge in French, because French may so easily
+be supposed to mean something. The paper had little knowledge of, but
+much confidence in, French. _Entourage_ had seemed to it as good a word
+as any other, as indeed did _clientèle_. It had hesitated between the
+two, but finally chose _entourage_ because there happened to be no
+accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were amused at the
+word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable; and, until the
+last afternoon, only the manager didn't like the Twinklers. He didn't
+like them because of the canary. His sympathies had been alienated from
+the Miss Twinklers the moment he heard through the chambermaid that they
+had tied the heavy canary cage on to the hanging electric light in their
+bedroom. He said nothing, of course. One doesn't say anything if one is
+an hotel manager, until the unique and final moment when one says
+everything.
+
+On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton's advent the twins, tired of
+standing about for days at the cottage and in shops, appeared in the
+hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn't go to their room to
+rest because they didn't feel inclined for the canary, and they sat down
+very happily in the comfortable rocking-chairs with which the big hall
+abounded, and, propping their dusty feet on the lower bar of a small
+table, with friendly and interested eyes they observed the other guests.
+
+The other guests also observed them.
+
+It was the first time the _entourage_ had appeared without its
+companion, and the other guests were dying to know details about it. It
+hadn't been sitting in the hall five minutes before a genial old
+gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas's friendly eye and instantly drew up his
+chair.
+
+"Uncle gone off by himself to-day?" he asked; for he was of the party in
+the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked difference in profiles,
+to the relationship theory, and he made a shot at the relationship being
+that of uncle.
+
+"We haven't got an uncle nearer than England," said Anna-Felicitas
+affably.
+
+"And we only got him by accident," said Anna-Rose, equally affably.
+
+"It was an unfortunate accident," said Anna-Felicitas, considering her
+memories.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed. How was that?"
+
+"By the usual method, if an uncle isn't a blood uncle," said Anna-Rose.
+"We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married her. So we have
+to have him."
+
+"It was sheer bad luck," said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on that
+distant image.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Just bad luck. He might so easily have married
+some one else's aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs go and fall
+on ours."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated on this,
+with an affectionate eye--he was affectionate--resting in turn on each
+Anna.
+
+"Then Mr. Twist," he went on presently--"we all know him of course--a
+public benefactor--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose radiantly.
+
+"A boon to the breakfast-table--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. "He _is_ so
+pleasant at breakfast."
+
+"Then he--Mr. Twist--Teapot Twist we call him where I live--"
+
+"Teapot Twist?" said Anna-Rose. "I think that's irreverent."
+
+"Not at all. It's a pet name. A sign of our affection and gratitude.
+Then he isn't your uncle?"
+
+"We haven't got a real uncle nearer than heaven," said Anna-Felicitas,
+her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the image of Onkel Col.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated, on this
+too, his thirsty heart--he had a thirsty heart, and found difficulty in
+slaking it because of his wife--very indulgent toward the twins.
+
+Then he said: "That's a long way off."
+
+"What is?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The place your uncle's in."
+
+"Not too far really," said Anna-Felicitas softly. "He's safe there. He
+was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he got there at last
+through his own carelessness."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Sheer carelessness," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "How was that?"
+
+"Well, you see where we lived they didn't have electric light," began
+Anna-Rose, "and one night--the the night he went to heaven--he put the
+petroleum lamp--"
+
+And she was about to relate that dreadful story of Onkle Col's end
+which has already been described in these pages as unfit for anywhere
+but an appendix for time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas
+put out a beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't bear to remember Onkle Col's end. It had haunted
+her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping tongues of
+flame. And it wasn't only tongues of flame. There were circumstances
+connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the war had damped down
+lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She could at least now talk of
+him calmly, and also speculate with pleasure on the probable aspect of
+Onkle Col in glory, but she still couldn't bear to hear the details of
+his end.
+
+At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very upright
+and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce, came down
+the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old gentleman, crossed
+straight over and sat down briskly next to them smiling benevolently.
+
+"Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I," she said,
+pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and smiling at
+the group.
+
+She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next winter,
+but it being warm just then in California they were cotton socks because
+wool made her hands too hot.
+
+The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.
+
+"I'm just crazy to hear about you," said the brisk lady, knitting with
+incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over everybody. "You're
+fresh from Europe, aren't you? What say? Quite fresh? My, aren't you
+cute little things. Thinking of making a long stay in the States? What
+say? For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid.
+Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I guess
+they won't let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist looking after you
+meanwhile? What say? There isn't any meanwhile? Well, I don't quite--Mr.
+Twist your uncle, or cousin? What say? No relation at all? H'm, h'm. No
+relation at all, is he. Well, I guess he's an old friend of your
+parents, then. What say? They didn't know him? H'm, h'm. They didn't
+know him, didn't they. Well, I don't quite--What say? But you know him?
+Yes, yes, so I see. H'm, h'm. I don't quite--" Her needles flew in and
+out, and her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.
+
+Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old gentleman, who
+was gazing with thirsty appreciation at Anna-Felicitas, could struggle
+out of his chair.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the silence
+that had fallen on the lady, "Mr. Twist, regarded as a man, is old, but
+regarded as a friend he is new."
+
+"Brand new," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"H'm, h'm," said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and looking first
+at one twin and then at the other. "H'm, h'm, h'm. Brand new, is he.
+Well, I don't quite--" Her smiles had now to struggle with the
+uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening visibly.
+
+"Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?" asked the old gentleman, who
+was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent owing to his
+affectionate heart and his not being a lady.
+
+"We met Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of alluding
+to him, "on the steamer."
+
+"Not before? You didn't meet Mr. Twist before the steamer?" exclaimed
+the lady, the last of her smiles flickering out. "Not before the
+steamer, didn't you. Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen
+him. H'm, h'm, h'm."
+
+"We would have met him before if we could," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.
+
+"I should think so," said Anna-Rose. "It has been the great
+retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them."
+
+"Why now," said the old gentleman smiling, "I shouldn't call it so
+particularly late in them."
+
+But the knitting lady didn't smile at all, and sat up very straight and
+said "H'm, h'm, h'm" to her flashing needles as they flew in and out;
+for not only was she in doubt now about the cute little things, but she
+also regretted, on behalf of the old gentleman's wife who was a friend
+of hers, the alert interest of his manner. He sat there so very much
+awake. With his wife he never seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not
+seen him except with his wife.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that we're younger than we really
+are," Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.
+
+"Why no, I won't," he answered with a liveliness that deepened the
+knitting lady's regret on behalf of his wife. "When I run away you bet
+it won't be with an idea."
+
+And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he whom
+she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And wasn't what he
+had just said very like what the French call a _double entendre?_ She
+hadn't a husband herself, but if she had she would wish him to be at
+least as quiet when away from her as when with her, and at least as free
+from _double entendres_. At least. Really more. "H'm, h'm, h'm," she
+said, clicking her needles and looking first at the twins and then at
+the old gentleman.
+
+"Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you two?" she
+asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these remarkable and
+unusual lines of _badinage_.
+
+"Quite," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Once we had got him," amended Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the knitting lady, "so you say. H'm, h'm, h'm. Once you
+had got him. I don't quite--"
+
+"Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the old
+gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can say is I
+wish I had been on that boat."
+
+"Here's Mrs. Ridding," said the knitting lady quickly, relief in her
+voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. "My, Mrs. Ridding," she added
+when the lady drew within speaking distance, "you do look as though you
+needed a rest."
+
+Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had been
+approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out on the
+verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was the one
+drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so much recovering
+from; and the nicer they were the longer it took. The meals at the
+Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really all one's time was taken
+up getting over them.
+
+She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman
+had married her in her youth, when she hadn't had time to have had so
+many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone
+on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of
+his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife,
+and the older he got in years--his heart very awkwardly retained its
+early freshness--the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he
+got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman
+felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why should he have to be
+married to this old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old
+ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most
+appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious
+years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his
+heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and
+inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a
+chance pretty girl.
+
+He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
+impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.
+
+"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back again,"
+said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself down carefully
+and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair that didn't rock,
+and fanning herself with a small fan she carried on the end of a massive
+gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the twins while she spoke.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as young
+as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but with her eyes
+continuing to explore the twins.
+
+They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and Anna-Felicitas said
+politely, "Really?" and Anna-Rose, feeling she too ought to make some
+comment, said, "Isn't that very unusual?"
+
+Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she didn't know
+what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because then the other
+person launched into affirmations or denials with the reasons for them,
+and was quite happy.
+
+But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in silence.
+
+"Because," explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn't quite
+follow, "nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to remember
+it."
+
+Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It was
+quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was constantly
+reminding him. "Old stranger," he thought resentfully, as he carefully
+arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn't like her back. Why should
+he have to pay bills for putting expensive clothes on it? He didn't want
+to. It was all a dreadful mistake.
+
+"You're the Twinkler girls," said the old lady abruptly.
+
+They made polite gestures of agreement.
+
+The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight and
+saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every
+responsibility.
+
+"Where does your family come from?" was the next question.
+
+This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of Pomerania. They
+hadn't wanted to talk about Pomerania once since the war began; and they
+felt very distinctly in their bones that America, though she was a
+neutral, didn't like Germany any more than the belligerents did. It had
+been their intention to arrange together the line they would take if
+asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and so exciting
+since their arrival that they had forgotten to.
+
+Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all. Anna-Felicitas,
+therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved, plunged in.
+
+"Our family," she said gently, "can hardly be said to come so much as to
+have been."
+
+The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on Anna-Felicitas's
+face.
+
+The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the
+management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.
+
+"How's that?" asked the old lady, finally deciding that she hadn't
+understood.
+
+"It's extinct," said Anna-Felicitas. "Except us. That is, in the direct
+line."
+
+The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not being so
+numerous or so clear in America as in some other countries.
+
+"You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?" she asked.
+
+"The only ones left that matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "There are
+branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they're so
+unimportant that we don't know them."
+
+"Mere twigs," said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing
+Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose
+unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.
+
+"Haven't you got any parents?" asked the old lady.
+
+"We used to have," said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her darling
+mother was going to be asked about.
+
+The old gentleman gave a sudden chuckle. "Why yes," he said, forgetting
+his wife's presence for an instant, "I guess you had them once, or I
+don't see how--"
+
+"Albert," said his wife.
+
+"We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of Twinklers,"
+said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give Columbus a hand.
+"There's just us. And we--" she paused a moment, and then plunged--"we
+come from England."
+
+"Do you?" said the old lady. "Now I shouldn't have said that. I can't
+say just why, but I shouldn't. Should you, Miss Heap?"
+
+"I shouldn't say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap
+enigmatically, her needles flying.
+
+"It's because we've been abroad a great deal with our parents, I
+expect," said Anna-Rose rather quickly. "I daresay it has left its mark
+on us."
+
+"Everything leaves its mark on one," observed Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Ah," said the old lady. "I know what it is now. It's the foreign r.
+You've picked it up. Haven't they, Miss Heap."
+
+"I shouldn't like to say what they haven't picked up, Mrs. Ridding,"
+said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.
+
+"I'm afraid we have," said Anna-Rose, turning red. "We've been told that
+before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it up."
+
+And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one had picked
+it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.
+
+She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a moment.
+
+"Albert, if you talk so much you won't be able to sleep to-night," she
+said. "I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember we've got to be careful at
+our age," she added to the knitting lady.
+
+"You seem to be bothered by your memory," said Anna-Rose politely,
+addressing the old gentleman "Have you ever tried making notes on little
+bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I think you would
+probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do that. Or rather he
+made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them where he would see them."
+
+"Uncle Arthur," explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, "is an uncle
+of ours. The one," she said turning to the old gentleman, "we were just
+telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on marrying our aunt.
+Uncle, that is, by courtesy," she added, turning to the old lady, "not
+by blood."
+
+The old lady's eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one spoke,
+but she said nothing.
+
+"But Aunt Alice," said Anna-Rose, "is our genuine aunt. Well, I was
+going to tell you," she continued briskly, addressing the old gentleman.
+"There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every day and every
+week, but still he had to be reminded of them each time, and Aunt Alice
+had a whole set of the regular ones written out on bits of cardboard,
+and brought them out in turn. The Monday morning one was: Wind the
+Clock, and the Sunday morning one was: Take your Hot Bath, and the
+Saturday evening one was: Remember your Pill. And there was one brought
+in regularly every morning with his shaving water and stuck in his
+looking-glass: Put on your Abdominable Belt."
+
+The knitting needles paused an instant.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these recollections, her
+long limbs sunk in her chair in a position of great ease and comfort,
+"and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put on
+what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we wrote a
+slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table: Don't forget
+your Trousers."
+
+The knitting needles paused again.
+
+"But the results of that were dreadful," added Anna-Felicitas, her face
+sobering at the thought of them.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done it, in
+a fit of high spirits, though she never had high spirits--"
+
+"And wouldn't have been allowed to if she had," explained
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And he thought she was laughing at him," said Anna-Rose, "though we
+have never seen her laugh--"
+
+"And I don't believe he has either," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"So there was trouble, because he couldn't bear the idea of her laughing
+at him, and we had to confess."
+
+"But that didn't make it any better for Aunt Alice."
+
+"No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not keeping us
+stricter."
+
+"So," said Anna-Felicitas, "after the house had been steeped in a
+sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we were
+being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by writing a
+final one--a nice one--and leaving it on his plate at breakfast: Kiss
+your Wife. But instead of kissing her he--" She broke off, and then
+finished a little vaguely: "Oh well, he didn't."
+
+"Still," remarked Anna-Rose, "it must be pleasant not to be kissed by a
+husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to say, which is why
+we reminded him of it. He used to forget that more regularly than
+almost anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were
+just the opposite--the husband was for ever trying to kiss the person
+who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Like the people on Keats's Grecian Urn."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "And that sort of husband, must be even worse.
+
+"Oh, much worse," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the chairs. "I
+shall refrain altogether from husbands," she said placidly. "I shall
+take something that doesn't kiss."
+
+And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek resting on
+her hand, what he, or it, would look like.
+
+There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a creature
+Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it would have; and
+the other three were, as before, silent.
+
+Then the old lady said, "Albert," and put out her hand to be helped on
+to her feet.
+
+The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up. His
+face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty keeping back
+things he wanted to say.
+
+Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into her
+brocaded bag.
+
+"Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert," said the old lady.
+"It's time we went and had our nap."
+
+"I ain't going to," said the old gentleman suddenly.
+
+"What say? What ain't you going to, Albert?" said the old lady, turning
+her slow eyes round to him.
+
+"Nap," said the old gentleman, his face very red.
+
+It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay where he was
+and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap because somebody else
+wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an old lady, anyway? Never in
+his life had he wanted to nap with old ladies. It was all a dreadful
+mistake.
+
+"Albert," said his wife looking at him.
+
+He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.
+
+"You're quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap,
+walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit hers. "I should say
+it was essential that he should be kept quiet in the afternoons. You
+should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than he does. _Much_ more," she
+added significantly.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us--"
+
+This was the last the twins heard.
+
+They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady began to
+heave into activity, and they stood watching the three departing
+figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had all been in the
+middle of an interesting conversation?
+
+"Perhaps it's American to go away in the middle," remarked Anna-Rose,
+following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the lift.
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.
+
+The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two ladies had
+their backs to him while preceding him into the lift, turned quickly
+round on his heels and waved his hand before he himself went in.
+
+The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such goodwill
+that the old gentleman couldn't resist giving one more wave. He was
+seen doing it by the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as
+she let herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he
+mustn't exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his
+drops again.
+
+That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she had got
+her breath again, she said, "Albert, there's just one thing in the world
+I hate worse than a fool, and that's an old fool."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up from
+the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss Twinklers'
+canary wouldn't sing.
+
+"But it can't help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of door
+she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't either if
+you were a canary," she added, reasoning with the messenger.
+
+"It's just got to help it," said he.
+
+"But why shouldn't it sing?"
+
+"Complaints."
+
+"But it always has sung."
+
+"That is so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in this
+hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while. Take it
+easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think."
+
+"But it won't sit quiet and think."
+
+"Well, I've told you," he said, going away.
+
+This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the Cosmopolitan about
+a week before by the lawyer, and it had piercingly sung ever since. It
+sang, that is, as long as there was any light, real or artificial, to
+sing by. The boy who carried it from the shop for the twins said its
+cage was to be hung in a window in the sun, or it couldn't do itself
+justice. But electric light also enabled it to do itself justice, the
+twins discovered, and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too,
+singing as loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn't been a real
+canary at all, but something clever and American with a machine inside
+it.
+
+Secretly the twins didn't like it. Shocked at its loud behaviour, they
+had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but Anna-Rose was determined
+to have it at The Open Arms because of her conviction that no house
+showing the trail of a woman's hand was without a canary. That, and a
+workbag. She bought them both the same day. The workbag didn't matter,
+because it kept quiet; but the canary was a very big, very yellow bird,
+much bigger and yellower than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted
+civilization, and quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping
+quiet for a minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great
+many lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and
+similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they
+were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the
+principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the
+canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the
+biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.
+
+The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive from the
+first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent toward its owners,
+those cute little relations or charges or whatever they were of Teapot
+Twist's, that they bore its singing without complaint. But on the
+evening of the day the Annas had the interesting conversation with Mr.
+and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap, two definite complaints were lodged in
+the office, and one was from Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss
+Heap.
+
+The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the canary.
+Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its food,
+assiduously administered in quantities exceeding its capacity, littered
+the expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent
+up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss Heap,
+who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing the Twist
+and Twinkler party.
+
+She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one of the
+questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he could
+answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew about Mr.
+Twist, and it wasn't likely he would choose an hotel of so high a class
+to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers were anything but
+regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was joining the party
+shortly; and besides, there was the house being got ready, a permanent
+place of residence he gathered, in which the party would settle down,
+and experience had taught him that genuine illicitness was never
+permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn't really cared about the
+Twinklers since the canary came. He could fill the hotel very easily,
+and there was no need to accommodate people who spoilt carpets. Also,
+the moment the least doubt or question arose among his guests, all of
+whom he knew and most of whom came back regularly every year, as to the
+social or moral status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go.
+Miss Heap evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost
+impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs.
+Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in an
+hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like measles. The
+time had come for him to act.
+
+Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist's room as he
+was pulling on his boots, and cheerfully hoped he was bearing in mind
+what he had been told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged
+for the date of the month now arrived at.
+
+Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. "I'm not bearing it in mind," he
+said, "because you didn't tell me."
+
+"Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist," said the manager briskly. "It isn't likely
+I'd make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every year for this
+date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this one, and Mr. and
+Mrs.--"
+
+Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in silence. What
+he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and the twins had got
+under a cloud.
+
+The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they had made
+some friends. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned them. But it
+appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle Arthur. Well, damnable
+as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe enough as a topic of
+conversation. He was English. He was known to people in America like the
+Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now clear they must have said things
+besides that. Probably they had expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some
+point of view undesirable to American ears. The American ear was very
+susceptible. He hadn't been born in New England without becoming aware
+of that.
+
+Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got them into
+knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a big hotel. Yet
+lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn't that white-haired gasbag,
+Mrs. Bilton--Mr. Twist's thoughts were sometimes unjust--joined them
+sooner? Why had that shirker Dellogg died? He got his bootlaces
+hopelessly into knots.
+
+"I'd like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr. Twist," said
+the manager pleasantly. "Mrs. Hart of Boston is very--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning the full
+light of his big spectacles on to him, "I don't care a curse for Mrs.
+Hart of Boston."
+
+The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a curse with
+a lady. It wasn't American to do that. Mrs. Hart--
+
+"Damn Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of speech
+while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.
+
+The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist and the
+twins.
+
+"I don't know what you've been saying," he said in an extremely
+exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their grips,
+considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was singing, piled
+up round him.
+
+"Saying?" echoed the twins, their eyes very round.
+
+"But whatever it was you'd have done better to say something else.
+Confound that bird. Doesn't it ever stop screeching?"
+
+It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much confounded by
+what they considered his unjust severity that they didn't attempt to
+defend themselves, but sat looking at him with proud hurt eyes.
+
+By this time they both had become very fond of Mr. Twist, and
+accordingly he was able to hurt them. Anna-Rose, indeed, was so fond of
+him that she actually thought him handsome. She had boldly said so to
+the astonished Anna-Felicitas about a week before; and when
+Anna-Felicitas was silent, being unable to agree, Anna-Rose had heatedly
+explained that there was handsomeness, and there was the higher
+handsomeness, and that that was the one Mr. Twist had. It was infinitely
+better than mere handsomeness, said Anna-Rose--curly hair and a straight
+nose and the rest of the silly stuff--because it was real and lasting;
+and it was real and lasting because it lay in the play of the features
+and not in their exact position and shape.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't see that Mr. Twist's features played. She looked
+at him now in the taxi while he angrily stared out of the window, and
+even though he was evidently greatly stirred his features weren't
+playing. She didn't particularly want them to play. She was fond of and
+trusted Mr. Twist, and would never even have thought whether he had
+features or not ii Anna-Rose hadn't taken lately to talking so much
+about them. And she couldn't help remembering how this very Christopher,
+so voluble now on the higher handsomeness, had said on board the _St.
+Luke_ when first commenting on Mr. Twist that God must have got tired of
+making him by the time his head was reached. Well, Christopher had
+always been an idealist. When she was eleven she had violently loved the
+coachman. Anna-Felicitas hadn't ever violently loved anybody yet, and
+seeing Anna-Rose like this now about Mr. Twist made her wonder when she
+too was going to begin. Surely it was time. She hoped her inability to
+begin wasn't perhaps because she had no heart. Still, she couldn't begin
+if she didn't see anybody to begin on.
+
+She sat silent in the taxi, with Christopher equally silent beside her,
+both of them observing Mr. Twist through lowered eyelashes. Anna-Rose
+watched him with hurt and anxious eyes like a devoted dog who has been
+kicked without cause. Anna-Felicitas watched him in a more detached
+spirit. She had a real affection for him, but it was not, she was sure
+and rather regretted, an affection that would ever be likely to get the
+better of her reason. It wasn't because he was so old, of course, she
+thought, for one could love the oldest people, beginning with that
+standard example of age, the _liebe Gott_; it was because she liked him
+so much.
+
+How could one get sentimental over and love somebody one so thoroughly
+liked? The two things on reflection didn't seem to combine well. She was
+sure, for instance, that Aunt Alice had loved Uncle Arthur, amazing as
+it seemed, but she was equally sure she hadn't liked him. And look at
+the _liebe Gott_. One loves the _liebe Gott_, but it would be going too
+far, she thought, to say that one likes him.
+
+These were the reflections of Anna-Felicitas in the taxi, as she
+observed through her eyelashes the object of Anna-Rose's idealization.
+She envied Anna-Rose; for here she had been steadily expanding every day
+more and more like a flower under the influence of her own power of
+idealization. She used to sparkle and grow rosy like that for the
+coachman. Perhaps after all it didn't much matter what you loved, so
+long as you loved immensely. It was, perhaps, thought Anna-Felicitas
+approaching this subject with some caution and diffidence, the quantity
+of one's love that mattered rather than the quality of its object. Not
+that Mr. Twist wasn't of the very first quality, except to look at; but
+what after all were faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing
+else but face, so handsome was he and so without any other
+recommendation. He couldn't even drive; and her father had very soon
+kicked him out with the vigour and absence of hesitation peculiar to
+Junkers when it comes to kicking and Anna-Rose had wept all over her
+bread and butter at tea that day, and was understood to say that she
+knew at last what it must be like to be a widow.
+
+Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window with an
+angry and worried face, his attention irritably concentrated, so it
+seemed, on the objects passing in the road, very well knew he was being
+observed. He wouldn't, however, allow his eye to be caught. He wasn't
+going to become entangled at this juncture in argument with the Annas.
+He was hastily making up his mind, and there wasn't much time to do it
+in. He had had no explanation with the twins since the manager's visit
+to his room, and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders
+to them, told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got
+them safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
+were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train from
+Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind. The
+station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage in till
+she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the parcel-room as
+easily as he could their grips--neatly labelled, put away safely on a
+shelf till called for.
+
+Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at decisions. He
+would leave the twins in the waiting room at the station till Mrs.
+Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find lodgings for them and her.
+He himself would get a room in another and less critical hotel, and stay
+in it till the cottage was habitable. So would unassailable
+respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and
+cover it up.
+
+But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the _contretemps_ that had
+occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there;
+nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the twins to be happy,
+to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was
+their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything to make it
+difficult. And, jerkily, his angry thoughts pounced, as they so often
+did, on Uncle Arthur. Fancy kicking two little things like that out into
+the world, two little breakable things like that, made to be cherished
+and watched over. Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard
+the female as an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a
+charming setting and kept brightly free from dust. If Uncle Arthur had
+had a shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would
+have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling was
+against aliens. Never would a decent man have chucked them out.
+
+He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins. Their
+eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face. With the quick
+change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose hearts are warm,
+a flood of love for them gushed up within him and put out his anger.
+After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he, Edward A. Twist, never
+would have met these blessed children. He would now have been at Clark;
+leading lightless days; hopelessly involved with his mother.
+
+His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile. Instantly the two
+faces opposite cleared into something shining.
+
+"Oh dear," said Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, "it _is_
+refreshing when you leave off being cross."
+
+"We're fearfully sorry if we've said anything we oughtn't to have," said
+Anna-Rose, "and if you tell us what it is we won't say it again."
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know what it was," said Mr. Twist, in
+his usual kind voice. "I only see the results. And the results are that
+the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we've got to find lodgings."
+
+"Lodgings?"
+
+"Till we can move into the cottage. I'm going to put you and Mrs. Bilton
+in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some hotel."
+
+The twins stared at him a moment in silence. Then Anna-Rose said with
+sudden passion, "You're not."
+
+"How's that?" asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering by the
+arrival of the taxi at the station.
+
+There followed ten minutes' tangle and confusion, at the end of which
+the twins found themselves free of their grips and being piloted into
+the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.
+
+"There," he said. "You sit here quiet and good. I'll come back about one
+o'clock with sandwiches and candy for your dinner, and maybe a
+story-book or two. You mustn't leave this, do you hear? I'm going to
+hunt for those lodgings."
+
+And he was in the act of taking off his hat valedictorily when Anna-Rose
+again said with the same passion, "You're not."
+
+"Not what?" inquired Mr. Twist, pausing with his hat in mid-air.
+
+"Going to hunt for lodgings. We won't go to them."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas, with no passion but with an
+infinitely rock-like determination.
+
+"And pray--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"Go into lodgings alone with Mrs. Bilton?" interrupted Anna-Rose her
+face scarlet, her whole small body giving the impression of indignant
+feathers standing up on end. "While you're somewhere else? Away from us?
+We won't."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost placid
+quality in her determination, it was so final and so unshakable. "Would
+you?"
+
+"See here--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We won't see anywhere," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Would you," inquired Anna-Felicitas, again reasoning with him, "like
+being alone in lodgings with Mrs. Bilton?"
+
+"This is no time for conversation," said Mr. Twist, making for the door.
+"You've got to do what I think best on this occasion. And that's all
+about it."
+
+"We won't," repeated Anna-Rose, on the verge of those tears which always
+with her so quickly followed any sort of emotion.
+
+Mr. Twist paused on his way to the door. "Well now what the devil's the
+matter with lodgings?" he asked angrily.
+
+"It isn't the devil, it's Mrs. Bilton," said Anna-Felicitas. "Would you
+yourself like--"
+
+'But you've got to have Mrs. Bilton with you anyhow from to-day on."
+
+"But not unadulterated Mrs. Bilton. You were to have been with us too.
+We can't be drowned all by ourselves in Mrs. Bilton. _You_ wouldn't like
+it."
+
+"Of course I wouldn't. But it's only for a few days anyhow," said Mr.
+Twist, who had been quite unprepared for opposition to his very
+sensible arrangement.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if it's only a few days now before we can all
+squeeze into some part of the cottage. If you don't mind dust and noise
+and workmen about all day long."
+
+A light pierced the gloom that had gathered round Anna-Felicitas's soul.
+
+"We'll go into it to-day," she said firmly, "Why not? We can camp out.
+We can live in those little rooms at the back over the kitchen,--the
+ones you got ready for Li Koo. We'd be on the spot. We wouldn't mind
+anything. It would just be a picnic."
+
+"And we--we wouldn't be--sep--separated," said Anna-Rose, getting it out
+with a gasp.
+
+Mr. Twist stood looking at them.
+
+"Well, of all the--" he began, pushing his hat back. "Are you aware,"
+he went on more calmly, "that there are only two rooms over that
+kitchen, and that you and Mrs. Bilton will have to be all together in
+one of them?"
+
+"We don't mind that as long as you're in the other one," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course," suggested Anna-Felicitas, "if you were to happen to marry
+Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division."
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles stared enormously at her.
+
+"No, no," said Anna-Rose quickly. "Marriage is a sacred thing, and you
+can't just marry so as to be more comfortable."
+
+"I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I'd be more uncomfortable," remarked
+Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.
+
+He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he fixed his
+hat properly on his head and said, sobriety in his voice and manner,
+"Come along, then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at
+the rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've done
+with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits."
+
+"Oh, _don't_ say that," said the twins together, with all and more of
+their usual urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the rooms Li
+Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by the time Mrs.
+Bilton arrived. They were in an outbuilding at the back of the house,
+and consisted of a living-room with a cooking-stove in it, a bedroom
+behind it, and up a narrow and curly staircase a larger room running the
+whole length and width of the shanty. This sounds spacious, but it
+wasn't. The amount of length and width was small, and it was only just
+possible to get three camp-beds into it and a washstand. The beds nearly
+touched each other. Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going
+to be regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr.
+Twist's consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the room
+by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that there was
+lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the camp life so
+extensively practised in America, would thoroughly enjoy herself.
+
+They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making the
+little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains intended for the
+other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in great bunches of the
+pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled about everywhere in the
+garden and hiding the worst places in the rooms with them. Mr. Twist was
+in Acapulco most of the time, getting together the necessary temporary
+furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't miss him, for they
+were helped with zeal by the architect, the electrical expert, the
+garden expert and the chief plumber.
+
+These young men--they were all young, and very go-ahead--abandoned the
+main building that day to the undirected labours of the workmen they
+were supposed to control, and turned to on the shanty as soon as they
+realized what it was to be used for with a joyous energy that delighted
+the twins. They swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the
+windows and the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with
+the curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
+packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted various
+other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,--a rug or two, an easy
+chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They screwed in hooks behind the
+doors for clothes to be hung on, and they tied the canary to a
+neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it could be seen and hardly heard.
+The chief plumber found buckets and filled them with water, and the
+electrical expert rigged up a series of lanterns inside the shanty, even
+illuminating its tortuous staircase. There was much _badinage_, but as
+it was all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able
+to apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant smiles.
+But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so engaging that
+the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed when Mr. Twist came
+back.
+
+He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins, whom he
+had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with nothing at all to
+eat; and he found them looking particularly comfortable and
+well-nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they refused his
+sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.
+
+They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived, resting
+from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted with the four
+experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and the experts who were
+smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they were saying. It wouldn't
+have added to his comfort if he had heard, for they were giving the
+experts an account of their attempt to go and live with the Sacks, and
+interweaving with it some general reflections of a philosophical nature
+suggested by the Sack _ménage_. The experts were keenly interested, and
+everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly if
+the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't directing the
+workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist perceived a drawback to the
+twins living on the spot while the place was being finished; another
+drawback. He had perceived several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs.
+Bilton would soon be there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He
+positively longed for her.
+
+When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the boss,"
+they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up quickly and
+departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the Twinkler family,
+but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of the country to wink,
+and they wondered whether they ought to have winked back. The young men
+were certainly deserving of every friendliness in return for all they
+had done. They decided they would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could
+wink at them if necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.
+
+Mr. Twist took them with him when he went down to the station to meet
+the Los Angeles train. It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home
+by then, but the experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished
+at the amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
+they explained to him how very active the experts had been, whereupon he
+said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them they would go
+with him to the station.
+
+"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
+finishing touches if we stayed here."
+
+"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She supposed she
+was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she originally was, and
+all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was trying to tell her she
+wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say about her journey, and her
+last days among her friends, and all the pleasant new acquaintances she
+had made on the train, and her speech was so very close-knit, that he
+felt he was like a rabbit on the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running
+desperately up and down searching for a gap to get through. It was
+nothing short of amazing how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there
+wasn't at any moment the smallest pause in the flow.
+
+"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she wanted
+to say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.
+
+"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas, also a
+little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.
+
+"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought Mr. Twist,
+consoling himself.
+
+"This hotel we're going to seems to be located at some distance from
+the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages
+of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely--" and off she went
+again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
+explain at last.
+
+She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change in her
+fate.
+
+Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who has been
+deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a husband. She
+had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the Cosmopolitan, its bath,
+its soft bed and good food, with frank satisfaction. She thought it
+admirable that before embarking on active duties she should for a space
+rest luxuriously in an excellent hotel, with no care in regard to
+expense, and exchange ideas while she rested with the interesting people
+she would be sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles,
+Mr. Twist had explained to her by letter and under the seal of
+confidence the philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss
+Twinklers were engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the
+very considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
+unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days in
+Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular pleasure
+to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots for which she
+had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of grit; and she
+possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a redoubtable psyche,
+a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so that when, talking
+ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each other as they streamed
+through her brain to get first to the exit of her tongue, she caught her
+foot in some builder's débris carelessly left on the path up to the
+cottage and received in this way positively her first intimation that
+this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as a more timid female
+soul well might have, become alarmed and suppose that Mr. Twist, whom
+after all she didn't know, had brought her to this solitary place for
+purposes of assassination, but stopped firmly just where she was, and
+turning her head in the darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll
+stand right here till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to
+what's at my feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm
+not going any further with this promenade till I can say. And when
+you've thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
+information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming to."
+
+"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give it you
+ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your getting out of
+the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been trying to offer you
+my arm along the path--"
+
+"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.
+
+At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking up and
+down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the electrical
+expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be about.
+
+Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him first
+examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave it back to
+him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to whatever it is
+has been substituted without my knowledge for that hotel," she said; and
+while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal with her grips, she walked
+carefully toward the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
+immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's not
+having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from her
+itinerary.
+
+The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without further
+struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without answering to
+the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept her in the dark,
+raised her voice at last and called out, "But he wanted to--he wanted to
+all the time--you wouldn't listen--you wouldn't stop--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her tongue
+and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert had lit all
+the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its lighted windows
+gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no amount of light and
+bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its discomforts, its dreadful
+smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which the twins were accustomed to
+regard as precious, as things brought up lovingly in pots, were nothing
+but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's experienced Californian eye.
+
+She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet fell on the twins with
+a great sense of refreshment. Standing in the doorway--for Mrs. Bilton
+and the electrical expert between them filled up most of the
+kitchen--they heaved a deep sigh. "And see how beautiful the stars are,"
+whispered Anna-Felicitas in Anna-Rose's ear; she hadn't been able to see
+them before somehow, Mrs. Bilton's voice had so much ruffled the night.
+
+"Do you think she talks in her sleep?" Anna-Rose anxiously whispered
+back.
+
+But Mr. Twist, arriving with his hands full, was staggered to find Mrs.
+Bilton not talking. An icy fear seized his heart. She was going to
+refuse to stay with them. And she would be within her rights if she did,
+for certainly what she called her itinerary had promised her a
+first-rate hotel, in which she was to continue till a finished and
+comfortable house was stepped into.
+
+"I wish you'd say something," he said, plumping down the bags he was
+carrying on the kitchen floor.
+
+The twins from the doorway looked at him and then at each other in great
+surprise. Fancy _asking_ Mrs. Bilton to say something.
+
+"They would come," said Mr. Twist, resentfully, jerking his head toward
+the Annas in the doorway.
+
+"It's worse upstairs," he went on desperately as Mrs. Bilton still was
+dumb.
+
+"Worse upstairs?" cried the twins, as one woman.
+
+"It's perfect upstairs," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"It's like camping out without _being_ out," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"The only drawback is that there are rather a lot of beds in our room,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "but that of course"--she turned to Mr.
+Twist--"might easily be arranged--"
+
+"I wish you'd _say_ something, Mrs. Bilton," he interrupted quickly and
+loud.
+
+Mrs. Bilton drew a deep breath and looked round her. She looked round
+the room, and she looked up at the ceiling, which the upright feather in
+her hat was tickling, and she looked at the faces of the twins, lit
+flickeringly by the uncertain light of the lanterns. Then, woman of
+grit, wife who had never failed him of Bruce D. Bilton, widow who had
+remained poised and indomitable on a small income in a circle of
+well-off friends, she spoke; and she said:
+
+"Mr. Twist, I can't say what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt
+with information, but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to
+a plough and then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been
+good enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had
+to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good enough
+for me. You've conducted me to a shack instead of the hotel I was
+promised, and I await your explanation. Meanwhile, is there any supper?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was only a fortnight after this that the inn was ready to be opened,
+and it was only during the first days of this fortnight that the party
+in the shanty had to endure any serious discomfort. The twins didn't
+mind the physical discomfort at all; what they minded, and began to mind
+almost immediately, was the spiritual discomfort of being at such close
+quarters with Mrs. Bilton. They hardly noticed the physical side of that
+close association in such a lovely climate, where the whole of
+out-of-doors can be used as one's living-room; and their morning
+dressing, a difficult business in the shanty for anybody less young and
+more needing to be careful, was rather like the getting up of a dog
+after its night's sleep--they seemed just to shake themselves, and there
+they were.
+
+They got up before Mrs. Bilton, who was, however, always awake and
+talking to them while they dressed, and they went to bed before she did,
+though she came up with them after the first night and read aloud to
+them while they undressed; so that as regarded the mysteries of Mrs.
+Bilton's toilette they were not, after all, much in her way. It was like
+caravaning or camping out: you managed your movements and moments
+skilfully, and if you were Mrs. Bilton you had a curtain slung across
+your part of the room, in case your younger charges shouldn't always be
+asleep when they looked as if they were.
+
+Gradually one alleviation was added to another, and Mrs. Bilton forgot
+the rigours of the beginning. Li Koo arrived, for instance, fetched by a
+telegram, and under a tent in the eucalyptus grove at the back of the
+house set up an old iron stove and produced, with no apparent exertion,
+extraordinarily interesting and amusing food. He went into Acapulco at
+daylight every morning and did the marketing. He began almost
+immediately to do everything else in the way of housekeeping. He was
+exquisitely clean, and saw to it that the shanty matched him in
+cleanliness. To the surprise and gratification of the twins, who had
+supposed it would be their lot to go on doing the housework of the
+shanty, he took it over as a matter of course, dusting, sweeping, and
+tidying like a practised and very excellent housemaid. The only thing he
+refused to do was to touch the three beds in the upper chamber. "Me no
+make lady-beds," he said briefly.
+
+Li Koo's salary was enormous, but Mr. Twist, with a sound instinct,
+cared nothing what he paid so long as he got the right man. He was,
+indeed, much satisfied with his two employees, and congratulated himself
+on his luck. It is true in regard to Mrs. Bilton his satisfaction was
+rather of the sorrowful sort that a fresh ache in a different part of
+one's body from the first ache gives: it relieved him from one by
+substituting another. Mrs. Bilton overwhelmed him; but so had the Annas
+begun to. Her overwhelming, however, was different, and freed him from
+that other worse one. He felt safe now about the Annas, and after all
+there were parts of the building in which Mrs. Bilton wasn't. There was
+his bedroom, for instance. Thank God for bedrooms, thought Mr. Twist. He
+grew to love his. What a haven that poky and silent place was; what a
+blessing the conventions were, and the proprieties. Supposing
+civilization were so far advanced that people could no longer see the
+harm there is in a bedroom, what would have become of him? Mr. Twist
+could perfectly account for Bruce D. Bilton's death. It wasn't diabetes,
+as Mrs. Bilton said; it was just bedroom.
+
+Still, Mrs. Bilton was an undoubted find, and did immediately in those
+rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them with her in
+the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did to Mrs. Bilton
+they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the peculiar ease of the
+Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans approach with care. Never
+would they be able to tell her things about Uncle Arthur, the kind of
+things that had caused the Cosmopolitan to grow so suddenly cool. There
+was, most happily for this particular case, no arguing with Mrs. Bilton.
+The twins couldn't draw her out because she was already, as it were, so
+completely out. This was a great thing, Mr. Twist felt, and made up for
+any personal suffocation he had to bear; and when on the afternoon of
+Mrs. Bilton's first day the twins appeared without her in the main
+building in search of him, having obviously given her the slip, and said
+they were sorry to disturb him but they wanted his advice, for though
+they had been trying hard all day, remembering they were ladies and
+practically hostesses, they hadn't yet succeeded in saying anything at
+all to Mrs. Bilton and doubted whether they ever would, he merely smiled
+happily at them and said to Anna-Rose, "See how good comes out of
+evil"--a remark that they didn't like when they had had time to think
+over it.
+
+But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all alone all
+day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never left their
+side, regarding it as proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
+bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for ladies
+to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at apparently
+producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly acquainted with her
+young charges. This she did by imparting to them intimate and meticulous
+information about her own life, with the whole of the various uplifts,
+as she put it, her psyche had during its unfolding experienced. There
+was so much to tell about herself that she never got to inquiring about
+the twins. She knew they were orphans, and that this was a good work,
+and for the moment had no time for more.
+
+The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they
+didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she
+didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete
+experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr.
+Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and
+find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her
+details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton's thoughts
+remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins that he must have thought
+a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said
+for death.
+
+The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the Clouston-Sacks,
+and had never been separated for a single day during the whole of their
+married life. This seemed to the twins very strange, and needing a great
+deal of explanation. In order to get light thrown on it the first thing
+they wanted to find out was how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs.
+Bilton was deaf to their inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's
+last moments and obsequies--obsequies scheduled by her, she said, with
+so tender a regard for his memory that she insisted on a horse-drawn
+hearse instead of the more fashionable automobile conveyance, on the
+ground that a motor hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first
+speed--she washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the
+dreadfulness of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps
+on catching in everything--chairs, overhanging branches, and passers-by,
+including it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She inquired of the
+twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow in a wind. Chicago,
+she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton passed in its windiest
+month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down the streets on the daily
+constitutional she considered it her duty toward the living to take, for
+one owes it to one's friends to keep oneself fit and not give way, was
+blown hither and thither in the buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy
+climate, and her walk in the busier streets was a series of
+entanglements. Embarrassing entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately
+the persons she got caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often,
+indeed, seeming quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the
+situation, covered with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the
+wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above
+her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
+moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any
+one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once about the
+body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose side she had
+paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before it could be
+unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the track of a sensation,
+had caused her friends much painful if only short-lived amazement by
+coming out with huge equivocal headlines:
+
+WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER
+
+and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing her name
+in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends were a prey
+to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on discovering there
+was nothing in it after all.
+
+The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped round
+their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet, occasionally
+felt as they followed her narrative that they were somehow out of their
+depth and didn't quite understand. It was extraordinarily exasperating
+to them to be so completely muzzled. They were accustomed to elucidate
+points they didn't understand by immediate inquiry; they had a habit of
+asking for information, and then delivering comments on it.
+
+This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The ilex tree
+in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton shepherded them each
+morning and afternoon for the first three days, became to them, in spite
+of its beauty with the view from under its dark shade across the sunny
+fields to the sea and the delicate distant islands, a painful spot. The
+beauty all round them was under these conditions exasperating. Only once
+did Mrs. Bilton leave them, and that was the first afternoon, when they
+instantly fled to seek out Mr. Twist; and she only left them then--for
+it wasn't just her sense of duty that was strong, but also her dislike
+of being alone--because something unexpectedly gave way in the upper
+part of her dress, she being of a tight well-held-in figure, depending
+much on its buttons; and she had very hastily to go in search of a
+needle.
+
+After that they didn't see Mr. Twist alone for several days. They hardly
+indeed saw him at all. The only meal he shared with them was supper, and
+on finding the first evening that Mrs. Bilton read aloud to people after
+supper, he made the excuse of accounts to go through and went into his
+bedroom, repeating this each night.
+
+The twins watched him go with agonized eyes. They considered themselves
+deserted; shamefully abandoned to a miserable fate.
+
+"And it isn't as if he didn't _like_ reading aloud," whispered
+Anna-Rose, bewildered and indignant as she remembered the "Ode to
+Dooty."
+
+"Perhaps he's one of those people who only like it if they do it
+themselves," Anna-Felicitas whispered back, trying to explain his base
+behaviour.
+
+And while they whispered, Mrs. Bilton with great enjoyment
+declaimed--she had had a course of elocution lessons during Mr. Bilton's
+life so as to be able to place the best literature advantageously before
+him--the diary of a young girl written in prison. The young girl had
+been wrongfully incarcerated, Mrs. Bilton explained, and her pure soul
+only found release by the demise of her body. The twins hated the young
+girl from the first paragraph. She wrote her diary every day till her
+demise stopped her. As nothing happens in prisons that hasn't happened
+the day before, she could only write her reflections; and the twins
+hated her reflections, because they were so very like what in their
+secret moments of slush they were apt to reflect themselves. Their
+mother had had a horror of slush. There had been none anywhere about
+her; but it is in the air in Germany, in people's blood, everywhere; and
+though the twins, owing to the English part of them, had a horror of it
+too, there it was in them, and they knew it,--genuine German slush.
+
+They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they would
+write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings they had to
+listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why didn't he come out and
+save them? What happy, what glorious evenings they used to have at the
+Cosmopolitan, spent in intelligent conversation, in a decent give and
+take--not this button-holing business, this being got into a corner and
+held down; and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to
+get sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
+now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled with
+impatience in their seats beneath the _Ă©panchements_ of the young girl,
+the strangely and distressingly familiar _Ă©panchements_. The diary was
+published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs. Bilton
+on laying it down announced she would go on with it while they were
+dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs. Bilton was
+awake and crept out and hid it.
+
+But Li Koo found it and restored it.
+
+Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes the third
+morning, although the twins had hidden them most carefully. Their idea
+was that while she, rendered immobile, waited indoors, they would
+zealously look for them in all the places where they well knew that they
+weren't, and perhaps get some conversation with Mr. Twist.
+
+But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the fourth
+morning, when, unable any longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran
+into the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
+at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled ditch.
+
+In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out that they
+were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though the ditch had
+nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no comment. He never
+did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made
+the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the
+opposite reason. They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather
+like the _liebe Gott_,--he saw everything, knew everything, and said
+nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to
+pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo--again, they silently
+reflected, like the _liebe Gott_--had a different sense of geniality
+from theirs; he couldn't apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever
+wanted to. Their genialities faltered and froze on their lips.
+
+Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found hiding, and
+were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in this manner to
+conciliate Li Koo. Their dignity on the walk back to the shanty seemed
+painfully shrunk. They ought never to have condescended to do the
+childish things they had been doing during the last three days. If they
+hadn't been found out it would, of course, have remained a private
+matter between them and their Maker, and then one doesn't mind so much;
+but they had been found out, and by Li Koo, their own servant. It was
+intolerable. All the blood of all the Twinklers, Junkers from time
+immemorial and properly sensitive to humiliation, surged within them.
+They hadn't felt so naughty and so young for years. They were sure Li
+Koo didn't believe them about the ditch. They had a dreadful sensation
+of being led back to Mrs. Bilton by the ear.
+
+If only they could sack Mrs. Bilton!
+
+This thought, immense and startling, came to Anna-Rose, who far more
+than Anna-Felicitas resented being cut off from Mr. Twist, besides being
+more naturally impetuous; and as they walked in silence side by side,
+with Li Koo a little ahead of them, she turned her head and looked at
+Anna-Felicitas. "Let's give her notice," she murmured, under her breath.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was so much taken aback that she stopped in her walk and
+stared at Anna-Rose's flushed face.
+
+She too hardly breathed it. The suggestion seemed fantastic in its
+monstrousness. How could they give anybody so old, so sure of herself,
+so determined as Mrs. Bilton, notice?
+
+"Give her notice?" she repeated.
+
+A chill ran down Anna-Felicitas's spine. Give Mrs. Bilton notice! It was
+a great, a breath-taking idea, magnificent in its assertion of
+independence, of rights; but it needed, she felt, to be approached with
+caution. They had never given anybody notice in their lives, and they
+had always thought it must be a most painful thing to do--far, far worse
+than tipping. Uncle Arthur usedn't to mind it a bit; did it, indeed,
+with gusto. But Aunt Alice hadn't liked it at all, and came out in a
+cold perspiration and bewailed her lot to them and wished that people
+would behave and not place her in such a painful position.
+
+Mrs. Bilton couldn't be said not to have behaved. Quite the contrary.
+She had behaved too persistently; and they had to endure it the whole
+twenty-four hours. For Mrs. Bilton had no turn, it appeared, in spite
+of what she had said at Los Angeles, for solitary contemplation, and
+after the confusion of the first night, when once she had had time to
+envisage the situation thoroughly, as she said, she had found that to
+sit alone downstairs in the uncertain light of the lanterns while the
+twins went to bed and Mr. Twist wouldn't come out of his room, was not
+good for her psyche; so she had followed the twins upstairs, and
+continued to read the young girl's diary to them during their undressing
+and till the noises coming from their beds convinced her that it was
+useless to go on any longer. And that morning, the morning they hid in
+the ditch, she had even done this while they were getting up.
+
+"It isn't to be borne," said Anna-Rose under her breath, one eye on Li
+Koo's ear which, a little in front of her, seemed slightly slanted
+backward and sideways in the direction of her voice. "And why should it
+be? We're not in her power."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, also under her breath and also watching Li
+Koo's ear, "but it feels extraordinarily as if we were."
+
+"Yes. And that's intolerable. And it forces us to do silly baby things,
+wholly unsuited either to our age or our position. Who would have
+thought we'd ever hide from somebody in a ditch again!" Anna-Rose's
+voice was almost a sob at the humiliation.
+
+"It all comes from sleeping in the same room," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"Nobody can stand a thing that doesn't end at night either."
+
+"Of course they can't," said Anna-Rose. "It isn't fair. If you have to
+have a person all day you oughtn't to have to have the same person all
+night. Some one else should step in and relieve you then. Just as they
+do in hospitals."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Mr. Twist ought to. He ought to remove her
+forcibly from our room by marriage.
+
+"No he oughtn't," said Anna-Rose hastily, "because we can remove her
+ourselves by the simple process of giving her notice."
+
+"I don't believe it's simple," said Anna-Felicia again feeling a chill
+trickling down her spine.
+
+"Of course it is. We just go to her very politely and inform her that
+the engagement is terminated on a basis of mutual esteem but inflexible
+determination."
+
+"And suppose she doesn't stop talking enough to hear?"
+
+"Then we'll hand it to her in writing."
+
+The rest of the way they walked in silence, Anna-Rose with her chin
+thrust out in defiance, Anna-Felicitas dragging her feet along with a
+certain reluctance and doubt.
+
+Mrs. Bilton had finished her breakfast when they got back, having seen
+no sense in letting good food get cold, and was ready to sit and chat to
+them while they had theirs. She was so busy telling them what she had
+supposed they were probably doing, that she was unable to listen to
+their attempted account of what they had done. Thus they were saved from
+telling humiliating and youthful fibs; but they were also prevented, as
+by a wall of rock, from getting the speech through to her ear that
+Anna-Rose, trembling in spite of her defiance, had ready to launch at
+her. It was impossible to shout at Mrs. Bilton in the way Mr. Twist,
+when in extremity of necessity, had done. Ladies didn't shout;
+especially not when they were giving other ladies notice. Anna-Rose,
+who was quite cold and clammy at the prospect of her speech, couldn't
+help feeling relieved when breakfast was over and no opportunity for it
+had been given.
+
+"We'll write it," she whispered to Anna-Felicitas beneath the cover of a
+lively account Mrs. Bilton was giving them, _Ă  propos_ of their being
+late for breakfast, of the time it took her, after Mr. Bilton's passing,
+to get used to his unpunctuality at meals.
+
+That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily for
+years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly astonished her
+every day, she said. The clock struck, yet Mr. Bilton continued late. It
+was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way of being reminded of her loss.
+Each day she would instinctively expect; each day would come the stab of
+recollection. The vacancy these non-appearances had made in her life was
+beyond any words of hers. In fact she didn't possess such words, and
+doubted if the completest dictionary did either. Everything went just
+vacant, she said. No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as
+to be behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr.
+Bilton simultaneously appeared. No need any more to think of him when
+ordering meals. No need any more to eat the dish he had been so fond of
+and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked beans and bacon;
+yet she found herself ordering it continually after his departure, and
+choking memorially over the mouthfuls--"And people in Europe," cried Mrs
+Bilton, herself struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, "say that
+American women are incapable of passion!"
+
+"We'll write it," whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Write what?" asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, who as usual when Mrs.
+Bilton narrated her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and
+trying to get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.
+
+But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to the
+recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth pulled out.
+The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being free from it charmed
+and thrilled her, but how painful, how alarming was the prospect of
+pulling it out!
+
+There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton's talk, and that was
+that under its voluminous cover they could themselves whisper
+occasionally to each other. Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs. Bilton didn't
+notice that they whispered neither probably would she notice if she
+wrote. She therefore under Mrs. Bilton's very nose got a pencil and a
+piece of paper, and with many pauses and an unsteady hand wrote the
+following:
+
+DEAR MRS. BILTON--For some time past my sister and I have felt that we
+aren't suited to you, and if you don't mind would you mind regarding the
+engagement as terminated? We hope you won't think this abrupt, because
+it isn't really, for we seem to have lived ages since you came, and
+we've been thinking this over ripely ever since. And we hope you won't
+take it as anything personal either, because it isn't really. It's only
+that we feel we're unsuitable, and we're sure we'll go on getting more
+and more unsuitable. Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we're
+fearfully sorry. But on the other hand we're inflexible.--Yours
+affectionately,
+
+ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER
+
+With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the table
+under cover of the breakfast _débris_ to Anna-Felicitas, who read it
+with a beating heart and cautiously pushed it back.
+
+Anna-Felicitas felt sure Christopher was being terribly impetuous, and
+she felt sure she ought to stop her. But what a joy to be without Mrs.
+Bilton! The thought of going to bed in the placid sluggishness dear to
+her heart, without having to listen, to be attentive, to remember to be
+tidy because if she weren't there would be no room for Mrs. Bilton's
+things, was too much for her. Authority pursuing her into her bedroom
+was what she had found most difficult to bear. There must be respite.
+There must be intervals in every activity or endurance. Even the _liebe
+Gott_, otherwise so indefatigable, had felt this and arranged for the
+relaxation of Sundays.
+
+She pushed the letter back with a beating heart, and told herself that
+she couldn't and never had been able to stop Christopher when she was in
+this mood of her chin sticking out. What could she do in face of such a
+chin? And besides, Mrs. Bilton's friends must be missing her very much
+and ought to have her back. One should always live only with one's own
+sort of people. Every other way of living, Anna-Felicitas was sure even
+at this early stage of her existence, was bound to come to a bad end.
+One could be fond of almost anybody, she held, if they were somewhere
+else. Even of Uncle Arthur. Even he somehow seemed softened by distance.
+But for living-together purposes there was only one kind of people
+possible, and that was one's own kind. Unexpected and various were the
+exteriors of one's own kind and the places one found them in, but one
+always knew them. One felt comfortable with them at once; comfortable
+and placid. Whatever else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't
+feeling placid. That was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with
+her own kind. With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was
+talking on happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above
+manner as she pushed back the letter, instead of, as at the back of her
+mind she felt she ought to have done, tearing it up.
+
+Anna-Rose folded it and addressed it to Mrs. Bilton. Then she got up and
+held it out to her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas got up too, her inside feeling strangely unsteady and
+stirred round and round.
+
+"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs. Bilton,
+who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand without
+apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she was saying.
+
+"We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then said,
+making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who still stood
+hesitating.
+
+She slipped out; and Anna-Felicitas, suddenly panic-stricken lest she
+should be buttonholed all by herself fled after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was to be the
+tea-room. It was full of scattered fittings and the noise of hammering,
+but even so anybody could see what a delightful place it would presently
+turn into.
+
+The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days. Those were the days,
+those consecutive days of downpour that came in the winter and lasted
+without interruption for a fortnight at a time, when visitors in the
+hotels were bored beyond expression and ready to welcome anything that
+could distract them for an hour from the dripping of the rain on the
+windows. Bridge was their one solace, and they played it from after
+breakfast till bedtime; but on the fourth or fifth day of doing this,
+just the mere steady sitting became grievous to them. They ached with
+weariness. They wilted with boredom. All their natural kindness got
+damped out of them, and they were cross. Even when they won they were
+cross, and when they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of
+course, have been in California at all at such a time if it were
+possible to know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never
+did know, and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond
+Christmas. And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and
+warmth to be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
+blizzards.
+
+Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon for
+these victims of the rain. He would come to their rescue. He made up
+his mind, clear and firm on such matters, that it should become the
+habit of these unhappy people during the bad weather to motor out to The
+Open Arms for tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way
+made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without
+being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
+made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a
+welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes, at all
+times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful. Li Koo had a
+secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite
+peculiar and original charm, and these were to be reserved for the rainy
+season only, and be made its specialty. They were to become known and
+endeared to the public under the brief designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr.
+Twist felt there was something thoroughly American about this
+name--plain and business-like, and attractively in contrast to the
+subtle, the almost immoral exquisiteness of the article itself. This
+cake had been one of those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his
+garments the day in Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the
+one of his party who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he
+decided to call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.
+
+The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace so as to
+be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in their shirt
+sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs. There was such a
+hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the latticed windows, and
+such a crackling being made by the logs Mr. Twist and the architect kept
+on throwing on the fire, that only from the sudden broad smile on the
+architect's face as he turned to pick up another log did Mr. Twist
+realize that something that hadn't to do with work was happening behind
+his back.
+
+He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him. They
+seemed in a hurry.
+
+"Hello," he called out.
+
+They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick their way
+among the obstacles in their path. They appeared to be much perturbed.
+What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton? He soon knew.
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," panted Anna-Rose as soon as she got
+near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the prevailing noise.
+
+Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet, her eyes
+looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.
+
+"We simply can't stand it any longer," she went on as Mr. Twist only
+stared at her.
+
+"And you wouldn't either if you were us," she continued, the more
+passionately as he still didn't say anything.
+
+"Of course," said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her heart
+was full of doubt, "it's your fault really. We could have borne it if we
+hadn't had to have her at night."
+
+"Come outside," said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led on to
+the verandah.
+
+They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement, Anna-Felicitas
+trying to persuade herself that they had acted in the only way
+consistent with real wisdom.
+
+The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them and
+smiling all by himself. There was something about the Twinklers that
+lightened his heart whenever he caught sight of them. He and his fellow
+experts had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came
+of developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them on
+their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and respectful
+familiarity as The Cutes.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and led the
+twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced them,
+"perhaps you'll tell me exactly what you've done."
+
+"You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done," said
+Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she would go.
+She couldn't but perceive that the excess of Christopher's emotion was
+putting her at a disadvantage in the matter of dignity.
+
+"I can guess pretty much what she has done," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You can't--you can't," burst out Anna-Rose. "Nobody could--nobody ever
+could--who hadn't been with her day and night."
+
+"She's just been Mrs. Bilton," said Mr. Twist, lighting a cigarette to
+give himself an appearance of calm.
+
+"Exactly," said Anna-Felicitas. "So you won't be surprised at our having
+just been Twinklers."
+
+"Oh Lord," groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, "oh, Lord."
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," continued Anna-Felicitas, making a
+gesture of great dignity with her hand, "because we find with regret
+that she and we are incompatible."
+
+"Was she aware that you were giving it her?" asked Mr. Twist,
+endeavouring to keep calm.
+
+"We wrote it."
+
+"Has she read it?"
+
+"We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should have an
+opportunity of quietly considering it."
+
+"You shouldn't have left us alone with her like this," burst out
+Anna-Rose again, "you shouldn't really. It was cruel, it was wrong,
+leaving us high and dry--never seeing you--leaving us to be talked to
+day and night--to be read to--would _you_ like to be read to while
+you're undressing by somebody still in all their clothes? We've never
+been able to open our mouths. We've been taken into the field for our
+airing and brought in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams,
+or flocks and herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape. We
+haven't had a minute to ourselves day or night. There hasn't been a
+single exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we're grown
+up. We've been followed, watched, talked to--oh, oh, how awful it has
+been! Oh, oh, how awful! Forced to be dumb for days--losing our power of
+speech--"
+
+"Anna-Rose Twinkler," interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, "you haven't lost
+it. And you not only haven't, but that power of yours has increased
+tenfold during its days of rest."
+
+He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had already heard
+several times since they landed in America. Each time it took them
+aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds as the kindest and
+gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings of his each time
+astonished them.
+
+On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished. Anna-Felicitas
+all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the depth of her heart
+that Mr. Twist wouldn't like what they had done. He would be upset, she
+felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search of him. He
+would be, she was afraid very much upset. And so he was. He was appalled
+by what had happened. Lose Mrs. Bilton? Lose the very foundation of the
+party's respectability? And how could he find somebody else at the
+eleventh hour and where and how could the twins and he live,
+unchaperoned as they would be, till he had? What a peculiar talent these
+Annas had for getting themselves and him into impossible situations! Of
+course at their age they ought to be safe under the wing of a wise and
+unusually determined mother. Well, poor little wretches, they couldn't
+help not being under it; but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to
+them--faced up to her husband, and stuck to them.
+
+"I suppose," he said angrily, "being you and not being able to see
+farther than the ends of your noses, you haven't got any sort of an idea
+of what you've done."
+
+"We--"
+
+"She--"
+
+"And I don't suppose it's much use my trying to explain, either. Hasn't
+it ever occurred to you, though I'd be real grateful if you'd give me
+information on this point--that maybe you don't know everything?"
+
+"She--"
+
+"We--"
+
+"And that till you do know everything, which I take it won't be for some
+time yet, judging from the samples I've had of your perspicacity, you'd
+do well not to act without first asking some one's advice? Mine, for
+instance?"
+
+"She--" began Anna-Rose again; but her voice was trembling, for she
+couldn't bear Mr. Twist's anger. She was too fond of him. When he looked
+at her like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and
+she could only look back at him piteously.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in
+adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher's feelings put
+her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist's attention from her by saying
+with gentleness, "But why add to the general discomfort by being
+bitter?"
+
+"Bitter!" cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do you dispute that God made us?" inquired Anna-Felicitas, placing
+herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist's wrathful
+concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young person's
+emotion.
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist turning on her, "I'm not going to argue with
+you--not about _anything_. Least of all about God."
+
+"I only wanted to point out to you," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, "that
+that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little use in
+being bitter with us because we're not different. In regard to anything
+fundamental about us that you deplore I'm afraid we must refer you to
+Providence."
+
+"Say," said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this reasoning but,
+as Anna-Felicitas couldn't but notice, quite the contrary, "used you to
+talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of yours? Because if you did, upon
+my word I don't wonder--"
+
+But what Mr. Twist didn't wonder was fortunately concealed from the
+twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who, emerging
+from the shades of the verandah and looking about her, caught sight of
+them and came rapidly down the garden.
+
+There was no escape.
+
+They watched her bearing down on them without a word. It was a most
+unpleasant moment. Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give himself a
+countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton would probably say
+was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn't help shaking a little.
+Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink behind him. Anna-Felicitas
+stood motionless, awaiting the deluge. All Mr. Twist's sympathies were
+with Mrs. Bilton, and he was ashamed that she should have been treated
+so. He felt that nothing she could say would be severe enough, and he
+was extraordinarily angry with the Annas. Yet when he saw the injured
+lady bearing down on them, if he only could he would have picked up an
+Anna under each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did
+he prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this
+moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn't.
+
+There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching figure, and
+the letter in Mrs. Bilton's hand bobbed up and down as she walked, white
+and conspicuous in the sun against her black dress. What was their
+amazement to see as she drew nearer that she was looking just as
+pleasant as ever. They stared at her with mouths falling open. Was it
+possible, thought the twins, that she was longing to leave but hadn't
+liked to say so, and the letter had come as a release? Was it possible,
+thought Mr. Twist with a leap of hope in his heart, that she was taking
+the letter from a non-serious point of view?
+
+And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right. For Mrs. Bilton, woman
+of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of allowing herself to be
+dislodged or even discouraged. This was the opening sentence of her
+remarks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst. Had she not
+explained the first night that she was one who, having put her hand to
+the plough, held on to it however lively the movements of the plough
+might be? She would not conceal from them, she said, that even Mr. Bilton
+had not, especially, at first, been entirely without such movements. He
+had settled down, however on finding he could trust her to know better
+than he did what he wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And
+the result had been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he
+was alive, or a more devoted widow after he wasn't. She had told him one
+day, when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was
+conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills, and he
+said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could see she
+would be left a widow and that was about all she would be left--she had
+told him that if it was any comfort to him to know it, he might rely on
+it that he would have the most devoted widow any man had ever had, and
+he said--Mr. Bilton had odd fancies, especially toward the end--that a
+widow was the one thing a man never could have because he wasn't there
+by the time he had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies. And if she
+had managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he
+being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that encountering
+odd fancies in two very young and unformed girls--oh, it wasn't their
+fault that they were unformed, it was merely because they hadn't had
+time enough yet--she would be unable, experienced as she was, to steer
+among them too? Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb
+animals always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist,"
+Mrs. Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on Anna-Rose's
+shoulder as a more convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young
+charges aren't going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I
+don't undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting
+affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days in
+intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh young
+chatter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening day.
+
+Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear Mrs.
+Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how near his
+shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his meals with
+the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He was immensely
+grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He esteemed and
+respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then and there at the end
+of her speech, and told her he did, and the least he could do after that
+was to come to dinner. But this very genuine appreciation didn't prevent
+his finding her at close quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now
+only called temperately "a little much," and the result was a really
+frantic hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four
+days of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to
+finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense of
+having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had considerably
+slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs. Bilton they hurried up
+again, and after forty-eight of her the speed was headlong. At the end
+of forty-eight hours it seemed to Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he
+had ever known that he should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere
+with space in it, and sound-proof walls--lots of walls--and long
+passages between people's doors; and before the rooms in the inn were
+anything like finished he insisted on moving in.
+
+"You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he said to the
+twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you must just take
+off your coats to it and not mind."
+
+Mind? Turn to? It was what they were languishing for. It was what, in
+the arid hours under the ilex tree, collected so ignominiously round
+Mrs. Bilton's knee they had been panting for, like thirsty dogs with
+their tongues out. And such is the peculiar blessedness of work that
+instantly, the moment there was any to be done, everything that was
+tangled and irritating fell quite naturally into its proper place.
+Magically life straightened itself out smooth, and left off being
+difficult. _Arbeit und Liebe_, as their mother used to say, dropping
+into German whenever a sentence seemed to her to sound better that
+way--_Arbeit und Liebe_: these were the two great things of life; the
+two great angels, as she assured them, under whose spread-out wings lay
+happiness.
+
+With a hungry zeal, with the violent energy of reaction, the Annas fell
+upon work. They started unpacking. All the things they had bought in
+Acapulco, the linen, the china, the teaspoons, the feminine touches that
+had been piled up waiting in the barn, were pulled out and undone and
+carried indoors. They sorted, and they counted, and they arranged on
+shelves. Anna-Rose flew in and out with her arms full. Anna-Felicitas
+slouched zealously after her, her arms full too when she started, but
+not nearly so full when she got there owing to the way things had of
+slipping through them and dropping on to the floor. They were in a
+blissful, busy confusion. Their faces shone with heat and happiness.
+Here was liberty; here was freedom; here was true dignity--_Arbeit und
+Liebe_....
+
+When Mr. Twist, as he did whenever he could, came and looked on for a
+moment in his shirt sleeves, with his hat on the back of his head and
+his big, benevolent spectacles so kind, Anna-Rose's cup seemed full. Her
+dimple never disappeared for a moment. It was there all day long now;
+and even when she was asleep it still lurked in the corner of her mouth.
+_Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Immense was the reaction of self-respect that took hold of the twins.
+They couldn't believe they were the people who had been so crude and
+ill-conditioned as to hide Mrs. Bilton's belongings, and actually
+finally to hide themselves. How absurd. How like children. How
+unpardonably undignified. Anna-Rose held forth volubly to this effect
+while she arranged the china, and Anna-Felicitas listened assentingly,
+with a kind of grave, ashamed sheepishness.
+
+The result of this reaction was that Mrs. Bilton, whose pressure on them
+was relieved by the necessity of her too being in several places at
+once, and who was displaying her customary grit, now became the definite
+object of their courtesy. They were the mistresses of a house, they
+began to realize, and as such owed her every consideration. This bland
+attitude was greatly helped by their not having to sleep with her any
+more, and they found that the mere coming fresh to her each morning made
+them feel polite and well-disposed. Besides, they were thoroughly and
+finally grown-up now, Anna-Rose declared--never, never to lapse again.
+They had had their lesson, she said, gone through a crisis, and done
+that which Aunt Alice used to say people did after severe trials, aged
+considerably.
+
+Anna-Felicitas wasn't quite so sure. Her own recent behaviour had
+shaken and shocked her too much. Who would have thought she would have
+gone like that? Gone all to pieces, back to sheer naughtiness, on the
+first provocation? It was quite easy, she reflected while she worked,
+and cups kept on detaching themselves mysteriously from her fingers, and
+tables tumbling over at her approach, to be polite and considerate to
+somebody you saw very little of, and even, as she found herself doing,
+to get fond of the person; but suppose circumstances threw one again
+into the person's continual society, made one again have to sleep in the
+same room? Anna-Felicitas doubted whether it would be possible for her
+to stand such a test, in spite of her earnest desire to behave; she
+doubted, indeed, whether anybody ever did stand that test successfully.
+Look at husbands.
+
+Meanwhile there seemed no likelihood of its being applied again. Each of
+them had now a separate bedroom, and Mrs. Bilton had, in the lavish
+American fashion, her own bathroom, so that even at that point there was
+no collision. The twins' rooms were connected by a bathroom all to
+themselves, with no other door into it except the doors from their
+bedrooms, and Mr. Twist, who dwelt discreetly at the other end of the
+house, also had a bathroom of his own. It seemed as natural for American
+architects to drop bathrooms about, thought Anna-Rose, as for the little
+clouds in the psalms to drop fatness. They shed them just as easily, and
+the results were just as refreshing. To persons hailing from Pomerania,
+a place arid of bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to
+have one's own. Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from
+childhood to these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out
+to him, he hadn't lived in Pomerania, where nothing stood between you
+and being dirty except the pump.
+
+But it wasn't only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by Mr.
+Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the most
+wonderful magic little house in the world: the intelligent American
+spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever, simple devices
+for saving labour--so full that it almost seemed to the Annas as if it
+would get up quite unaided at six every morning and do itself; and they
+were sure that if the smallest encouragement were given to the
+kitchen-stove it would cook and dish up a dinner all alone. Everything
+in the house was on these lines. The arrangements for serving
+innumerable teas with ease were admirable. They were marvels of economy
+and clever thinking-out. The architect was surprised at the attention
+and thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the future
+housekeeping. "You seem sheer crazy on teas," he remarked; to which Mr.
+Twist merely replied that he was.
+
+The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy and
+promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a happy
+betrothal. They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in April, those
+enchanting days she had always loved the best, when the bees get busy
+for the first time, and suddenly there are wallflowers and a flowering
+currant bush and the sound of the lawn being mown and the smell of cut
+grass. How one's heart leaps up to greet them, she thought. What a
+thrill of delight rushes through one's body, of new hope, of delicious
+expectation.
+
+Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech seemed to
+feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be heard in the
+evenings singing strange songs among his pots. And what he was singing,
+only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of the two
+white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose eyes were
+deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the shores of his
+father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive and inarticulate, in
+secret seethed with passion. Which was why his cakes were so wonderful.
+He had to express himself somehow.
+
+But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr. Twist and
+his party--he always thought of them as his party--were innocently and
+happily busy full of hopefulness and mutual goodwill, down in the town
+and in the houses scattered over the lovely country round the town,
+people were talking. Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was
+doing up, for the daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had
+bought the long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt's,
+and was converting it into a little _ventre-Ă -terre_ for his widowed
+mother--launching once more into French, as though there were something
+about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language. Everybody knew this, and it
+was perfectly natural for a well-off Easterner to have a little place
+out West, even if the choice of the little place was whimsical. But what
+about the Miss Twinklers? Who and what were they? And also, Why?
+
+There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party from the
+Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time much had been
+done in the way of conjecture. The first waves of it flowed out from the
+Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by waves flowing in from the
+town. Good-natured curiosity gave place to excited curiosity when the
+rumour got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to ask Mr.
+Twist to take his _entourage_ somewhere else. Was it possible the cute
+little girls, so well known by sight on Main Street going from shop to
+shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed almost unbelievable, but
+luckily nothing was really unbelievable.
+
+The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest after
+the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen from the
+local press, was not to be drawn. His reserve was most interesting. Miss
+Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently enigmatic. Her silence was
+most exciting. On the other hand, Mrs. Ridding's attitude was merely one
+of contempt, dismissing the Twinklers with a heavy gesture. Why think or
+trouble about a pair of chits like that? They had gone; Albert was quiet
+again; and wasn't that the gong for dinner?
+
+But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist _entourage_ presently
+were superseded by much graver and more perturbing doubts. Nobody knew
+when exactly this development took place. Acapulco had been enjoying the
+first set of doubts. There was no denying that doubts about somebody
+else's morals were not unpleasant. They did give one, if one examined
+one's sensations carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add
+the kick to lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time
+like the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the
+life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat. But from the doubts that
+presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got nothing
+but genuine discomfort and uneasiness. Nobody knew how or when they
+started. Quite suddenly they were there.
+
+This was in the November before America's coming into the war. The
+feeling in Acapulco was violently anti-German. The great majority of the
+inhabitants, permanent and temporary, were deeply concerned at the
+conduct of their country in not having, immediately after the torpedoing
+of the _Lusitania_, joined the Allies. They found it difficult to
+understand, and were puzzled and suspicious, as well as humiliated in
+their national pride. Germans who lived in the neighbourhood, or who
+came across from the East for the winter, were politely tolerated, but
+the attitude toward them was one of growing watchfulness and distrust;
+and week by week the whispered stories of spies and gun-emplacements and
+secret stores of arms in these people's cellars or back gardens, grew
+more insistent and detailed. There certainly had been at least one spy,
+a real authentic one, afterward shot in England, who had stayed near-by,
+and the nerves of the inhabitants had that jumpiness on this subject
+with which the inhabitants of other countries have long been familiar.
+All the customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary
+mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered speeds
+along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the customary signalling
+out to sea was observed and passionately sworn to by otherwise calm
+people. It was possible, the inhabitants found, to believe with ease
+things about Germans--those who were having difficulty with religion
+wished it were equally easy to believe things about God. There was
+nothing Germans wouldn't think of in the way of plotting, and nothing
+they wouldn't, having thought of it, carry out with deadly thoroughness
+and patience.
+
+And into this uneasy hotbed of readiness to believe the worst, arrived
+the Twinkler twins, rolling their r's about.
+
+It needed but a few inquiries to discover that none of the young
+ladies' schools in the neighbourhood had been approached on their
+behalf; hardly inquiries,--mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary
+chatting with the principals of these establishments when one met them
+at the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of the
+community organized and supported. Not many of the winter visitors went
+to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap had a restless soul. It
+was restless because it was worried by perpetual thirst,--she couldn't
+herself tell after what; it wasn't righteousness, for she knew she was
+still worldly, so perhaps it was culture. Anyhow she would give culture
+a chance, and accordingly she went to the instructive evenings. Here she
+met that other side of Acapulco which doesn't play bridge and is proud
+to know nothing of polo, which believes in education, and goes in for
+mind training and welfare work; which isn't, that is, well off.
+
+Nobody here had been asked to educate the Twinklers. No classes had been
+joined by them.
+
+Miss Heap was so enigmatic, she who was naturally of an unquiet and
+exercise-loving tongue, that this graver, more occupied section of the
+inhabitants was instantly as much pervaded by suspicions as the idlest
+of the visitors in the hotels and country houses. It waved aside the
+innocent appearance and obvious extreme youth of the suspects. Useless
+to look like cherubs if it were German cherubs you looked like. Useless
+being very nearly children if it were German children you very nearly
+were. Why, precisely these qualities would be selected by those terribly
+clever Germans for the furtherance of their nefarious schemes. It would
+be quite in keeping with the German national character, that character
+of bottomless artfulness, to pick out two such young girls with just
+that type of empty, baby face, and send them over to help weave the
+gigantic invisible web with which America was presently to be choked
+dead.
+
+The serious section of Acapulco, the section that thought, hit on this
+explanation of the Twinklers with no difficulty whatever once its
+suspicions were roused because it was used to being able to explain
+everything instantly. It was proud of its explanation, and presented it
+to the town with much the same air of deprecating but conscious
+achievement with which one presents drinking-fountains.
+
+Then there was the lawyer to whom Mr. Twist had gone about the
+guardianship. He said nothing, but he was clear in his mind that the
+girls were German and that Mr. Twist wanted to hide it. He had thought
+more highly of Mr. Twist's intelligence than this. Why hide it? America
+was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and Germans could
+come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set tongues wagging? He
+did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness himself, a continuous
+wide-awakeness and minute consideration of consequences, realize, and if
+he had he wouldn't have believed, the affectionate simplicity and
+unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had been pointed out to him he would
+have dismissed it as a pose; for a man who makes money in any quantity
+worth handling isn't affectionately simple and unworldly--he is
+calculating and steely.
+
+The lawyer was puzzled. How did Mr. Twist manage to have a forehead and
+a fortune like that, and yet be a fool? True, he had a funny sort of
+face on him once you got down to the nose part and what came after,--a
+family sort of face, thought the lawyer; a sort of rice pudding,
+wet-nurse face. The lawyer listened intently to all the talk and
+rumours, while himself saying nothing. In spite of being a married man,
+his scruples about honour hadn't been blunted by the urge to personal
+freedom and the necessity for daily self-defence that sometimes afflicts
+those who have wives. He remained honourably silent, as he had said he
+would, but he listened; and he came to the conclusion that either there
+was a quite incredible amount of stupidity about the Twist party, or
+that there was something queer.
+
+What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house being got
+ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest of the world,
+took the newspapers _ventre-Ă -terre_ theory of the house for granted,
+and it was only the expectation of the arrival of that respectable lady,
+the widowed Mrs. Twist, which kept the suspicions a little damped down.
+They smouldered, hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot
+Twist's family life had been voluminously described in the entire
+American press when first his invention caught on, and it was known to
+be pure. There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
+born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would die--Mr. Twist
+read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish was to die in the old
+home--of the corner in the Clark churchyard where he would probably be
+entombed, with an inset showing his father's gravestone on which would
+clearly be read the announcement that he was the Resurrection and the
+Life. And there was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols
+of ungluttable grief,--a most creditable mother. And there were accounts
+of the activities of another near relative, that Uncle Charles who
+presided over the Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a
+snapshot of his macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,--a most
+creditable uncle.
+
+These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the impression
+survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents were
+unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his mother and she
+was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd and unintelligible,
+it was probable that his being there now with the two Germans was after
+all capable of explanation. Not much of an explanation, though. Even the
+moderates who took this view felt this. One wasn't with Germans these
+days if one could help it. There was no getting away from that simple
+fact. The inevitable deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why
+couldn't he help it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a
+passion cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which
+was known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
+with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
+exactly informed of their movements? He had met the Twinklers, so it was
+reported, on a steamer coming over from England. Of course. All arranged
+by the German Government. That was the peculiar evil greatness of this
+dangerous people, announced the serious section of Acapulco, again with
+the drinking-fountain-presentation air, that nothing was too private or
+too petty to escape their attention, to be turned to their own wicked
+uses. They were as economical of the smallest scraps of possible
+usefulness as a French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food.
+Everything was turned to account. Nothing was wasted. Even the
+mosquitoes in Germany were not wasted. They contained juices, Germans
+had discovered, especially after having been in contact with human
+beings, and with these juices the talented but unscrupulous Germans made
+explosives. Could one sufficiently distrust a nation that did things
+like that? asked the serious section of Acapulco.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that they were
+less interested than they otherwise would have been in the sea-blue
+advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing that The Open Arms
+would open wide on the 29th of the month and exhorting the public to
+watch the signposts, they merely remarked that it wasn't, then, the
+title of a book after all. Mr. Twist would have been surprised and
+nettled if he had known how little curiosity his advertisements were
+exciting; he would have been horrified if he had known the reason. As it
+was, he didn't know anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to
+be vulnerable to rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe
+from it inside their magic circle of _Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco through
+which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning, looking as
+though he had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in; and
+once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also apparently very busy,
+but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton, the lady from Los
+Angeles--Acapulco knew all about her and admitted she was a lady of
+strictest integrity and unimpeachable character, but this only made the
+Twinkler problem more obscure--came too, and seemed, judging from the
+animation of her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.
+
+But once an idea has got into people's heads, remarked the lawyer, who
+was nudged by the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were
+seen approaching,--Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair
+setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean
+white frocks and shining youth,--once an idea has got into people's
+heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out. Yet on
+the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton--
+
+"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up with the
+water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"
+
+And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using
+the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.
+
+The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the
+East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with
+some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon after the
+departure--she didn't see why she shouldn't call it by its proper name
+and say right out expulsion--of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan,
+but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long
+time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered
+if the other person doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous
+interests that are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest,
+and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
+morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
+machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
+uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
+sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that his
+mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt unable to
+believe it. "Do tell your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how
+_delighted_ we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us
+in our sunny refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her.
+Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
+indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."
+
+She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got
+it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the
+exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German
+secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of
+America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found
+she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.
+
+It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till Miss
+Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two girls
+mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very morning
+after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe. That was all his
+mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the top of all her other
+sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a fearful, perhaps a finishing
+blow, but she was such a good woman that she still prayed for him. Clark
+was horrified. His mother had decided at first she would try to shield
+him and say nothing, but when she found that nobody had the least idea
+of what he had done she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and
+have no secrets from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and
+humiliation she would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up
+false appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
+a splendid woman. The girls--poor Mrs. Twist--were Germans.
+
+On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her worst suspicions
+hadn't been half bad enough. Here was everything just about as black as
+it could be; and Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected
+American citizen, had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon
+weaknesses she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe,
+from books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
+part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the German
+Government.
+
+What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go? Which
+was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to her that
+the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a real menace to
+its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of them? And if they
+were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some other part of America,
+less watchful, less perhaps able to take care of itself, to the ripening
+and furtherance of their schemes, whatever their schemes might be? Even
+at that moment Miss Heap unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go
+would be to lose thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with
+excitement and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years.
+She wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
+thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone in
+her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair,
+her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft carpet,
+hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding her knowledge
+meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether to herself, her very
+own, shared as yet by no one,--it was while she sat there, that people
+out of doors in Acapulco itself, along the main roads, out in the
+country towards Zamora on the north and San Blas on the south, became
+suddenly aware of new signposts.
+
+They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards the spot
+at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They all pointed,
+with a long white finger, in that direction. And on them all was written
+in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the distance in miles or
+fractions of a mile was clearly marked, _To The Open Arms_.
+
+Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main Street
+stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what they were, and
+decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in their cars and track
+them down. They made up parties to go and track together. It would be a
+relief to have something a little different to do. What on earth could
+The Open Arms be? Hopes were expressed that they weren't something
+religious. Awful to follow signposts out into the country only to find
+they landed you in a meeting-house.
+
+At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were together, the
+signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being discussed from her
+solitary table, but was so much taken up with her own exciting thoughts
+that she hardly noticed. After lunch, however, as she was passing out of
+the restaurant, still full of her unshared news and still uncertain as
+to whom she should tell it first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table
+and said he supposed she was going too.
+
+They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon of the
+conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called out to any one
+at that moment. He was sitting waiting while Mrs. Ridding finished her
+lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and was in the condition of
+muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of Mrs.
+Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this happened, that Mr.
+Ridding got through his meal first by at least twenty minutes and then
+sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She wasn't aware of these efforts.
+They would greatly have shocked her; for to try not to mind one's wife
+surely isn't what decent, loving husbands ever have to do.
+
+"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon Mr.
+Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.
+
+Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.
+
+"Following these new signposts that are all over the place," said Mr.
+Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."
+
+"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs. Ridding?"
+
+"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take you. Car
+at four o'clock, Albert."
+
+She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well knew
+that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals and as she
+had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her thanks and
+pleasure, and temporarily left them.
+
+This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big limousine--symbol of
+Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding couldn't for the life of him see
+why he should have to provide a strange old lady with cars, and yet did
+so on an increasing scale of splendour--arrived at the turn on the main
+road to San Blas which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the
+final signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
+Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's mind in company. So too
+did they enter Mr. Ridding's mind; and they only remained outside Mrs.
+Ridding's because of her profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged
+in aspic. That was the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at
+the Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
+and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it afterwards.
+
+The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was in Pepper
+Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should happen to be
+there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very straight and alert, her
+eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said nothing either. Not for
+worlds would he have mentioned the word Twist, which so instantly and
+inevitably suggested that other and highly controversial word Twinkler.
+But he too sat all eyes; for anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of
+the place containing those cunning little bits of youngness, the
+Twinkler sisters, and even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.
+
+Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in front of
+it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was lovely, there was no
+polo, and nobody happened to be giving a party. All the way out from
+Acapulco they had only had to follow other cars. Cars were going, and
+cars were coming back. The cars going were full of solemn people,
+pathetically anxious to be interested. The cars coming back were full of
+animated people who evidently had achieved interest.
+
+Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend in the
+lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been there
+before, making a point of getting a friend to motor her past it in
+order to see what she could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of
+his desire to go and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to,
+found Mrs. Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where
+it was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
+putting his head out--he was sitting backwards--- he saw a great,
+old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in pictures of
+ancient English village greens, with
+
+     The Open Arms
+
+in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've run it
+to earth."
+
+Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind
+blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy
+eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All
+stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless
+fatigue she dimly wondered at them.
+
+"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his
+Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on
+which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of
+brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't see one, though."
+
+He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he said.
+
+Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.
+
+A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said quickly.
+"Don't, Mr. Ridding."
+
+There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that grew behind the
+pepper trees, and some people he knew, who had been in the car in front,
+were walking up to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it,
+and were standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in
+their hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on
+to one of the gate-posts, with the words _Won't you take one_? painted
+on it.
+
+Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was Miss Heap
+laying hold of him and saying "Don't."
+
+"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the door.
+
+"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good getting
+out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in to-day.
+Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."
+
+And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and came
+over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.
+
+"Say--" he said,--"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs. Ridding, your
+humble servant--say, look at this. Teapot Twist wasn't born yesterday
+when it comes to keeping things dark. No mention of his name on this
+book of words, but it's the house he was doing up all right, and it is
+to be used as an inn. Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American
+Red Cross. Price per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea.
+Wonder where those Twinkler girls come in. Here--you have this, Ridding,
+and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a second time to
+the ladies he went back to his friends.
+
+In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
+galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly heaving
+itself free of aspic. "Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs
+Ridding," said Miss Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish
+particularly to tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly
+I knew, but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at
+the signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.
+
+"Albert--hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.
+
+And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
+suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
+speaking-tube to the chauffeur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+"It's _perfect_," said the twins, looking round the tea-room.
+
+This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking round
+saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each time they
+finished getting another of the little tables ready, each time they
+brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they stood back and
+gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one voice, "It's
+_perfect_."
+
+Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as sober,
+quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was obliged to
+admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the Annas. Especially the
+Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue frocks and little Dutch
+caps and big muslin aprons that he took off his spectacles and cleaned
+them carefully so as to have a thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as
+they stood at a quarter to four gazing round the room, he stood gazing
+at them, and when they said "It's _perfect_," he said, indicating them
+with his thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all
+very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had pictured
+her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair beautifully
+brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave each of them a
+hearty kiss--for luck, she said--which Mr. Twist watched with an odd
+feeling of jealousy.
+
+"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden desire to hug.
+Then he said it out loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And
+added, "As it's the opening day."
+
+"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction," said
+Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained, we think,
+by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs. Bilton, "we like it
+very much as an expression of esteem."
+
+"Then why not in that spirit--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning very red.
+Intolerable to be kissed _en famille_. If it had to be done at all,
+kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But she and Anna-Felicitas
+didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To her amazement she found
+tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid idiots.... It must be that
+she was so happy. She had never been so happy. Where on earth had her
+handkerchief got to....
+
+"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.
+
+"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her beautiful new
+muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We are, you know,"
+she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist, so that the corner of
+her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at Christopher's perfectly
+tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily happy, and all through you.
+Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued, addressing her with firmness while
+she finished her eyes and began her nose, "You may like to be reminded
+that there's only ten minutes left now before all those cars that were
+here yesterday come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your
+career as a waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"
+
+But half an hour later no cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty.
+The long shadows lay across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in
+the grass chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something
+was coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts--Li Koo to the
+boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the room,
+and the twins to the door--but the sounds passed on along the road and
+died away round the next corner.
+
+At half-past four the _personnel_ of The Open Arms was sitting about
+silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when Mr. Ridding walked
+in.
+
+There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked in
+mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to the
+nearest point and had done the last mile on his own out-of-condition
+feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters in the smoking-room.
+She herself was in a big chair on the verandah, and with Miss Heap and
+most of the other guests was discussing The Open Arms in all its
+probable significance. He hadn't been able to get away sooner because of
+the nap. He had gone through with the nap from start to finish so as not
+to rouse suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of
+dare-devil running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew
+that he would cool down again presently and that then the consequences
+of his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile his
+blood was up.
+
+He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,--most gratifying
+sensation. The _personnel_, after a moment's open-mouthed surprise,
+rushed to greet him. Never was a man more welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding
+been so warmly welcomed anywhere in his life.
+
+"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at Anna-Rose who took his
+stick. "Wish I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had
+something to look forward to."
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to look very
+solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering with eagerness.
+"Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate? Each of these beverages
+can be provided either hot or iced--"
+
+"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in spite of
+also trying to look like a family butler. "_I'd_ have ice-cream if I
+were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious body. And you look so
+hot. Hot things should always as soon as possible be united to cold
+things, so as to restore the proper balance--"
+
+"And there's some heavenly stuff called cinnamon-toast--hot, you know,
+but if you have ice-cream at the same time it won't matter," said
+Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his hat for him. "I don't know whether you've
+studied the leaflets," she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I
+oughtn't to conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you
+have."
+
+"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to save, for
+you can't."
+
+"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said Mr.
+Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him and
+beaming up at her.
+
+She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the corner of
+her apron to convey to him that she knew her business, and hurried away
+to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away to give the order.
+
+"Say--" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna would have been
+enough for this and he was pining to talk to them; but the twins weren't
+to be stopped from both giving the very first order, and they
+disappeared together into the pantry.
+
+Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently absorbed
+in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep accounts and to
+enter the number of teas, and from this high seat she was to preside
+over the activities of the _personnel_. She had retired hastily to it on
+the unexpected entrance of Mr. Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring
+to look as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this
+was a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She
+wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had
+quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and
+talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till the room
+was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests entirely to the
+Annas.
+
+He himself was going to keep much in the background at all times, but
+through the half-open door of his office he could see and hear; and he
+couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching and observed the
+effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just arrived turned on the
+twins, that the first guest appeared to be extraordinarily and
+undesirably affectionate. He thought he had seen him at the
+Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that the Annas, after
+their conversation with him there, felt towards him as old friends, and
+he considered their manner was a little unduly familiar. Perhaps, after
+all, he thought uneasily, Mrs. Bilton had better do the waiting and the
+Annas sit with him in the office. The ledger could be written up at the
+end of the day. Or he could hire somebody....
+
+Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there only
+one guest? It was twenty minutes to five; and this time yesterday the
+road had been choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every
+minute this absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he
+had better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary
+one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn
+for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had heard to those
+others who so unaccountably hadn't come.
+
+He got up and went into the other room; and just as Anna-Felicitas was
+reappearing with the teapot followed by Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes,
+Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up expectantly and giving his tie a little
+pat of adjustment, perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot
+Twist.
+
+This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon heat to
+sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and amiable old man,
+and at any other time would have talked to him with pleasure; but he had
+made up his mind for the Twinklers as one makes up one's mind for a
+certain dish and is ravaged by strange fury if it isn't produced.
+Besides, hang it all, he was going to pay five dollars for his tea, and
+for that sum he ought to least to have it under the conditions he
+preferred.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist
+introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering
+Annas,--a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.
+
+It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't mind,
+Mr.--"
+
+"Ridding is my name."
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects to
+you."
+
+But he couldn't help wondering what he would do if there were several
+tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there
+wouldn't be enough of him in such a case to go round.
+
+Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil Teapot
+Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now. For that a
+man had a right to a table to himself.
+
+But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that moment a
+car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were heard coming
+up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his ears, for from the
+things he had heard being said all the evening before and all that
+morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night from the lips of that
+strange old lady with whom by some dreadful mistake he was obliged to
+sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be exactly a rush.
+
+Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class, he
+thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of sulky
+vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm the
+Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding crossly,
+as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.
+
+"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the long
+things he was saying.
+
+"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place," said Mr.
+Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears in
+expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was disappointed.
+
+He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young people,
+called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
+abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The young
+men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking round the
+Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter
+and exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all
+their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as pleased,
+Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost he could hear
+them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where Mrs. Bilton sat, as
+he had told her, bent pen in hand over the ledger. She didn't move. It
+was true he had told her to sit like that, but hadn't the woman any
+imagination? What she ought to do now was to bustle forward and take
+that laughing group in charge.
+
+"As I was telling you--" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with an effort to
+Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young people and catch
+an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.
+
+In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,--it was solely to
+see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at the
+Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that. "Unprincipled
+old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his ears flaming. Aloud
+he said, "As I was telling you--" and went on distractedly with his
+rigmarole.
+
+Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise the
+experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr. Ridding
+and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in the middle of
+the room, were made aware of their presence by Anna-Felicitas suddenly
+dropping the pencil and tablets she had been provided with for writing
+down orders and taking an uncertain and obviously timid step forward.
+
+They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant step, and saw
+a man and two women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course,
+didn't know them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding
+did. That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided
+knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.
+
+Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a man who
+liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his daily paper
+was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who disliked Germans and yet
+at the same time had a thirstily affectionate disposition, he declined
+to believe the prevailing theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't
+believe it anyhow. At that age people were truthful, and he had heard
+them explain they had come from England and had acquired their rolling
+r's during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from
+declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular nationality,
+owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he couldn't call his
+but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as ours. Except, however,
+for the Twinklers, for all other persons of whom it was said that they
+were Germans, naturalized or not, immediate or remote, he had,
+instructed by his newspaper, what his called a healthy instinctive
+abhorrence.
+
+"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond between
+them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant advance to
+meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are wrong."
+
+But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were the
+first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any shop or
+hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the experts friends.
+This was trade coming in,--real business being done. Anna-Felicitas
+hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and prepared-for
+moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the guests seemed so
+disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the threshold the whole
+three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't been prepared for that,
+and it unnerved her.
+
+"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her and
+embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense inclusive
+smile of appreciation.
+
+"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's
+explanations.
+
+"No," said he.
+
+"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced
+harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous--"
+
+"But this is delicious--this is a conception of genius," said Mr.
+Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up Anna-Felicitas's
+tablets and restored them to her with a low bow.
+
+"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.
+
+"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And she
+laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual understanding.
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously. "Or
+perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these beverages can
+be--"
+
+"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping
+Anna-Felicitas in her smile.
+
+"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas with a
+kind of grave nervousness.
+
+"Ah--charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately
+appreciative.
+
+"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes on her
+tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile. "And--and a great
+many kinds of cakes--"
+
+"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker genially,
+"or are all the tables engaged?"
+
+"Oh I _beg_ your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and moving
+hastily towards a table laid for three.
+
+"Ah--that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following closely on her
+heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of ordering what we
+shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow me to present myself.
+My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German name. And this is my wife. She
+too had an honest German name before she honoured mine by accepting
+it--she was a Niedermayer. And this is my daughter, with whom I trust
+you will soon be friends."
+
+And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and Anna-Felicitas shook
+them.
+
+"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.
+
+"As I was telling you--" said Mr. Twist irritably, for really why should
+Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers? Her business was to wait,
+not to get shaking hands. He must point out to her very plainly.
+
+"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker; and at
+this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped her tablets a
+second time.
+
+"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that air of
+mutual comprehension.
+
+"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her tablets from
+the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting to thank him.
+
+"What?" said Mrs. Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for
+once the phrase must be sincere?"
+
+"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her title," said
+Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps--perhaps. Wiser perhaps from the point
+of view of convenience. Is that where you will sit, GĂĽstchen? Still, we
+Germans when we are together can allow ourselves the refreshment of
+being ourselves, and I hope to be frequently the means of giving you the
+relief, you and your charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed
+correctly. It is a great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In
+these sad days we Germans must hang together--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from one
+Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.
+
+"But--" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or coffee?" she
+ended by asking again.
+
+"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down
+comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it, GĂĽstchen. To
+see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."
+
+"Charming, charming," said his wife.
+
+"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at Anna-Felicitas,
+again with comprehension,--with, almost, a wink. "You must let me come
+and help. I'd look nice in that costume, wouldn't I mother."
+
+"There is also frothed choc--"
+
+"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely sympathy--"
+interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially, leaning forward and
+lowering his voice a little.
+
+Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were coming in at
+the door, and behind them she could see on the path yet more, and
+Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.
+
+"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked. "Because
+I'm afraid--"
+
+Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was looking.
+
+"Ah--" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent GĂĽstchen, here are
+Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister--why, and there come the Diederichs--but
+splendid, splendid--"
+
+"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested face,
+"ever been to Berlin?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton irrelevance
+flung into the middle of his sentence.
+
+"Well, it's just like this."
+
+"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot there--see
+'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other of their confounded
+towns."
+
+"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.
+
+"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans," said Ridding.
+
+"All Germans?"
+
+"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you know?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"So are the ones who've just come in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans."
+
+There was a pause, during which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was
+presenting quite a populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm
+damned."
+
+And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr. Twist. He
+considered that at last he was talking sense.
+
+"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're damned. It
+was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would be. Shake hands,
+sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.
+
+Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that was
+obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed abruptly,
+after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had never seen so
+many Germans at once before, that her psyche was disharmonious to
+Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just as cats in a room made
+Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when he had flesh to go it with,
+that she hadn't been aware the inn was to be a popular resort and
+rendezvous for Germans, and that she wished to speak alone with Mr.
+Twist in the morning; while the twins, feeling the ominousness of this
+last sentence,--as did Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,--and
+overcome by the lassitude that had succeeded the shocks of the
+afternoon, a lassitude much increased by their having tried to finish up
+the pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly
+soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the
+moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars. There
+they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense distance and
+indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how infinitely
+insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and how they would
+both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And this last reflection
+afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and draughty comfort.
+
+Thus the first evening, that was to have been so happy, was spent by
+everybody in silence and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression
+even in his kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing
+with it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
+wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the opening
+day--"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange
+essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the
+meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone
+wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member
+of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with
+peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
+down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people
+of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that
+sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?
+
+Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must
+think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those
+Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the
+Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so
+exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as
+though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him
+in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable
+impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.
+Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It
+looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his
+mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between
+the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he
+hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her
+they weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
+came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
+exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their
+nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done
+so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas,
+and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened
+to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had
+kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that
+nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in
+the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?
+What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would
+happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain
+simply couldn't conceive.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door on to
+the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge,
+their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the
+moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien
+children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was
+their mother.
+
+Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal
+side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms
+round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to
+go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told
+him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms
+round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left
+them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second
+occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested
+itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely
+went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of
+Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he
+felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was
+difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas
+continued to consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that
+feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
+mattered.
+
+Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his
+office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her
+resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of
+straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards
+herself--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.
+
+She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she
+feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to
+resist the encroachments of foreigners--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up
+with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a
+soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be,
+of that nationality--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem
+to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and respected American
+name should be mixed up--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say it did
+seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian of two girls
+who, it was clear from what she had overheard that afternoon, were
+German--
+
+Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he shouted,
+so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee to keep quiet
+for just five minutes--sit down right here at this table and not say one
+single thing, not one single thing for just five minutes," he said,
+banging the table, "I'll tell you all about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your
+resignation at the end of that time if you're still set on leaving, but
+just for this once it's me that's going to do the talking."
+
+And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital letters
+would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.
+
+Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of how good
+her intentions had been when she took the post, and how deceitful--she
+was forced to think it--Mr. Twist's were when he offered it. She was
+prepared, however, to give him a hearing. It was only fair. But Mr.
+Twist had to burst into capitals several times before he had done, so
+difficult was it for Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed, even when
+she herself wished, not to say anything.
+
+It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of the
+office again. She went straight into the garden, where the Annas, aware
+of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been lingering anxiously,
+unable at so crucial a moment to settle to anything, and with solemnity
+kissed them. Her eyes were very bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless
+as parchment, was red. Positively she kissed them without saying a
+single word; and they kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a
+relief that made them hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that
+the brightness in her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her
+handkerchief and wipe it away.
+
+"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm through
+with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll weld."
+
+And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the situation.
+
+She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that happened
+nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through what she called
+thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton had occupied the
+position of the guns; now it would be these poor orphans. No Germans
+could frighten her away, once she knew their story; no harsh judgments
+and misconceptions of her patriotic friends. Mr. Twist had told her
+everything, from the beginning on the _St. Luke_, harking back to Uncle
+Arthur and the attitude of England, describing what he knew of their
+mother and her death, not even concealing the part his own mother had
+played or that he wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs.
+Bilton's silence; and as she listened her heart melted within her, and
+the immense store of grit which was her peculiar pride came to the top
+and once and for all overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think,
+and at last she burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he
+hadn't imparted all this to her long ago.
+
+"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind before
+the outburst of her released volubility.
+
+Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked forward
+to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just happened so the
+first day, that only Germans came. It was just accident. Mr. Twist, with
+the very large part of him that wasn't his head, found himself feeling
+like this too and declining to take any notice of his intelligence,
+which continued to try to worry him.
+
+Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second afternoon
+was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and clustered round the
+Annas, and made friendly though cautious advances to Mr. Twist. The ones
+who had been there the first day came again and brought others with them
+worse than themselves, and they seemed more at home than ever, and the
+air was full of rolling r's--among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny,
+being the r's of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he
+told himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
+While as for these other people--confound it all, the place might really
+have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a _Conditorei_ Unter
+den Linden.
+
+All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed and no
+Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and straight,
+and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered, thought they
+weren't. What an aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered,
+impatient with them when first he came back from France. What folly.
+Americans. The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a
+thirsty day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
+seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient--like some
+blessed unction dropped from above.
+
+But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.
+
+At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go on
+hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down, and
+close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly shaded
+lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching from the
+partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the guests to
+begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice of the signals
+of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside growing bright in
+the surrounding blackness.
+
+Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by the
+disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr. Wangelbecker, and
+had sat there watching in growing exasperation ever since. When six
+struck and nobody showed the least sign of going away he could bear it
+no longer, and touched the little muffled electric bell that connected
+him to Mrs. Bilton in what Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union--Anna
+II. was really excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in
+his presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
+an embarrassing abundance of imagery--by buzzing gently against her knee
+from the leg of the desk.
+
+She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up a
+column, and went to him.
+
+"Now don't talk," said Mr. Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly
+she came in.
+
+Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?" she
+repeated. "Why now, as though--"
+
+"Don't _talk_ I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I can't stand
+seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge rise. I want you
+to fetch them in here--now don't talk--you and me'll do the confounded
+waiting--no, no, don't talk--they're to stay quiet in here till the last
+of those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs. Bilton.
+No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they come." And he
+urged her out into the tea-room again.
+
+The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on, for they
+were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly enjoying
+themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more manifestly at
+home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices and fruit-salads.
+Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was after all a great deal
+to pay for afternoon tea, however good the cause might be and however
+important one's own ulterior motives; and since one had in any case to
+pay, one should eat what one could. So they kept the Annas very busy.
+There seemed to be no end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and
+thither, to what a German will hold.
+
+Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was carrying
+a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying ices to
+innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap clung damply
+to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed. What with having
+to carry so many trays, and remember so many orders, and try at the same
+time to escape from the orderers and their questions and admiration,
+she was in a condition not very far from tears.
+
+Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr. Twist
+wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general bewilderment
+that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be going to scold her.
+She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr. Twist were to be severe,
+she was sure she wouldn't be able not to cry. She made her way very
+slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton looked round the room for the
+other one. There was no sign of her. Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she
+was fetching something in the kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and
+seeing a group over by the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was
+evidently destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep
+them quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new duties. Never
+would she have dreamed it possible that she should have to carry trays
+to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he would certainly turn in
+his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit, of adhesiveness to her guns;
+if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn in his grave, let him; he would,
+she dared say, be more comfortable on his other side after all these
+years.
+
+For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and waited
+single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No wonder that
+child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist didn't come and help,
+as he had promised, and nowhere was there any sign of Anna-Felicitas;
+and the guests not only wanted things to eat, they wanted to talk,--talk
+and ask questions. Well, she would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk.
+She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational
+blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful
+are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs.
+Bilton was grumbled at for not talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.
+
+"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about tired
+of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there. You're
+through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and the day after
+as well."
+
+He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for his
+business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he said
+severely, "and stay put."
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather unsteadily
+to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if you're angry or being
+kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever it is I--I wish you
+wouldn't. I--I wish you'd manage to be something that isn't either."
+And, as she had feared, she began to cry.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern mixed with
+irritation--out there all those Germans, in here the weeping child; what
+a day he was having--"for heaven's sake don't do that."
+
+"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being so
+natu--natu--naturally liquid."
+
+"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his pockets. If
+he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking her, and she
+seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
+would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great girl
+now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist could
+imagine....
+
+"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."
+
+"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"And the Germans have been too much for you."
+
+"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion that
+anybody could ever be that.
+
+"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist, setting
+his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to his natural
+kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he
+remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she come?" he asked.
+
+"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."
+
+"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been much upset
+by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had suspected her,
+though she couldn't understand it after last night's finishings up, of
+secret unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.
+
+Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't see her
+either," he said. "Confound them--what have they done to her? Worn her
+out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd crawled off somewhere
+and were crying too."
+
+"Anna-F.--doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and she--doesn't cry but--I
+wish you'd find--her."
+
+"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he said,
+looking at her from the door uncertainly.
+
+And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair, and
+somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a
+promise not to move, that he found himself unable to resist going back
+to her for a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr.
+Twist, very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
+yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and
+also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.
+
+"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he knew what
+he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than ever,--grew, indeed,
+almost into small howls, so long was it since anybody had said things
+like that to her. It was her mother who used to say things like that;
+things almost exactly like that.
+
+"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious eye on the
+half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to outdo the noise
+of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush, hush--here's a clean
+handkerchief--you just wipe up your eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll
+worry, you know, if she sees you like this,--hush now, hush--there,
+there--and I expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in
+some corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would you--"
+
+And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and feeling much
+flurried went away to search for the other one who was somewhere, he was
+sure, in a state of equal distress.
+
+He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he came out of
+the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her come into the
+tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed across it towards
+the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist. He hurried to
+intercept her. Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over
+having done it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would
+seem, in any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
+particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,--why smug?
+wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete satisfaction on
+her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the
+tables, of the guests who tried in vain to attract her attention and
+detain her with orders. She wasn't at all hot, as Anna-Rose had been,
+nor rattled, nor in any way discomposed; she was just smug. And also she
+was unusually, extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at
+her like that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to
+her. And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand--no, his paw; in his
+annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of Mr.
+Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw--on her wrist to get her to
+listen to some confounded order or other. She took no notice of that
+either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly. Steadily. Obvious.
+Smug.
+
+"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached her.
+
+She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes. Then she
+appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said amiably.
+
+"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the office."
+
+"I can't. I'm busy."
+
+"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the pantry
+since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way, "that's
+trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw you come in.
+Perhaps you'll tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged
+in."
+
+"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's nobody to
+wait on?"
+
+They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to Li Koo
+through the serving window before answering; the order was tea and hot
+cinnamon toast for one.
+
+"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the most
+delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready, and
+carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all there.
+There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't come in."
+
+"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"Because he doesn't like Germans."
+
+"And who pray is he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course. His name
+is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now listen: I won't
+have--"
+
+But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared into two
+funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.
+
+Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers. That one
+in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with what she would
+no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction became suddenly final
+that the office was the place for both the Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton
+would do the waiting.
+
+"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of cakes. "I'll send
+Mrs. Bilton for the tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister
+is there and wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed
+the tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
+laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
+something."
+
+"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with gentle
+firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it on the tray.
+"I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man out there is Mr.
+Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps of people he isn't, and
+one of the principal ones is Mr. Ridding."
+
+"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.
+
+"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it too.
+
+"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.
+
+"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas mildly; and
+her eyes began to screw up again.
+
+"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having got the
+tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs. Bilton and me
+will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."
+
+He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His appearance
+in this new rĂ´le was greeted by the Germans with subdued
+applause--subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't quite as cordial
+to them as they had supposed he would be, and they were accordingly
+being a little more cautious in their methods with him than they had
+been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took no notice of them,
+except that his ears turned red when he knocked against a chair and the
+tray nearly fell out of his hands and they all cried out _Houp lĂ _.
+Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. _Houp lĂ _ indeed.
+
+In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly verandah,
+sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He was a young
+man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin brown face and
+very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the window behind him
+shone on him as he turned his head when he heard the swing doors open,
+and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and at once. He also saw how
+the young man's face fell on his, Mr. Twist's, appearance with the tray,
+and he also saw with some surprise how before he had reached him it
+suddenly cleared again. And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist
+arrived at the table--got up with some little difficulty, for he had to
+lean hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with _empressement._
+
+"You've forgotten the sugar," said Anna-Felicitas's gentle voice behind
+Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she was, sure
+enough, looking smugger than ever.
+
+"This is Mr. Twist," said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable gesture. "That
+I was telling you about," she explained to the young man.
+
+"When?" asked Mr. Twist, surprised.
+
+"Before," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were talking for some time before I
+went in to order the tea, weren't we?" she said to the young man,
+angelically smiling at him.
+
+"Rather," he said; and since he didn't on this introduction remark to
+Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain he couldn't be
+an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless, suddenly suspected
+Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves that day and was ready to
+suspect anything, he was German cleverly got up for evil purposes to
+appear English. But the young man dispersed these suspicions by saying
+that he was over from England on six months' leave, and that his name
+was Elliott.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater interest
+than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it wasn't.
+
+"What, are you an Elliott too?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Anna-Felicitas shook her head. "On the contrary," she said, "I'm a
+Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you're like us about
+coming from England. We've done that. Only our leave is for ever and
+ever. Or the duration of the war."
+
+Mr. Twist waved her aside. "Anna-Felicitas," he said, "your sister is
+waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I'll see to Mr.
+Elliott."
+
+"Why not bring your sister here?" said the young man, who, being in the
+navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at Anna-Felicitas,
+who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile at each other.
+
+"I think that's a brilliant idea," she said; and turned to Mr. Twist.
+"You go," she said gently, thereby proving herself, the young man
+considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. "It's much more
+likely," she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without moving, "that
+she'll come for you than for me. My sister," she explained to the young
+man, "is older than I am."
+
+"Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more likely--"
+
+"But only about twenty minutes older."
+
+"What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of you?"
+
+"Anna-Felicitas," interrupted Mr. Twist, "you will go to your sister
+immediately. She needs you. She's upset. I don't wish to draw Mr.
+Elliott behind the scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get
+you into the office you force me to tell you that she is very, much
+upset indeed, and is crying."
+
+"Crying?" echoed Anna-Felicitas. "Christopher?" And she turned and
+departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was alert as well
+as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and grab at a chair in
+her way and pull it aside, and so avert a deplorable catastrophe.
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious?" he inquired of Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh no. Children will cry."
+
+"Children?"
+
+Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. "Tell me about
+England," he said. "You've been wounded, I see."
+
+"Leg," said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick and
+looking after Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But that didn't get you six months' leave."
+
+"Lungs," said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr. Twist.
+
+Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out his tea.
+
+He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after hours in the
+water. For months he was struggling to recover, but finally tuberculosis
+had developed and he was sent to California, to his sister who had
+married an American and lived in the neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr.
+Twist extracted out of him by diligent questioning. He had to question
+very diligently. What the young man wanted to talk about was
+Anna-Felicitas; but every time he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.
+
+And she didn't come back. He waited and waited, and drank and drank.
+When the teapot was empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all
+the cakes, more and more deliberately, eking them out at last with
+slowly smoked cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist's
+activities there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the
+ambulance from start to finish; and still she didn't come back. In vain
+he tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer
+home--to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr. Twist
+wouldn't budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained shut. And
+the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at last but to
+go.
+
+So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get up, still
+spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing doors. It was both
+late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li Koo had lit the usual
+evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It blazed most beautifully, and
+the young man looked at it through the window and hesitated.
+
+"How jolly," he said.
+
+"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up too.
+
+"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man with a
+little shiver.
+
+"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before leaving."
+
+"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your sister and
+have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot coffee
+first."
+
+"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, looking at his
+watch. "We close at half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."
+
+"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go," said the
+young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what couldn't be
+helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."
+
+"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr. Twist, "for
+surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick leg. You can pay
+me right here."
+
+And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as far as
+the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting car, seeing
+his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after all, humane, but
+the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just watched from the gate
+till the car had actually started, and then went back to the house.
+
+He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the ground. This
+second day had been worse than the first. And besides the continued and
+remarkable absence of Americans and the continued and remarkable
+presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness suddenly developed in the
+Annas. He felt insecure; as though he didn't understand, and hadn't got
+hold. They seemed to him very like eels. And this Elliott--what did he
+think _he_ was after, anyway?
+
+For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He defied
+Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing successful, this
+Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And he stuck out his
+jaw--or would have stuck it out if he hadn't been prevented by the
+amiable weakness of that feature. But spiritually and morally, when he
+got back into the house he was all jaw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning and drop
+in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and see if he could
+pick up anything that would explain why Americans wouldn't come and have
+tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he might look up old Ridding. He
+didn't sleep. He lay all night thinking.
+
+The evening had been spent _tĂŞte-Ă -tĂŞte_ with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose
+was in bed, sleeping off her tears; Mrs. Bilton had another headache,
+and disappeared early; so he was left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched
+about abstractedly eating up the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk,
+except once to remark a little pensively that her inside was dreadfully
+full of cold stuff, and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a
+mausoleum; but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist
+could see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had
+nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a useful
+purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any counter-observations
+she might make. Watchfulness was what was required. Silent watchfulness.
+And wariness. And firmness. In fact all the things that were most
+foreign to his nature, thought Mr. Twist, resentful and fatigued.
+
+Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li Koo, and
+then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without seeing the others.
+It was another of the perfect days which he was now beginning to take
+as a matter of course, so many had there been since his arrival. People
+talked of the wet days and of their desolate abundance once they
+started, but there had been as yet no sign of them. The mornings
+succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November was merging into
+December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr. Twist to himself
+sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked lane in the gracious
+light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm scents drifted across his
+face, and the flowers in the grass, standing so bright and unruffled
+that they seemed almost as profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded
+at him, and everything was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh
+yes--I daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked
+round him,--he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful. These things
+hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be calm and bright.
+So could he, if--
+
+He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two figures, a
+man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside. Lovers, of course.
+"Oh yes--I daresay," said Mr. Twist again, grimly. They hadn't to deal
+with Twinklers either. No wonder they could sit happily in the grass. So
+could he, if--
+
+At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last thing
+they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned their heads,
+and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard that the
+Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.
+
+"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.
+
+"Hello," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach
+with complacent interest.
+
+She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton just as
+she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr. Twist felt;
+sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect of natural and
+comfortable arrival at the place where she was.
+
+"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her when the
+car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had torrents of things
+he wanted to say, and this was all that came out.
+
+Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to the
+conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.
+
+"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.
+
+"Yes. I'll give you a lift."
+
+"No thanks. I've just come from there."
+
+"I see. Then _you'd_ better come with me," said Mr. Twist to
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."
+
+"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had
+no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with
+perfect goodwill.
+
+He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see,
+before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt
+a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just
+waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of
+his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her
+future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before
+everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.
+
+He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the
+car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded
+by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of
+sight.
+
+"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.
+
+"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "One has to
+sit somewhere."
+
+And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at
+everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was
+the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to
+listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready
+ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began
+to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to
+fall in love.
+
+In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at
+him, and he told her tumultuously--for being a sailor-man he went
+straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making--that her eyes
+were as if pansies had married stars.
+
+She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded lovely it
+made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer; and then he
+said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most perfect thing ever
+stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind turning her face to him so
+that he might see if she had another just like it on the other side.
+
+She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she had
+washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's ears; there were so
+many different things to wash--and he told her that when she blushed it
+was like the first wild rose of the first summer morning of the world.
+
+At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a
+condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come next.
+Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it
+every day for years and years in the looking-glass, and not noticed
+anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face.
+Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else
+you didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and
+couldn't be hidden,--an object remote indeed from pansies, and stars,
+and beautiful things like that.
+
+She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point out
+that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that perhaps
+when his leg was well again he would see things more as they were, but
+to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him this she found she
+was obliged to look away at once again. She couldn't look at him. Fancy
+that now, thought Anna-Felicitas, attentively gazing at her toes. And he
+had such dear eyes; and such a dear, eager sort of face. All the more,
+then, she reasoned, should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him.
+But they couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as
+carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.
+
+"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff.
+I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught
+myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly
+blood and muck of the war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to
+things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God
+now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to
+mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I
+write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now being
+seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and my mother
+came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle of the street.
+Do you realize what a tremendous change that means, you little girl
+who's never had brothers? You extraordinary adorable little lovely
+thing?"
+
+And off he was again.
+
+"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still watching
+her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider, before I said
+anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would like to say in the
+hearing of my parents. Would you like to say what you're saying to me in
+the hearing of your parents?"
+
+"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.
+
+"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She rather
+wished now she hadn't mentioned it.
+
+"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.
+
+She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps be
+regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give herself
+up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might have to say.
+
+And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the most highly
+gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all round and taking one
+thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the conclusion that this was
+the most agreeable and profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat
+there for hours, and they all flew. People passed in cars and saw her,
+and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she
+ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the
+tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished
+and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was
+hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had
+motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.
+Once a great car passed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished
+when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out
+and wave to her.
+
+"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each other."
+
+"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of
+continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she
+hadn't got a husband.
+
+"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate people to
+die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when they're not in
+the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor old Dellogg was such
+a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea
+this afternoon. But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."
+
+"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg. The name
+swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy enjoying
+herself to remark it and its coincidences now.
+
+"Of course. It's the first thing one does."
+
+"What first thing?"
+
+"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has found her.
+Once one has had"--his voice fell to a whisper--"the God-given luck to
+find her." And he laid his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped
+together in her lap.
+
+This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed, and she
+didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand lying on
+hers, and considered it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now,
+and she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
+Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly judicious
+went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still,
+it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar
+situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one
+was rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the condition
+of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn't like his hand on hers.
+And she did like it.
+
+She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it. But would
+Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly clear about that.
+Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it up, and shake it, and
+say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like a lady. Well, perhaps she
+ought to do that. Christopher would probably think so too. But what a
+pity.... Still, behaviour was behaviour; ladies were ladies.
+
+She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
+instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing of
+the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top of his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful
+indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple
+of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track
+back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to
+proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or
+shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger
+cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The
+Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that
+Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he
+couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
+this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
+served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up
+his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.
+
+There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.
+
+At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since
+his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went
+into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after
+difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he
+couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he
+had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main
+Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the
+other way.
+
+From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of
+the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its
+mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the
+inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The
+solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the
+clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about
+it.
+
+By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask
+the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find
+anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and
+frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere
+else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
+Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent
+undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of
+this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush
+falling upon it, a holding of the breath.
+
+In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw
+that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great
+parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black
+heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and
+naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.
+Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass
+in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter,
+probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher
+mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that
+part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the
+heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of
+some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall
+in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair
+that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only
+the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two
+smouldering coals.
+
+He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he
+tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right,
+and went out quickly by the side door.
+
+There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to
+the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the
+guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was
+chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried
+away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a
+last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main
+Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of
+agitation and restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.
+
+The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his morning's
+experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being
+admitted at once. He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with
+unmistakable interest.
+
+"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.
+
+The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult him,
+but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their
+preference in conversation for the self-evident.
+
+"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr. Twist, his
+great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.
+
+"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.
+
+"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the hell--"
+
+The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said. "Sorry to
+interrupt--"
+
+And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition between his
+office and his clerks' room.
+
+"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.
+
+He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were inquiring what
+the hell--?"
+
+"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but you're so
+calm--"
+
+"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
+
+"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one. Yours is
+another."
+
+"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I want to
+know is why--"
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you. It's
+because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the
+German Government."
+
+A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a
+detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared at the
+lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left him. This
+blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank astonishment.
+
+"You know about my teapot?" he said at last.
+
+"Try me again, Mr. Twist."
+
+"It's on every American breakfast table."
+
+"Including my own."
+
+"They wouldn't use it if they thought--"
+
+"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
+proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment
+to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on an unofficial
+black list. It is to be banished from the hotels."
+
+Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The teapot his
+mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his
+happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging over America in
+great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used
+for Germany. He saw--but what didn't he see in that moment of submerged
+horror? Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason
+with a gasp. "Why?" he asked.
+
+"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"
+
+"No. Why do they think the inn--"
+
+"The Miss Twinklers are German."
+
+"Half."
+
+"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all
+about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward
+notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So
+transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk
+has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's
+women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others
+caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
+fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are
+certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw
+he had made a little joke in that last remark.
+
+Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do
+you mean to say those children--" he began.
+
+"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
+
+"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the
+wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd
+best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen
+them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
+boat."
+
+"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty
+considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being
+believed?"
+
+"Of course. It's what I've come for."
+
+"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by
+this time the whole coast--is that you threw over your widowed mother,
+of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who
+got hold of you on the boat--now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the
+boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as
+undesirable aliens--quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're
+in the pay of the German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and
+that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has
+been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't
+say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so
+familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
+complete secret understanding."
+
+For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he
+took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was
+startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort
+of lips. "You're not--" he began.
+
+Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.
+
+"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.
+
+"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his
+features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny.
+Cat's-paw. Yes--rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit
+of a bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly refused
+to compose.
+
+The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these
+beliefs may be awkward."
+
+"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.
+
+And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would
+mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless
+Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his
+conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it
+had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative
+enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side
+properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted
+on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the
+twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted.
+Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get
+them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just
+couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and
+terrible situation.
+
+"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.
+
+"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life
+of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions--"
+
+"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two
+courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You
+shut down the inn--at once, to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on
+Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open--now pray let me
+finish--close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private
+residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."
+
+"Marry what girls?"
+
+"The Miss von Twinklers."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them
+who to?"
+
+"You for one."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to
+me before."
+
+"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."
+
+"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way
+out--"
+
+But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by
+events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.
+
+"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls," said the lawyer, at each
+word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American.
+Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same
+time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you
+didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would
+want to--I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them--it's your
+plain duty, having got them into this mess."
+
+"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet
+a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.
+
+For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either or both," he
+said. "For God's sake don't be such a--"
+
+He pulled up short.
+
+"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that
+sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will
+substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"
+
+No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might
+choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out
+his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his
+mouth.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.
+
+Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard
+them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to
+them--to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he
+proposed to and the one he didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He
+hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this
+whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a
+movement of his shoulder.
+
+"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My
+wife was--"
+
+"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all _that_" said Mr.
+Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're
+_children_--"
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
+negligibleness.
+
+Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said.
+"You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing
+more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the
+sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's
+the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and
+prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"
+
+Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table
+crooked. His ears flamed.
+
+"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like
+that about my wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him all up.
+His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home
+matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets
+before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was
+on the wrong side of the road. During this period, deep as he was in
+confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely notice the anger on the faces
+of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations,
+and it roused a dim wonder in him.
+
+Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the
+affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark.
+They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always disapproving.
+Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of
+not going to do or be enough.
+
+His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,--somebody kind
+and soft, who would let herself be adored. She needn't even love
+him,--he knew he wasn't the sort of man to set passion alight; she need
+only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his
+very own.
+
+His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes. But the
+Annas....
+
+When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
+propose--indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to--but
+wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to
+think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
+course,--one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny man,
+thought Mr. Twist; funny man,--yet otherwise so sagacious. It is true he
+need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could
+imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to
+be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred
+not to imagine.
+
+Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard. It
+was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and
+Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on
+which side he had been driving.
+
+The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence.
+Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when
+he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed
+flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She
+said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone
+home, and that little Christopher too might for a bit be somewhere else,
+so that when he arrived he wouldn't immediately have to face everybody
+at once. He wanted to think; he wanted to have time to think; time
+before four o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to
+any conclusion about shutting up the inn--and how could he if nobody
+gave him time to think?--those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they
+who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and their
+blasted war....
+
+At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the green
+shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the
+lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
+very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's time
+given him to think.
+
+"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had waved to
+him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to the stable, "she
+isn't with you?"
+
+"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she said.
+
+"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.
+
+"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken eyes;
+for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of her mind,
+half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any moment of panic, an
+impression that the chief activities and recreations of all those
+Americans who weren't really good were two: they lynched, and they
+kidnapped. They lynched you if they didn't like you enough, and if they
+liked you too much they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and
+unsuspecting, had been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had
+alighted on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other
+explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one
+so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
+that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there was any
+shirking to be done they had always done it together. As the hours
+passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to persuade herself
+that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and
+unnatural and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
+been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she
+was convinced the worst had happened--her beautiful, her precious
+Columbus had been kidnapped.
+
+"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.
+
+Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was announcing the
+kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think of Anna-Felicitas; he
+had seen her too recently. But that Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped
+seemed to him to touch the lowest depths of American criminal enterprise
+and depravity. At the same time though he recoiled before this fresh
+blow a thought did fan through his mind with a wonderful effect of
+coolness and silence,--"Then they'll gag her," he said.
+
+"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag her?" And
+pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried
+again, "Gag Columbus?"
+
+"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
+disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you--"
+
+He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the
+lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely
+as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a distracted
+household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an
+extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality. Still
+smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one could imagine a lily
+turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down
+the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
+thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god would
+be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be worrying much
+about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd just be coming
+along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and
+his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a
+sober and abstracted radiance.
+
+"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his
+thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly, leaning
+over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found
+himself faced by both twins together, "that when next your imagination
+gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till
+it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your
+constitution going pale."
+
+And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into
+the yard.
+
+Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only living
+thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of
+one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home.
+The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave
+the twins much unacknowledged relief. It was, they thought secretly,
+quite a good plan to have one's pets inside each other,--it kept them so
+quiet. She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning
+her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order
+to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.
+
+Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.
+
+He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre
+about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it
+kept him longer away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of
+him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel
+was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
+The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he
+wouldn't hurt a fly.
+
+Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the stable,
+all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and having got it
+in he still lingered fiddling about with it, examining its engine and
+wiping its bonnet; and then when he couldn't do that any longer he went
+out and lingered in the yard, looking down at the cat with his hands in
+his pockets. "I must think," he kept on saying to himself.
+
+"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen window.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who didn't
+like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got out of it by
+lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful white stomach. She
+was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful white stomach, and she
+had discovered that nobody could see it without wanting to stroke it.
+Whenever she found herself in a situation that threatened to become
+disagreeable she just lay down and showed her stomach. Human beings in
+similar predicaments can only show their tact.
+
+"Nice pussy--nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud, stroking this
+irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as she had intended
+he should.
+
+"Lunchee get cold," said Li Koo, again putting his head out of the
+kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton say, Come in."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that should
+have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening
+tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up
+carefully again.
+
+Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.
+
+"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard door.
+
+"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right away and
+have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I guess you'll be
+sorry."
+
+"All right--coming," he called back very loud and cheerfully, striding
+towards her as one strides who knows there is nothing for it now but
+courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton--sorry if I've kept you waiting. You
+shouldn't have bothered about me--"
+
+And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself being
+loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house, through the
+house, and out on to the verandah.
+
+They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning was
+down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it blazed the
+garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as usual ready for
+four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding the Annas at the
+table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her back to the garden, her
+little fair head outlined against the glowing light as he had seen it
+every day since they had lived in the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably
+volubly and passionately addressing her.
+
+And there was no one.
+
+"Why--" he said, stopping short.
+
+"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before everything is
+spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed behind to give an
+order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the verandah and shaded her
+eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you can do all that talking
+better after lunch."
+
+He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most private
+place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some arum lilies
+that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood the twins facing
+each other.
+
+"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when they're
+ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's talking right
+away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more quickly for she
+plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to sally out into the
+sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often get a chance of a quiet
+chat together--"
+
+And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her chair ready
+for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning again.
+
+She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite that
+tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the eager
+gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.
+
+She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
+immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,--while Mrs.
+Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if one
+wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he gave
+himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once started
+flowing over him, on this occasion with something of the comfort of
+warm water, and he was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't
+gagged.
+
+While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at the two
+figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs. Bilton
+remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at the different
+stages, of the meal,--at the salad, at the pudding--he stopped her. She
+became more and more pleased by his evident determination to lunch alone
+with her, for after all one remains female to the end, and her
+conversation took on a gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second
+marriages. They had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had
+had no post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
+whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.
+
+The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs. Bilton
+talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she being the
+eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and, if she refused,
+proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But before proceeding to
+Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with peculiar misgiving, he would
+very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose the seriousness of the situation and
+the necessity, the urgency, the sanity of her marrying him. These
+proposals would be kept on the cool level of strict business. Every
+trace of the affection with which he was so overflowing would be sternly
+excluded. For instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel
+of Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
+comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his
+remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most
+scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful
+avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr.
+Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water,
+how difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more female than
+ever.
+
+Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the war.
+Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
+steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated Mr.
+Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of it.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.
+
+Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it. He saw
+that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he would
+explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which after the
+war they--he meant, of course, she--could easily in that land of facile
+and honourable divorce get rid of. Meanwhile, he would point out,
+they--she, of course; bother these twins--would be safely American, and
+he would undertake never to intrude love on them--her--unless by some
+wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr. Twist's
+spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more water.
+
+Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of self-mortification
+for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his wife--again at the dear
+word he had to gulp down water--and one his sister-in-law. They would
+just have to agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
+shilly-shallying. Yes. That was the line to take; and by the time he
+had got to the coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.
+
+But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for anything that
+would support him....
+
+"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the web of
+Mrs. Bilton's words.
+
+"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether female,
+for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,--"You're not sick?"
+
+"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his head
+drooping. "It's nice...."
+
+"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and going away
+rattling a bunch of keys.
+
+At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act of
+putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
+passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He knew
+there would be.
+
+He gulped down more water.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole morning
+and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about it. Besides,
+the expression on her face wanted explaining,--a lot of explaining. Mr.
+Twist didn't like to think so, but Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct
+seemed to him almost artful. It seemed to him older than her years. It
+seemed to justify the lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to
+him as children. That young man Elliott--
+
+But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for looking
+once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was coming towards
+the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had vanished. Why had he
+bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go? He had counted, somehow,
+on beginning with Anna-Rose....
+
+He seized a cigarette and lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand
+steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas,
+walking in beneath the awning.
+
+"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to you."
+
+And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew from the
+look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very remarkable look. It
+was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect bliss, had unaccountably got
+its feet wet. Not more troubled than that; a little troubled, but not
+more than that.
+
+"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished yours, do you
+mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment
+interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise
+Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.
+
+She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it
+without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her
+there.
+
+He could only follow.
+
+In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he
+wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get
+things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less
+of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it....
+And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be
+comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....
+
+"Christopher--" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.
+
+"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
+interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase.
+Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.
+
+"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her voice
+softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.
+
+Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of
+one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in--with,
+that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big chair.
+"It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't think being in
+love would make one want to sit down."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a
+kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your--what did you say?" he asked.
+
+She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance,
+of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to
+her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I can't tell you how
+pleased I am because I've always been afraid I was going to find it a
+difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."
+
+Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this
+afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and
+Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."
+
+And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from
+her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.
+
+"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.
+
+"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation
+for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."
+
+Well. This beat everything.
+
+Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.
+
+Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what
+they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How
+dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come
+making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So
+suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins
+constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them.
+They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug
+them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman
+should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and
+respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they
+wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering
+Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared
+to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to
+think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old
+footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be
+able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his
+addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?
+
+Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all
+tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against
+the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was
+gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy,
+and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one
+great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside
+and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he
+beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.
+
+He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her
+and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very
+calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been
+since the arrival in his life of the twins.
+
+"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."
+
+"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II.,
+that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's
+Elliott."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she
+added, "I now have to allude to him as John."
+
+Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said,
+"think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man
+John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."
+
+"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
+
+"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It
+doesn't strike you as foolish."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've
+been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm
+not _naturally_ quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded
+as a pardonable pride.
+
+"It doesn't strike you as even a little--well, a little improper."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one
+man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's
+husband."
+
+"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife,
+but then that was different.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a flaming
+unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been
+toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had
+a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.
+
+He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of
+half his problem,--and of much the worst half, for it was after all
+Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of
+slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair
+crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution
+was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base
+his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of
+both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the
+idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by
+the realization that now he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut
+the ground from under his feet. He had indeed--what was the expression
+he used the evening before?--yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
+for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn
+feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was
+thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people
+of seventeen; he couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only
+age. Mr. Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he
+was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
+jealously said.
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only time but
+war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden
+about all sorts of things."
+
+"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."
+
+"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many things--"
+
+And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he
+gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent
+smugness.
+
+"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait
+while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular crisis
+fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as much time
+as you seem to think."
+
+"No--and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a
+shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again
+as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet
+wet.
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room.
+"There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty
+well heart-broken over this."
+
+"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle
+deprecation.
+
+"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the impression--the
+remarkably vivid impression--that she's losing you."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's sheer gain.
+Without the least effort or bother on her part she's acquiring a
+brother-in-law."
+
+"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up and down
+the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it all myself."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. "Why
+should two of you be feeling things that aren't?"
+
+"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn't
+be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct."
+
+"But there has to _be_ conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle,
+but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I don't see how
+anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been some conduct first."
+
+"Oh, don't argue--don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose not to mind
+your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn't even seen."
+
+"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
+somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't _argue_!" exclaimed Mr. Twist. "And as
+for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to this
+twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be terribly
+upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy."
+
+"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with love?"
+
+Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes
+troubled, "Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more,
+down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
+saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I found
+she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't be
+comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what
+I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."
+
+Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring at the
+carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don't suppose
+anything I would say--"
+
+"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth
+into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. "You dear
+children," he said, "you dear, dear children--"
+
+"I don't know about children--" began Anna-Felicitas; but was
+interrupted by a knock at the door.
+
+"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the
+expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton.
+"Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out, "and put it on the--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the door an
+inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist," she
+said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says he just must. I
+found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I'm not
+the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in
+with me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."
+
+"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."
+
+"I say--" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. "That's
+John."
+
+"I say--may I come in? I've got something important--"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you rather--?" he began.
+
+"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a most
+beautiful light.
+
+Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said. "Mrs.
+Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you--Commander Elliott of the
+British Navy."
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr. Twist,
+your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?"
+
+"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps you
+wouldn't mind waiting for me there--I don't suppose Mr. Elliott will
+want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."
+
+And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing
+and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.
+
+There stood Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Elliott stopped dead.
+
+"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.
+
+"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.
+
+"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look here, sir," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "could _you_ talk business with her there?"
+
+"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there. I've
+got to talk business," he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,--"business
+about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking
+like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.
+
+"But you'll interrupt--just your being there will interrupt. I shall see
+you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll be impossible not to--I mean
+I know I'll want to--I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've
+got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian--"
+
+"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently.
+"He only very nearly once was."
+
+"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take some
+time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade--for I expect," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?"
+
+"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding
+it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly
+in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might have been almost a
+reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so
+happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first
+wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the
+surprise of it.
+
+"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who
+stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. "I've got to explain
+that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a fearfully
+decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've got a jolly
+little sister here who's respectable and well-known besides, and I'm
+going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that
+I'm perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn't
+health but just foot and which you don't seem to mind anyhow, and how--I
+ask you _how_, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you
+standing there looking like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.
+
+"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"
+
+"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her,
+then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.
+
+"_Somebody's_ got to go," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.
+
+He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear
+the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going
+out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear, after what he
+had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.
+
+All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love.
+He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it
+and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got
+so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He had never tried to
+marry,--again because of his home and his mother and the whole
+only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try now. He would risk it. It was
+awful to risk it, but it was more awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How
+nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he
+taken her in his arms! Why, he would have taken her into them then and
+there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of
+comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that
+he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child.
+Fool that he was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't
+children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
+Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was
+because she was little and easily cried. He loved her for being little.
+He loved her because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to
+comfort, to pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
+mother.
+
+Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
+recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
+answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped in.
+Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo,
+who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li Koo did. He
+jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and
+looked out. There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where
+he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her
+stomach was Anna-Rose.
+
+She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun streamed
+down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked
+round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close to her, so much
+absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn't look
+up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come and talk to me."
+
+"I'm thinking."
+
+"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little--little dear one."
+
+She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said again.
+
+"Come and tell me what you're thinking."
+
+"I'm thinking about cats."
+
+"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully
+keeping her face hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they
+are."
+
+"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and come and
+talk to me now."
+
+"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably twins,
+and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes sixes, but
+still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and don't mind a bit
+what their--what their twins do--"
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."
+
+"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their whiskers
+and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them. Perhaps if I--if I
+had whiskers and a--and a purr--"
+
+The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
+Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.
+
+Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a laugh as
+she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a sound so
+wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him, that Mr.
+Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said, catching at the cat
+and hugging her tight, "I can't let _you_ go--" And she buried her face
+in her fur, so that Mr. Twist still couldn't see it.
+
+"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very firmly.
+"You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up, cat and all,
+and set her on her feet.
+
+Then he saw her face.
+
+"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking shelter
+behind her pride and looking at him as defiantly as she could out of
+eyes almost closed up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen
+to--to seem as if I'd been crying that I--that I'm minding anything."
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had straightway
+forgotten about himself and his longings and his proposals, and only
+knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no," he said, looking at her
+aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding anything, either of us."
+
+He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to
+do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony--yes, it was
+downright agony--on her face.
+
+He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he thought--he
+was pretty sure--she was thinking and feeling that her beloved Columbus
+had gone from her, and gone to a stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to
+a stranger she had never even seen, never even heard of; that her
+Columbus had had secrets from her, had been doing things behind her
+back; that she had had perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was
+tasting the dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that
+she must be sick with fears,--for he knew how responsible she felt, how
+seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin--sick with fear
+about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness, of
+looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for all any
+one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.
+
+Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt. Certainly he
+could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one with confidence,
+who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting mate for Anna-Felicitas.
+But he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
+thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to suffer so
+violently on account of what was, after all, a natural happening. But
+however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.
+
+He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said; and led
+her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen window, towards
+the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come right along with me,"
+he repeated, holding her firmly for she was very wobbly on her feet,
+"and we'll tell each other all about the things we're not minding. Do
+you remember when the _St. Luke_ left Liverpool? You thought I thought
+you were minding things then, and were very angry with me. We've made
+friends since, haven't we, and we aren't going to mind anything ever
+again except each other."
+
+But he hardly knew what he was saying, so great was his concern and
+distress.
+
+Anna-Rose went blindly. She stumbled along, helped by him, clutching the
+cat. She couldn't see out of her swollen eyes. Her foot caught in a
+root, and the cat, who had for some minutes past been thoroughly uneasy,
+became panic-stricken and struggled out of her arms, and fled into the
+wood. She tried to stop it, but it would go. For some reason this broke
+down her self-control. The warm cat clutched to her breast had at least
+been something living to hold on to. Now the very cat had gone. Her
+pride collapsed, and she tumbled against Mr. Twist's arm and just
+sobbed.
+
+If ever a man felt like a mother it was Mr. Twist at that moment. He
+promptly sat her down on the grass. "There now--there, there now," he
+said, whipping out his handkerchief and anxiously mopping up her face.
+"This is what I did on the _St. Luke_--do you remember?--there now--that
+time you told me about your mother--it looks like being my permanent
+job--there, there now--don't now--you'll have no little eyes left soon
+if you go on like this--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--Co-Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes I know all about Columbus. Don't you worry about her. She's
+all right. She's all right in the office at this moment, and we're all
+right out here if only you knew it, if only you wouldn't cry such
+quantities. It beats me where it all comes from, and you so
+little--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know--you're worrying yourself sick because you think
+you're responsible for her to your aunt and uncle, but you won't be, you
+know, once she's married--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--"
+
+"Now don't--now please--yes, yes, I know--he's a stranger, and you
+haven't seen him yet, but everybody was a stranger once," said Mr.
+Twist, quoting Anna-Felicitas's own argument, the one that had
+especially irritated him half-an-hour before, "and he's real good--I'm
+sure of it. And you'll be sure too the minute you see him. That's to
+say, if you're able to see anything or anybody for the next week out of
+your unfortunate stuck-together little eyes."
+
+"Oh but--oh but--you don't--you haven't--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I have. Now turn your face so that I can wipe the other side
+properly. There now, I caught an enormous tear. I got him just in time
+before he trickled into your ear. Lord, how sore your poor little eyes
+are. Don't it even cheer you to think you're going to be a
+sister-in-law, Anna-Rose?"
+
+"Oh but you don't--you haven't--" she sobbed, her face not a whit less
+agonized for all his reassurances.
+
+"Well, I know I wish I were going to be a brother-in-law," said Mr.
+Twist, worried by his inability to reassure, as he tenderly and
+carefully dabbed about the corners of her eyes and her soaked eyelashes.
+"My, shouldn't I think well of myself."
+
+Then his hand shook.
+
+"I wish I were going to be Anna-Felicitas's brother-in-law," he said,
+suddenly impelled, perhaps by this failure to get rid of the misery in
+her face, to hurl himself on his fate. "Not _yours_--get your mind quite
+clear about that,--but Anna-Felicitas's." And his hand shook so much
+that he had to leave off drying. For this was a proposal. If only
+Anna-Rose would see it, this was a proposal.
+
+Anna-Rose, however, saw nothing. Even in normal times she
+wasn't good at relationships, and had never yet understood the
+that-man's-father-was-my-father's-son one; now she simply didn't
+hear. She was sitting with her hands limply in her lap, and sobbing
+in a curious sort of anguish.
+
+He couldn't help being struck by it. There was more in this than he had
+grasped. Again he forgot himself and his proposal. Again he was
+overwhelmed by the sole desire to help and comfort.
+
+He put his hand on the two hands lying with such an air of being
+forgotten on her lap. "What is it?" he asked gently. "Little dear one,
+tell me. It's clear I'm not dead on to it yet."
+
+"Oh--Columbus--"
+
+She seemed to writhe in her misery.
+
+"Well yes, yes Columbus. We know all about that."
+
+Anna-Rose turned her quivering face to him. "Oh, you haven't seen--you
+don't see--it's only me that's seen--"
+
+"Seen what? What haven't I seen? Ah, don't cry--don't cry like that--"
+
+"Oh, I've lost her--lost her--"
+
+"Lost her? Because she's marrying?"
+
+"Lost her--lost her--" sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come now," remonstrated Mr. Twist. "Come now. That's just flat contrary
+to the facts. You've lost nothing, and you've gained a brother."
+
+"Oh,--lost her--lost her," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come, come now," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, looking at him out of her piteous eyes, "has nobody
+thought of it but me? Columbus hasn't. I--I know she hasn't from
+what--from what--she said. She's too--too happy to think. But--haven't
+you thought--haven't you seen--that she'll be English now--really
+English--and go away from me to England with him--and I--I can't go to
+England--because I'm still--I'm still--an alien enemy--and so I've lost
+her--lost her--lost my own twin--"
+
+And Anna-Rose dropped her head on to her knees and sobbed in an
+abandonment of agony.
+
+Mr. Twist sat without saying or doing anything at all. He hadn't thought
+of this; nor, he was sure, had Anna-Felicitas. And it was true. Now he
+understood Anna-Rose's face and the despair of it. He sat looking at
+her, overwhelmed by the realization of her misfortune. For a moment he
+was blinded by it, and didn't see what it would mean for him. Then he
+did see. He almost leaped, so sudden was the vision, and so luminous.
+
+"Anna-Rose," he said, his voice trembling, "I want to put my arm round
+you. That's because I love you. And if you'll let me do that I could
+tell you of a way there is out of this for you. But I can't tell you so
+well unless--unless you let me put my arm round you first...."
+
+He waited trembling. She only sobbed. He couldn't even be sure she was
+listening. So he put his arm round her to try. At least she didn't
+resist. So he drew her closer. She didn't resist that either. He
+couldn't even be sure she knew about it. So he put his other arm round
+her too, and though he couldn't be sure, he thought--he hardly dared
+think, but it did seem as if--she nestled.
+
+Happiness, such as in his lonely, loveless life he had never imagined,
+flooded Mr. Twist. He looked down at her face, which was now so close to
+his, and saw that her eyes were shut. Great sobs went on shaking her
+little body, and her tears, now that he wasn't wiping them, were rolling
+down her cheeks unchecked.
+
+He held her closer to him, close to his heart where she belonged, and
+again he had that sensation, that wonderful sensation, of nestling.
+
+"Little Blessed, the way out is so simple," he whispered. "Little
+Blessed, don't you see?"
+
+But whether Anna-Rose saw seemed very doubtful. There was only that
+feeling, as to which he was no doubt mistaken, of nestling to go on. Her
+eyes, anyhow, remained shut, and her body continued to heave with sobs.
+
+He bent his head lower. His voice shook. "It's so, so simple," he
+whispered. "All you've got to do is to marry me."
+
+And as she made an odd little movement in his arms he held her tighter
+and began to talk very fast.
+
+"No, no," he said, "don't answer anything yet. Just listen. Just let me
+tell you first. I want to tell you to start with how terribly I love
+you. But that doesn't mean you've got to love me--you needn't if you
+don't want to--if you can't--if you'd rather not I'm eighteen years
+older than you, and I know what I'm like to look at--no, don't say
+anything yet--just listen quiet first--but if you married me you'd be an
+American right away, don't you see? Just as Anna-Felicitas is going to
+be English. And I always intended going back to England as soon as may
+be, and if you married me what is to prevent your coming too? Coming to
+England? With Anna-Felicitas and her husband. Anna-Rose--little
+Blessed--think of it--all of us together. There won't be any aliens in
+that quartette, I guess, and the day you marry me you'll be done with
+being German for good and all. And don't you get supposing it matters
+about your not loving me, because, you see, I love you so much, I adore
+you so terribly, that anyhow there'll be more than enough love to go
+round, and you needn't ever worry about contributing any if you don't
+feel like it--"
+
+Mr. Twist broke off abruptly. "What say?" he said, for Anna-Rose was
+making definite efforts to speak. She was also making definite and
+unmistakable movements, and this time there could be no doubt about it;
+she was coming closer.
+
+"What say?" said Mr. Twist breathlessly, bending his head.
+
+"But I do," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do what?" said Mr. Twist, again breathlessly.
+
+She turned her face up to his. On it was the same look he had lately
+seen on Anna-Felicitas's, shining through in spite of the disfiguration
+of her tears.
+
+"But--_of course_ I do," whispered Anna-Rose, an extraordinary smile,
+an awe-struck sort of smile, coming into her face at the greatness of
+her happiness, at the wonder of it.
+
+"What? Do what?" said Mr. Twist, still more breathlessly.
+
+"I--always did," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"_What_ did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able to believe
+it, and yet--and yet--there on her little face, on her little
+transfigured face, shone the same look.
+
+"Oh--_love_ you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close as she could get.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes past four
+that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper obliquely across the
+sign of The Open Arms with the word.
+
+     SHUT
+
+on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr. Twist had
+only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the German inrush a
+few minutes before the hour, because of his being so happy; and when he
+did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the strip on only just in
+time. A car drove up as he came down the ladder.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car, pointing,
+thwarted and astonished, to the sign.
+
+"Shut," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Shut?"
+
+"Shut."
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14646 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14646 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher and Columbus, by Countess
+Elizabeth Von Arnim, Illustrated by Arthur Litle</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="Frontise" id="Frontise" href=
+"images/frontise_l.png"><img src="images/frontise_l.png" width=
+"300" alt=
+"Picture of man and two girls having tea in front of an inn. Signed Arthur Litle. Caption: &quot;Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me,&quot; said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.&quot;We love you.&quot; said Anna-Felicitas simply." />
+</a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1><a name="Title" id="Title"></a>CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS</h1>
+<h3>By the Author of <i>Elizabeth and Her German Garden</i></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">FRONTISPIECE BY ARTHUR LITLE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h6>Garden City New York<br />
+Doubleday, Page &amp; Company</h6>
+<h4>1919</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%; margin-top: 4em;" />
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<h3>Table of Contents:</h3>
+<p><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXXVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVIII</b></a></p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a><a name="CHAPTER_I" id=
+"CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p>Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they
+decided, as they sat huddled together in a corner of the
+second-class deck of the American liner <i>St. Luke</i>, and
+watched the dirty water of the Mersey slipping past and the
+Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist, and felt that it
+was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a father or a
+mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized that in
+front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet sea,
+endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of
+it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they
+could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the very
+remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to
+the other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways,
+derelicts, two wretched little Germans who were neither really
+Germans nor really English because they so unfortunately, so
+complicatedly were both,&mdash;they decided, looking very calm and
+determined and sitting very close together beneath the rug their
+English aunt had given them to put round their miserable alien
+legs, that what they really were, were Christopher and Columbus,
+because they were setting out to discover a New World.</p>
+<p>"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go
+and<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a> discover America. All for
+ourselves."</p>
+<p>It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and
+Columbus. She was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their
+seventeenth birthday&mdash;and what a birthday: no cake, no
+candles, no kisses and wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as
+Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it
+hard, you can't get blood out of an aunt&mdash;only a month before.
+Both were very German outside and very English inside. Both had
+fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have, and eyes the colour
+of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic. Their noses
+were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if you are
+a Junker's daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose.
+Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round.
+Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the
+most of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was
+tall and thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker
+made her eyes more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both
+held their heads up with a great air of calm whenever anybody on
+the ship looked at them, as who should say serenely, "We're
+<i>thoroughly</i> happy, and having the time of our lives."</p>
+<p>For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they
+were even aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry.
+Like other persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful
+nor pretended to be so much amused as when they were right down on
+the very bottom of their luck. Like other persons of German blood,
+they had the squashiest corners deep in their hearts, where they
+secretly clung to cakes and<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>
+Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible
+anniversary, both dead and alive.</p>
+<p>The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the
+rubbish that floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily
+forlorn. Empty boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of
+dismal dirtiness lay about on the sullen water; England was
+slipping away, England, their mother's country, the country of
+their dreams ever since they could remember&mdash;and the <i>St.
+Luke</i> with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.</p>
+<p>Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting
+an inch closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a
+submarine already?</p>
+<p>"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly,
+changing as it were the unspoken conversation.</p>
+<p>As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward
+her twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and
+encourage her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them,
+and hadn't seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that
+happened to her,&mdash;such as, for instance, when the war began
+and they three, their father having died some years before, left
+their home up by the Baltic, just as there was the most heavenly
+weather going on, and the garden was a dream, and the blue
+Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens that very
+day,&mdash;all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose
+thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the
+tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery,&mdash;and came
+by slow and difficult stages to England; or such as when their
+mother began catching cold and didn't seem at last ever able to
+leave off <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>catching cold, and
+though she tried to pretend she didn't mind colds and that they
+didn't matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter
+very much, for between them they killed her.</p>
+<p>Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that
+she was dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose's duty, as the next eldest
+in the family, to carry on the tradition and discountenance too
+much drooping in Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much
+too thoughtfully at the deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky
+and the rubbish brooding on the face of the waters, and she had
+jumped rather excessively when the <i>St. Luke</i> stopped so
+suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake hard, and emitted
+that agonized whistle.</p>
+<p>"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, "and
+we're going to discover America."</p>
+<p>"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'll be Christopher."</p>
+<p>"No. I'll be Christopher," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable,
+acquiescent person in the world. "Then I suppose I'll have to be
+Columbus. But I think Christopher sounds prettier."</p>
+<p>Both rolled their r's incurably. It was evidently in their
+blood, for nothing, no amount of teaching and admonishment, could
+get them out of it. Before they were able to talk at all, in those
+happy days when parents make astounding assertions to other parents
+about the intelligence and certain future brilliancy of their
+offspring, and the other parents, however much they may pity such
+self-deception, can't contradict, because after all it just
+possibly may be so, the most foolish people occasionally producing
+geniuses,&mdash;in <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>those happy
+days of undisturbed bright castle-building, the mother, who was
+English, of the two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the
+<i>St. Luke</i>, said to the father, who was German, "At any rate
+these two blessed little bundles of deliciousness"&mdash;she had
+one on each arm and was tickling their noses alternately with her
+eyelashes, and they were screaming for joy&mdash;"won't have to
+learn either German or English. They'll just <i>know</i> them."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father, who was a cautious man.</p>
+<p>"They're born bi-lingual," said the mother; and the twins
+wheezed and choked with laughter, for she was tickling them beneath
+their chins, softly fluttering her eyelashes along the creases of
+fat she thought so adorable.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father.</p>
+<p>"It gives them a tremendous start," said the mother; and the
+twins squirmed in a dreadful ecstasy, for she had now got to their
+ears.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father.</p>
+<p>But what happened was that they didn't speak either language.
+Not, that is, as a native should. Their German bristled with
+mistakes. They spoke it with a foreign accent. It was copious, but
+incorrect. Almost the last thing their father, an accurate man,
+said to them as he lay dying, had to do with a misplaced dative.
+And when they talked English it rolled about uncontrollably on its
+r's, and had a great many long words in it got from Milton, and Dr.
+Johnson, and people like that, whom their mother had particularly
+loved, but as they talked far more to their mother than to their
+father, who was a man of much briefness in words though not in
+temper, they were better on the whole at English than German.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>Their mother, who loved England
+more the longer she lived away from it,&mdash;"As one does; and the
+same principle," Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas when they
+had lived some time with their aunt and uncle, "applies to
+relations, aunts' husbands, and the clergy,"&mdash;never tired of
+telling her children about it, and its poetry, and its spirit, and
+the greatness and glory of its points of view. They drank it all in
+and believed every word of it, for so did their mother; and as they
+grew up they flung themselves on all the English books they could
+lay hands upon, and they read with their mother and learned by
+heart most of the obviously beautiful things; and because she
+glowed with enthusiasm they glowed too&mdash;Anna-Rose in a flare
+and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow and steadily. They adored their
+mother. Whatever she loved they loved blindly. It was a pity she
+died. She died soon after the war began. They had been so happy, so
+<i>dreadfully</i> happy....</p>
+<p>"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a
+shake, for here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to
+think of one's mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to
+a new life and everything is all promise because it isn't anything
+else, and not if one's mother happened to have been so&mdash;well,
+so fearfully sweet. "You can't be Christopher, because, you see,
+I'm the eldest."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with
+it, but she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and
+expressed a hope that Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her
+Col for short. "I'm afraid you will, though," she added, "and then
+I shall feel so like Onkel Nicolas."</p>
+<p>This was their German uncle, known during his life-<a name=
+"Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>time, which had abruptly left off when the
+twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient person, older by far
+even than their father, who had seemed so very old. But Onkel Col
+had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of the
+<i>liebe Gott</i> in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He
+came to a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them
+anything except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a
+black band round the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was
+more good-tempered than ever, and their mother, when they
+questioned her, just said that poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven,
+and that in future they would speak of him as Onkel Nicolas,
+because it was more respectful.</p>
+<p>"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
+Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the
+garden.</p>
+<p>"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so
+often explained to her sister, naturally knew more about
+everything, "because the angels won't like him. Nobody <i>could</i>
+like Onkel Col. Even if they're angels. And though they're obliged
+to have him there because he was such a very good man, they won't
+talk to him much or notice him much when God isn't looking. And
+second of all, because you <i>are</i> poor when you get to heaven.
+Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their things with them,
+and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He couldn't even take
+his clothes with him."</p>
+<p>"Then is he quite&mdash;did Onkel Col go there quite&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection
+with Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at
+them from the folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever
+they were <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>led in, trembling, to
+see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it seemed
+particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
+which was surely of all places the most
+<i>endimanch&eacute;</i>.</p>
+<p>"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a
+little. She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her
+mouth close to Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."</p>
+<p>They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in
+their eyes.</p>
+<p>"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away
+from the awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in
+heaven because they don't have the moth there. It says so in the
+Bible. And you can't have the moth without having anything for it
+to go into."</p>
+<p>"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn
+when they take their furs out."</p>
+<p>"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven,"
+continued Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there <i>isn't</i>
+anything to steal."</p>
+<p>"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for
+she didn't like to think there was nothing really valuable in
+heaven.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nobody ever steals <i>them</i>," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new
+uncomfortable view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right,
+and she always was right for she said so herself, that heaven
+couldn't be such a safe place after all, nor such a kind place.
+Thieves could break in and steal if they wanted to. She had a
+proper horror of thieves. She was sure the night would certainly
+come when they would break into her father's <a name="Page_11" id=
+"Page_11"></a><i>Schloss</i>, or, as her English nurse called it,
+her dear Papa's slosh; and she was worried that poor Onkel Col
+should be being snubbed up there, and without anything to put on,
+which would make being snubbed so much worse, for clothes did
+somehow comfort one.</p>
+<p>She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment
+when she knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour
+for inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the
+orchard, an exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because
+she had learned through affliction that her inside, fond and proud
+of it as she was, was yet not of that superior and blessed kind
+that suffers green apples gladly&mdash;she sought out the
+nursemaid, whose name, too, confusingly, was Anna, and led the
+conversation up to heaven and the possible conditions prevailing in
+it by asking her to tell her, in strict confidence and as woman to
+woman, what she thought Onkel Col exactly looked like at that
+moment.</p>
+<p>"Unrecognizable," said the nursemaid promptly.</p>
+<p>"Unrecognizable?" echoed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>And the nursemaid, after glancing over her shoulder to see if
+the governess were nowhere in sight, told Anna-Felicitas the true
+story of Onkel Col's end: which is so bad that it isn't fit to be
+put in any book except one with an appendix.</p>
+<p>A stewardess passed just as Anna-Felicitas was asking Anna-Rose
+not to remind her of these grim portions of the past by calling her
+Col, a stewardess in such a very clean white cap that she looked
+both reliable and benevolent, while secretly she was neither.</p>
+<p>"Can you please tell us why we're stopping?" Anna-Rose inquired
+of her politely, leaning forward to catch her attention as she
+hurried by.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>The stewardess allowed her
+roving eye to alight for a moment on the two objects beneath the
+rug. Their chairs were close together, and the rug covered them
+both up to their chins. Over the top of it their heads appeared,
+exactly alike as far as she could see in the dusk; round heads,
+each with a blue knitted cap pulled well over its ears, and round
+eyes staring at her with what anybody except the stewardess would
+have recognized as a passionate desire for some sort of
+reassurance. They might have been seven instead of seventeen for
+all the stewardess could tell. They looked younger than anything
+she had yet seen sitting alone on a deck and asking questions. But
+she was an exasperated widow, who had never had children and wasn't
+to be touched by anything except a tip, besides despising, because
+she was herself a second-class stewardess, all second-class
+passengers,&mdash;"As one does," Anna-Rose explained later on to
+Anna-Felicitas, "and the same principle applies to Jews." So she
+said with an acidity completely at variance with the promise of her
+cap, "Ask the Captain," and disappeared.</p>
+<p>The twins looked at each other. They knew very well that
+captains on ships were mighty beings who were not asked
+questions.</p>
+<p>"She's trifling with us," murmured Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Rose was obliged to admit, though the thought was
+repugnant to her that they should look like people a stewardess
+would dare trifle with.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
+silence.</p>
+<p>"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the
+rug."</p>
+<p>"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown
+up."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>Yes. She ought to have seen
+us six months ago."</p>
+<p>Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised
+at the activities and complete appearance of the two pup&aelig; now
+rolled motionless in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both
+been probationers in a children's hospital in Worcestershire,
+arrayed, even as the stewardess, in spotless caps, hurrying hither
+and thither with trays of food, sweeping and washing up, learning
+to make beds in a given time, and be deft, and quick, and never
+tired, and always punctual.</p>
+<p>This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of
+their Aunt Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their
+departure and who had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was
+an amiable aunt, but she didn't understand about birthdays. It was
+the first one they had had since they were complete orphans, and so
+they were rather sensitive about it. But they hadn't cried, because
+since their mother's death they had done with crying. What could
+there ever again be in the world bad enough to cry about after
+that? And besides, just before she dropped away from them into the
+unconsciousness out of which she never came back, but instead just
+dropped a little further into death, she had opened her eyes
+unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row by her bed,
+two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen faces
+and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
+moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and
+distance and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered
+with a flicker of the old encouraging smile that had comforted
+every hurt and bruise they had ever had, "<i>Don't cry</i> ...
+little darlings, <i>don't</i> cry...."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>But on that first birthday
+after her death they had got more and more solemn as time passed,
+and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no sounds, prick up
+their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in the next room,
+no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the presents, and at
+last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open of the door
+and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with candles,
+each on a table covered with flowers and all the things one has
+most wanted.</p>
+<p>Their aunt didn't know. How should she? England was a great and
+beloved country, but it didn't have proper birthdays.</p>
+<p>"Every country has one drawback," Anna-Rose explained to
+Anna-Felicitas when the morning was finally over, in case she
+should by any chance be thinking badly of the dear country that had
+produced their mother as well as Shakespeare, "and not knowing
+about birthdays is England's."</p>
+<p>"There's Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, whose honest mind
+groped continually after accuracy.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Rose admitted after a pause. "Yes. There's Uncle
+Arthur."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a name="Page_15" id=
+"Page_15"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p>Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like
+foreigners, and said so. He never had liked them and had always
+said so. It wasn't the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as
+the war went on, and these German nieces of his wife became more
+and more, as he told her, a blighted nuisance, so did he become
+more and more pointed, and said he didn't mind French foreigners,
+nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks later, that it wasn't
+Italian foreigners either that he minded; and still later, that nor
+was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of countries called
+neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a general way. To
+his wife when alone he said much more.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to
+soften his heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings
+when he came home weary from his daily avocations, which were golf.
+Her own suggestion instantly projected a touching picture on her
+impressionable imagination of youth, grateful for a roof over its
+head, in return alleviating the tedium of crabbed age by
+introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was evidently
+unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great
+masters of English literature.</p>
+<p>But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when
+she proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug,
+where he was moving money <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>about
+in trouser-pockets of the best material. And later on she
+discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen," and
+"Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals
+during his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get
+mentioned were well-known racehorses.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he
+said things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate
+alien nieces longer than one would have supposed possible if one
+had overheard what he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their
+bed. His ordered existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew,
+was shaken in its innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the
+arrival of the two Germans. Other people round about had Belgians
+in their homes, and groaned; but who but he, the most immensely
+British of anybody, had Germans? And he couldn't groan, because
+they were, besides being motherless creatures, his own wife's flesh
+and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but he could and did
+do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs couldn't
+have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she belonged,
+instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when she
+had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
+children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed
+that he would like to know.</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was
+both silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said
+nothing. She herself was quietly going through very much on behalf
+of her nieces. Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The
+tradespeople twitted the cook with having to cook for them and were
+facetious about sausages and asked how one <a name="Page_17" id=
+"Page_17"></a>made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
+very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was
+doing and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard
+such strange things, one never could possibly tell even with
+children; and regularly the local policeman bicycled over to see if
+the aliens, who were registered at the county-town police-station,
+were still safe. And then they looked so very German, Aunt Alice
+felt. There was no mistaking them. And every time they opened their
+mouths there were all those r's rolling about. She hardly liked
+callers to find her nieces in her drawing-room at tea-time, they
+were so difficult to explain; yet they were too old to shut up in a
+nursery.</p>
+<p>After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them
+back to Germany; but their consternation had been so great and
+their entreaties to be kept where they were so desperate that he
+said no more about that. Besides, they told him that if they went
+back there they would be sure to be shot as spies, for over there
+nobody would believe they were German, just as over here nobody
+would believe they were English; and besides, this was in those
+days of the war when England was still regarding Germany as more
+mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever of the tradition of
+great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward a foe, and
+Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be behind his
+country in generosity.</p>
+<p>Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous
+necklace of war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead
+of horror strung upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle
+remaining good, in practice found himself vindictive. He was
+saddled; that's what he was. Saddled with this monstrous <a name=
+"Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic
+of Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given
+notice by his old servants, having particular attention paid his
+house at night by the police, getting anonymous letters about
+lights seen in his upper windows the nights; the Zeppelins came,
+which were the windows of the floor those blighted twins slept on,
+and all because he had married Aunt Alice.</p>
+<p>At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was
+not a place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married
+Uncle Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed;
+but now she was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be
+told that she had brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life
+by having let him marry her. Inquiring backwards into her
+recollections it appeared to her that she had had no say at all
+about being married, but that Uncle Arthur had told her she was
+going to be, and then that she had been. Which was what had indeed
+happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little woman even in those
+days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with agreeable fat at
+the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist delicacy that
+comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she suggested, just
+as now, most of the things most men want to come home
+to,&mdash;slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and
+peace within one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out
+privately to Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the
+first time, she suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied
+fashions succulent, she was doomed to make some good man happy. But
+she did find it real hard work.</p>
+<p>It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that
+Uncle Arthur would not much longer endure <a name="Page_19" id=
+"Page_19"></a>his nieces, and that even if he did she would not be
+able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very dreadful to her
+that she was being forced to choose between two duties, and that
+she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she must
+either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
+and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing
+by, go away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or
+she must stand by Arthur.</p>
+<p>She chose Arthur.</p>
+<p>How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her
+husband? Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole
+of their married life that she was now unalterably attached to him.
+Sometimes a wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing
+dusk of her mind, the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving
+him for them, and helping and protecting the two poor aliens till
+happier days should return. If there were any good stuff in Arthur
+would he not recognize, however angry he might be, that she was
+doing at least a Christian thing? But this illumination would soon
+die out. Her comforts choked it. She was too well-fed. After twenty
+years of it, she no longer had the figure for lean and dangerous
+enterprises.</p>
+<p>And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she
+had of determination in finding an employment for her nieces that
+would remove them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found
+it in a children's hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a
+hospital subscribed to very largely by Arthur, for being a good man
+he subscribed to hospitals. The matron objected, but Aunt Alice
+overrode the matron; and from January to April Uncle Arthur's house
+was pure from Germans.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>Then they came back
+again.</p>
+<p>It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work
+with them. The sick children had relapses when they discovered who
+it was who brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It
+had been arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the
+unfortunate nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They
+were just to be Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,&mdash;("We
+will leave out the von," said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural
+cunning. "They have a von, you know, poor things&mdash;such a very
+labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without it might quite well
+be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as though they had had
+some shocking name like Bismarck.")</p>
+<p>Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the
+rolled r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined
+little mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were
+foreigners, and equally clearly they were not Italians, or
+Russians, or French. Within a week the nurses spoke of them in
+private as Fritz and Franz. Within a fortnight a deputation of
+staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on patriotic grounds,
+for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron, with the fear
+of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the biggest
+subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
+being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably
+have continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the
+nurses if it had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous,
+of the younger Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.</p>
+<p>In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's
+shortcomings by a double zeal, a double <a name="Page_21" id=
+"Page_21"></a>willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas was a
+born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
+never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
+bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her
+duty, but every time she met a pail standing about she knocked
+against it and it fell over. Patients and nurses watched her
+approach with apprehension. Her ward was in a constant condition of
+flood.</p>
+<p>"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried
+eagerly to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.</p>
+<p>"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.</p>
+<p>"She reads, you see, a lot&mdash;whenever she gets the chance
+she reads&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Reads!" echoed the sister.</p>
+<p>"And then, you see, she gets thinking&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Thinking! Reading doesn't make <i>me</i> think."</p>
+<p>"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am
+obliged to dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has
+no vocation for nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is
+shaping well and I shall be pleased to keep her on."</p>
+<p>"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she
+announced these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my
+sister. I'd like very much to know what would become of that poor
+child without me to look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."</p>
+<p>The matron put down her pen,&mdash;she was a woman who made many
+notes&mdash;and stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did
+her nurses speak to her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a
+spot remote from everything except love and laughter, had all the
+<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>fearlessness of ignorance; and
+in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining and her
+face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
+kitten.</p>
+<p>"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One
+should always do what one considers one's first duty."</p>
+<p>So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was
+greatly relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle
+Arthur said Damn.</p>
+<p>"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.</p>
+<p>"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell
+can we&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Arthur," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If
+people wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow
+them any better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for
+when he marries!"</p>
+<p>"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt
+Alice, tears in her gentle eyes.</p>
+<p>There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of
+Aunt Alice. She answered advertisements and offered the twins as
+nursery governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps,
+even as orphans willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim
+on salaries, she offered them for nothing, and at last she offered
+them accompanied by a bonus. "Their mother was English. They are
+quite English," wrote Aunt Alice innumerable times in innumerable
+letters. "I feel bound, however, to tell you that they once had a
+German father, but of course it was through no fault of their own,"
+etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with writing letters; and any
+solution of the problem that <a name="Page_23" id=
+"Page_23"></a>might possibly have been arrived at came to nothing
+because Anna-Rose would not be separated from Anna-Felicitas, and
+if it was difficult to find anybody who would take on one German
+nobody at all could be found to take on two.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt
+Alice was at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The
+twins racked their brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to
+relieve Uncle Arthur of their presence as he was to be relieved. If
+only they could be independent, do something, work, go as
+housemaids,&mdash;anything.</p>
+<p>They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it
+to <i>The Times</i>, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay
+for it. The advertisement was:</p>
+<p class="blockquot">Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but
+unimpeachable sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with
+respectability. No objection to being demeaned.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was
+Anna-Rose's word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding
+things like being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose.
+"Upper and Under. I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the
+eldest."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she
+regarded it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word,
+liked it, and explained that it Put a whole sentence into a
+nut-shell, and wouldn't change it.</p>
+<p>No one answered this advertisement except a society in London
+for helping alien enemies in distress.</p>
+<p>"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>And fancy thinking <i>us</i>
+enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While mummy&mdash;" Her eyes
+filled with tears. She kept them back, however, behind convenient
+long eye-lashes.</p>
+<p>Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of <i>The
+Times</i> that they instantly answered without saying a word to
+Aunt Alice. The advertisement was:</p>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Slightly wounded Officer would
+be glad to find intelligent and</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">interesting companion who can drive
+a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">by arrangement.</span></p>
+<p>"We'll <i>tell</i> him we're intelligent and interesting," said
+Anna-Rose, eagerly.</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given
+a chance?" said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.</p>
+<p>"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the
+emoluments won't have to be doubled."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;because he mightn't like paying twice over."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and while the preliminaries are being settled we
+could be learning to drive Uncle Arthur's car."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they
+different?"</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but only about the same difference as there is
+between a man and a woman. A man and a woman are both human beings,
+you know. And Daimlers and Humbers are both cars."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.</p>
+<p>They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.</p>
+<p>The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward
+the end of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and
+were requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to
+express their sympathy <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>with his
+wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity of driving a
+Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
+instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell
+them if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so
+it was very unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite
+the contrary.</p>
+<p>They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all
+hope and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have
+betrayed their want of intelligence and interestingness right away,
+when one day a letter came from General Headquarters in France,
+addressed <i>To Both the Miss Twinklers</i>, and it was a long
+letter, pages long, from the slightly wounded officer, telling them
+he had been patched up again and sent back to the front, and their
+answer to his advertisement had been forwarded to him there, and
+that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that the one he
+had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped when
+he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
+glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring
+them,&mdash;quick motoring in his racing car, sixty miles an hour
+motoring, flashing through the wonders of the New Forest, where he
+lived. And then there was a long bit about what the New Forest must
+be looking like just then, all quiet in the spring sunshine, with
+lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the big beeches, and the
+heather just coming alive, and all the winding solitary roads so
+full of peace, so empty of noise.</p>
+<p>"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end.
+"You've no idea what it's like getting letters from home out here.
+Write and tell me what you do and what the garden is like these
+fine afternoons. The <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>lilacs must
+be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them still about,
+and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and tea is
+brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
+except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog
+barking somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."</p>
+<p>The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a
+scrawl in the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English
+kids like you that we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again
+soon."</p>
+<p>"English kids like us!"</p>
+<p>They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their
+belligerent ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and
+as if Captain Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under
+false pretences. They also wondered why he should conclude they
+were kids.</p>
+<p>They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly
+what could be described as English, but on the other hand neither
+were they exactly what could be described as German. "We would be
+very glad indeed if we were really <i>something</i>," they
+added.</p>
+<p>But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in
+the list of casualties in <i>The Times</i> that Captain John
+Desmond had been killed.</p>
+<p>And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was
+revealed to Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday
+morning considering his troubles in detail.</p>
+<p>Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into
+being,&mdash;obvious, unquestionable, splendidly simple,&mdash;out
+of a trifle. For, chancing to raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to
+the bookshelves in front of him, they rested on <a name="Page_27"
+id="Page_27"></a>one particular book, and on the back of this book
+stood out in big gilt letters the word</p>
+<h3>AMERICA</h3>
+<p>There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood
+out, and it had all the effect of a revelation.</p>
+<p>There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the
+devil hadn't Alice thought of <i>that</i>? He knew some Americans;
+he didn't like them, but he knew them; and he would write to them,
+or Alice would write to them, and tell them the twins were coming.
+He would give the twins &pound;200,&mdash;damn it, nobody could say
+that wasn't handsome, especially in war-time, and for a couple of
+girls who had no earthly sort of claim on him, whatever Alice might
+choose to think they had on her. Yet it was such a confounded
+mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he wouldn't come
+under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money, as aiding
+the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to be
+rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would
+fall on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed
+Germans without making a face.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
+insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's
+what <i>they've</i> done," he said to himself&mdash;for this was
+1916, and America had not yet made her magnificent entry into the
+war&mdash;as he had already said to himself a hundred times. "Lost
+their chance of coming in on the side of civilization, and helping
+sweep the world up tidy of barbarism. Shoulder to shoulder with us,
+that's where <i>they</i> ought to have been. English-speaking
+races&mdash;duty to the world&mdash;" <a name="Page_28" id=
+"Page_28"></a>He then damned the Americans; but was suddenly
+interrupted by perceiving that if they had been shoulder to
+shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been able to send
+them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was, he
+conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could
+not, however, concede any others.</p>
+<p>At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
+Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
+uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
+to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.</p>
+<p>It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet
+Sunday, when he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had
+overdone the joint.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a name="Page_29"
+id="Page_29"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p>And so, on a late September afternoon, the <i>St. Luke</i>,
+sliding away from her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his
+burden.</p>
+<p>It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it
+would not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies
+themselves knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made
+Uncle Arthur feel so pleasant as he walked home across his park
+from golf to tea that for a moment he was actually of a mind to
+kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and perhaps even address her in the
+language of resuscitated passion, which in Uncle Arthur's mouth was
+Old Girl,&mdash;an idea he abandoned, however, in case it should
+make her self-satisfied and tiresome&mdash;the same knowledge that
+produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
+nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of
+the <i>St. Luke</i> hungrily watching the people on the wharf.</p>
+<p>For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth
+whose enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one
+direction. And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother,
+in England. It seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so
+far away, and leave her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel
+like that. She was with them just the same; wherever they went now
+she would be with them, and they could hear her saying at that very
+moment, "Little darlings, <i>don't</i> cry...." But it was <a name=
+"Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort
+of afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of
+the people waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to
+them.</p>
+<p>"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
+handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.</p>
+<p>"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas
+in her gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of
+bother with her eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the
+fact that she was sniffing.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly
+whipped out her handkerchief and waved it violently.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head
+forward. "Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has
+any one come to see us off?"</p>
+<p>"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until
+they had faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she
+turned round and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on
+to her very tight for a minute.</p>
+<p>"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But
+do you suppose I was going to have us <i>looking</i> like people
+who aren't seen off?"</p>
+<p>And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they
+were safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she
+added, "That man&mdash;" and then stopped. "<a name="Page_31" id=
+"Page_31"></a>What man?"</p>
+<p>"Standing just behind us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any
+more than she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen
+pails.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us,"
+said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to
+indignation.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Did you ever?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put
+her handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever;
+and after a pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new
+responsibilities and anxieties&mdash;she had so many that sometimes
+for a time she didn't remember some of them&mdash;turned her head
+to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried eye on her said, "You won't
+go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna F.?"</p>
+<p>"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.</p>
+<p>"Your German Bible. The bit about <i>wenn die b&ouml;sen Buben
+locken, so folge sie nicht</i>."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a
+troubled brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you,
+Anna F.?"</p>
+<p>For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she
+was very pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite
+creature God had yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed
+this conviction from her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds.
+She considered it wouldn't have been at all good for her; and she
+had, up to this, and ever since they could both remember, jeered in
+a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her defects, concentrating
+particularly <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>on her nose, on her
+leanness, and on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she
+drooped.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her
+own face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
+Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her
+leanness was lovely,&mdash;the same sort of slender grace her
+mother had had in the days before the heart-breaking emaciation
+that was its last phase; and that her head was set so charmingly on
+her neck that when she drooped and forgot her father's constant
+injunction to sit up,&mdash;"For," had said her father at
+monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as straight as
+a fir-tree,"&mdash;she only seemed to fall into even more
+attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone
+had the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming
+younger sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while
+tactfully avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which
+might make her conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself
+with discretion.</p>
+<p>But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of
+all to handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so
+elaborate, and so carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and
+German Scripture at that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't
+succeed in disentangling her meaning, and after a space of staring
+at her with a mild inquiry in her eyes, she decided that perhaps
+she hadn't got one. She was much too polite though, to say so, and
+they sat in silence under the rug till the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled
+and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make conversation about
+Christopher and Columbus.</p>
+<p>She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving
+England. She hoped Anna-Felicitas <a name="Page_33" id=
+"Page_33"></a>hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on like
+that. When the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled, she was ashamed that it
+wasn't only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness
+she put into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant
+to go and discover America was such that that young lady, who if
+slow was sure, said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really
+taking it dreadfully to heart."</p>
+<p>The <i>St. Luke</i> was only dropping anchor for the night in
+the Mersey, and would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from
+the talk of passengers walking up and down the deck in twos and
+threes and passing and repassing the chairs containing the silent
+figures with the round heads that might be either the heads of boys
+or of girls, and they were greatly relieved to think they wouldn't
+have to begin and be sea-sick for some hours yet. "So couldn't we
+walk about a little?" suggested Anna-Felicitas, who was already
+stiff from sitting on the hard cane chair.</p>
+<p>But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a
+ship if they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid
+being sick but also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the
+moment the ship got under way, and not move out of them till it
+stopped again. "Or, at least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt
+Alice, who had never herself been further on a ship than to Calais,
+but recognized that it might be difficult to avoid moving sooner or
+later if it was New York you were going to. "Two such young girls
+travelling alone should be seen as seldom as ever you can manage.
+Your Uncle is sending you second-class for that very reason,
+because it is so much less conspicuous."</p>
+<p>It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle <a name=
+"Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>Arthur's generosities were of the kind
+that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in eating he
+was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be damned,
+so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and the
+extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that
+were necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary,
+before he finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so
+profoundly that when it came to taking their passage he could
+hardly be got not to send them in the steerage. This was too much,
+however, for Aunt Alice, whose maid was going with them as far as
+Euston and therefore would know what sort of tickets they had, and
+she insisted with such quiet obstinacy that they should be sent
+first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the difference and
+consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also explained
+that second-class was less conspicuous.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the
+wisdom of walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already,
+but she too was stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has
+a wonderful effect, as she had already in her brief career had
+numerous occasions to observe, in doing away with prudent
+determinations. So, after cautiously looking round the corners to
+see if the man who was on the verge of being sorry for them were
+nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the damp, dark deck; and
+the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them a sensation of
+being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between two
+worlds.</p>
+<p>Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then
+against the side of the <i>St. Luke</i> when some other steamer,
+invisible in the mist, felt her way slowly <a name="Page_35" id=
+"Page_35"></a>by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
+that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other
+side, hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it
+further and further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt,
+it yet, because on either side of it were still the shores of
+England, didn't seem as forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land
+they were bound for. For suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of
+Anna-Rose, who had been privately asking herself the same thing,
+America didn't like them? Suppose the same sort of difficulties
+were waiting for them over there that had dogged their footsteps in
+England?</p>
+<p>"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself
+on the readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will
+like us, because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to
+it in exactly the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,&mdash;and don't
+you go forgetting it and showing your disagreeable side&mdash;that
+the dove was in when it flew across the waters to the ark, and with
+olive branches in our beaks just the same as the dove's, only
+they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's friends."</p>
+<p>"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends&mdash;" began
+Anna-Felicitas, who had great doubts as to everything connected
+with Uncle Arthur.</p>
+<p>"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she
+wasn't going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question
+liked to give all the information in her power, "secondly, America
+is the greatest of the neutrals except the <i>liebe Gott</i>, and
+is bound particularly to prize us because we're so unusually and
+peculiarly neutral. What ever was more neutral than you and me?
+We're neither one thing nor the other, and yet at the same time
+we're both." <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>Anna-Felicitas
+remarked that it sounded rather as if they were the Athanasian
+Creed.</p>
+<p>"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's
+&pound;200 waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm
+thing to think of. We never had &pound;200 waiting for us anywhere
+in our lives before, did we,&mdash;so you remember that, and don't
+get grumbling."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that
+she couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the
+goodwill of Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt
+Alice's friends they had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's
+friends were more likely to like her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which
+to start on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and
+that one didn't have doubts.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she
+was very hungry, not having had anything that could be called a
+meal since breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in
+"Lycidas," the hungry ones who looked up and were not fed, and she
+quoted the lines in case Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which
+Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew the lines by heart, and if there
+was any quoting to be done liked to do it herself), and said she
+felt just like that,&mdash;"Empty," said Anna-Felicitas, "and yet
+swollen. When do you suppose people have food on board ships? I
+don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about&mdash;oh well, about
+leaving England, if it was after dinner."</p>
+<p>"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At
+least, not more than's just proper."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily.
+"Except what's proper."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>And even if we were feeling
+it <i>dreadfully</i>," said Anna-Rose, with a little catch in her
+voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't make any
+difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."</p>
+<p>"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got
+much to bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things,
+Anna-F."</p>
+<p>"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there
+wouldn't soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all
+disappeared. They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there
+were no lights. The row of cabin windows along the wall were
+closely shuttered, and the door they had come through when first
+they came on deck was shut too, and they couldn't find it in the
+dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling along a wall for a door they
+knew was there and not be able to find it, that they began to
+laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up more than
+anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
+Arthur.</p>
+<p>"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and
+vainly along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.</p>
+<p>"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said
+Anna-Felicitas, following in her tracks.</p>
+<p>A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left
+off patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity
+against the wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It
+was a male figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they
+thought, and it stopped in front of them and said in an American
+voice, "Hello."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>Anna-Rose cast rapidly about
+in her mind for the proper form of reply to Hello.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured
+"Hello" back again.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to
+people they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think
+they had brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided
+that perhaps "Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said
+it.</p>
+<p>"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of
+this.</p>
+<p>"That's what <i>we</i> think," agreed Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.</p>
+<p>"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose,
+still distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to
+know.</p>
+<p>"But <i>don't</i> tell us to ask the Captain," said
+Anna-Felicitas, even more earnestly.</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."</p>
+<p>The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding
+on; and they followed him as obediently as though such persons as
+possible <i>b&ouml;se Buben</i> didn't exist.</p>
+<p>"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs
+were long and they could hardly keep up with him.</p>
+<p>"English?" said the man.</p>
+<p>"Ye&mdash;es," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "<a name="Page_39"
+id="Page_39"></a>I said," Anna-Felicitas endeavoured to explain,
+hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep within reach of his
+ear, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the
+pantings for breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"</p>
+<p>They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful
+question to have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but,
+having got to the door they had been searching for, opened it and
+stepped into the bright light inside, and putting out his arm
+behind him pulled them in one after the other over the high wooden
+door-frame.</p>
+<p>Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the
+afternoon, engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like
+grievances to an official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She
+stopped suddenly when the man appeared, and the official took his
+hands out of his pockets and became alert and attentive, and the
+stewardess hastily picked up a tray she had set down and began to
+move away along a passage.</p>
+<p>The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and
+came back even more quickly than she had tried to go.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to
+Anna-Felicitas, "it's Hi she answers to."</p>
+<p>"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good
+circumlocutions to throw them away on her."</p>
+<p>"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.</p>
+<p>He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason
+into a laugh, and turned away and beckoned <a name="Page_40" id=
+"Page_40"></a>to the official to follow him, and went out again
+into the night.</p>
+<p>"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the
+stewardess down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber
+and machine-oil and cooking all mixed up together.</p>
+<p>"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't
+tell us to ask the Captain, because we really do know better than
+that."</p>
+<p>"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."</p>
+<p>The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of
+course."</p>
+<p>"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess
+shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.</p>
+<p>"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."</p>
+<p>"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing
+to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her
+down arm-in-arm.</p>
+<p>"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do
+you suppose we quarrel?"</p>
+<p>"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
+stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."</p>
+<p>She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short
+girl or the long girl.</p>
+<p>"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said
+Anna-Felicitas gently. "<a name="Page_41" id=
+"Page_41"></a>Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head.
+She was unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of
+containing a reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow
+off and on for ten years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it
+would take more than even the Captain to obsess <i>me</i>."</p>
+<p>They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room,
+and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before
+indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If
+you're friends, what do you want to know his name for, then?"</p>
+<p>"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"The Captain's," said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
+patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."</p>
+<p>"Then&mdash;" began the stewardess. She restrained herself,
+however, and merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman <i>was</i>
+the Captain," went upstairs and left them.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your
+advice," she called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for
+it was evident that for some reason her heart was hardened, by
+flattery. "You <i>told</i> us to ask the Captain."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a name="Page_42" id=
+"Page_42"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p>In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it
+occurred to them that perhaps what was the matter with the
+stewardess was that she needed a tip. At first, with their recent
+experiences fresh in their minds, they thought that she was
+probably passionately pro-Ally, and had already detected all those
+Junkers in their past and accordingly couldn't endure them. Then
+they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You will have to give
+your stewardess a little something."</p>
+<p>This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they
+had been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the
+tippers, and anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses.
+Neither, it appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she
+said vaguely that as it was an American boat they were going on she
+supposed it would have to be American money, which was dollars, and
+she didn't know much about dollars except that you divided them by
+four and multiplied them by five, or else it was the other way
+about; and when, feeling still uninformed, they had begged her to
+tell them why one did that, she said it was the quickest way of
+finding out what a dollar really was, and would they mind not
+talking any more for a little while because her head ached.</p>
+<p>The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had
+all been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but
+Americans, Aunt Alice told them, <a name="Page_43" id=
+"Page_43"></a>were in some respects, in spite of their talking
+English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this
+point and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to
+crane out her head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her
+whether she didn't think that might be so, but was afraid of
+disturbing the people in the opposite berths.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin,
+and Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
+Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the
+opposite side were two similar berths, each containing as
+Anna-Felicitas whispered after peeping cautiously through their
+closed curtains,&mdash;for at first on coming in after dinner to go
+to bed the cabin seemed empty, except for inanimate things, like
+clothes hanging up and an immense smell,&mdash;its human freight.
+They were awed by this discovery, for the human freight was
+motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the noises
+suggesting sleep.</p>
+<p>They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible,
+but it was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for
+anything, not even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced
+a little uneasily at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed
+cautiously and delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly
+was. It appeared to be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum
+pudding at Christmas, and German bedrooms in the morning. It was a
+smell they didn't like the idea of sleeping with, but they saw no
+way of getting air. They thought of ringing for the stewardess and
+asking her to open a window, though they could see no window, but
+came to the conclusion it was better not to stir her up; not yet,
+at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed what was the matter
+with her. They said <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>nothing out
+loud, for fear of disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains,
+but they knew what each was thinking, for one isn't, as they had
+long ago found out, a twin for nothing.</p>
+<p>There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely
+hoisted up into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for
+some time after the rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had
+already neatly inserted herself into her own berth, after watching
+these legs in silence and fighting a desire to give them a tug and
+see what would happen, had to get out at last on hearing
+Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there as though she were
+choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was then on a
+level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
+Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do
+anything with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the
+blankets, but lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes
+up very tight and stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and
+evidently struggling with what appeared to be an attack of
+immoderate and ill-timed mirth.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was
+suddenly seized herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a
+hasty glance round at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her
+own berth and pulled the sheet over her mouth.</p>
+<p>She was sobering herself by going over her different
+responsibilities, checking them off on her fingers,&mdash;the two
+five-pound notes under her pillow for extra expenses till they were
+united in New York to their capital, the tickets, the passports,
+and Anna-Felicitas,&mdash;when two thick fair pigtails appeared
+dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by Anna-Felicitas's
+head.</p>
+<p>"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered <a name=
+"Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>Anna-Felicitas, her eyelashes still wet
+from her late attack; and stretching her neck still further down
+till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood rushing
+into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
+freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious
+negativeness of its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at
+all and was really stowaways.</p>
+<p>"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head
+emphatically, which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose,
+considering that it was upside down. "<i>German</i> stowaways,"
+whispered Anna-Felicitas, sniffing expressively though
+cautiously.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the
+bulging curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much
+curved. In spite of herself her flesh began to creep a little.</p>
+<p>"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously
+congested. "Stowaways are."</p>
+<p>There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board
+and took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till
+they came to bed.</p>
+<p>"<i>German</i> men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a
+delicate expressive sniff.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into
+ladies' cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."</p>
+<p>"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies'
+disguise." She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible
+suggestions.</p>
+<p>"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly,
+for Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic
+fit.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
+inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see <a name="Page_46"
+id="Page_46"></a>Anna-Rose presently very cautiously emerge from
+underneath her and on her bare feet creep across to the opposite
+side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness. She sat up to
+watch, her eyes round with interest.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with
+several pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the
+berths. Having got there she stood still a moment listening, and
+then putting a careful finger between the curtain of the lower
+berth and its frame, drew it the smallest crack aside and peeped
+in.</p>
+<p>Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your
+pardon," she said out loud, turning very red. "I&mdash;I
+thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush
+down her back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any
+more than before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker
+than she had gone. She just stopped on the way to switch off the
+light, and then felt along the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till
+she got to her head, and pulling it near her by its left pigtail
+whispered with her mouth close to its left ear, "Wide awake.
+Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."</p>
+<p>And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a name="Page_47" id=
+"Page_47"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p>The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady
+in the berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that
+didn't make them less German. Nothing ever makes a German less
+German, Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their
+blood by the right kind of mother."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."</p>
+<p>This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the
+next day, by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human
+freight being Germans, for one of their own submarines came after
+the <i>St. Luke</i> and no one was quite so loud in expression of
+terror and dislike as the two Germans.</p>
+<p>They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were
+Germans. They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was
+nothing compared to how one had been born. The curtains of their
+berths, till then so carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and
+the berths gave up their contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas
+remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it was the resurrection and the
+berths were riven sepulchres chucking up their dead.</p>
+<p>This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the <i>St.
+Luke</i> was pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The
+twins, waking about seven, found with a pained surprise that they
+were not where they <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>had been
+dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing tennis
+happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
+that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
+groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how
+long it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised
+her head once with the intention of asking if she could help at
+all, but dropped it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes
+tight and lay as quiet as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas
+didn't even raise her head, she felt so very uncomfortable.</p>
+<p>At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in&mdash;the same
+stewardess, they languidly noted, with whom already they had had
+two encounters, for it happened that this was one of the cabins she
+attended to&mdash;and said that if anybody wanted breakfast they
+had better be quick or it would be over.</p>
+<p>"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending
+tone; and instantly was sick.</p>
+<p>The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the
+twins, in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so
+as not to witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the
+cabin, feebly marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being
+quick to persons who were being constantly stood on their heads.
+And breakfast,&mdash;they shuddered and thought of other things; of
+fresh, sweet air, and of the scent of pinks and apricots warm with
+the sun.</p>
+<p>At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in,
+and with determination in every gesture.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them
+talking at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side,
+"you mustn't give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed.
+You must <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>get up and go on deck.
+And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all the
+time?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was
+more on the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could
+only see the stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured
+that she didn't care.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat
+drill at mid-day, and you've got to be present."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't
+care.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every
+soul on the ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat
+drill."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that
+moment how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths
+redoubled their groans.</p>
+<p>"Come, come&mdash;" said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>Then the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled five times, and the stewardess
+turned pale. For a brief space, before they understood what had
+happened, the twins supposed she was going to be sick. But it
+wasn't that that was the matter with her, for after a moment's
+staring at nothing with horror on her face she pounced on them and
+pulled them bodily out of their berths, regardless by which end,
+and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she plunged about and
+produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the passage flinging
+open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled back again and
+tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with hands that
+shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and all
+the time she was calling out "Quick&mdash;quick&mdash;quick&mdash;"
+<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>There was a great tramping of
+feet on deck and cries and shouting.</p>
+<p>The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came
+the Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and
+struggled vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur
+coats, and had the fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very
+energetic steward who ran in and said fur coats in the water were
+death-traps,&mdash;a steward so much bent on saving people that he
+began to pull off the other things the German ladies had on as
+well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in
+the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother Nature&mdash;Mother
+Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only stopped just in
+the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and seeing what
+was happening to the helpless Germans.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt
+there was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing
+their valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward
+assuring them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be
+taken up and somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never
+dare do anything to a ship containing its own flesh and
+blood&mdash;and an American ship, too&mdash;there must be some
+awful mistake&mdash;but anyhow they must be saved&mdash;there would
+be terrible trouble, that they could assure the steward and the
+twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if America
+allowed two Germans to be destroyed&mdash;and anyhow they would
+insist on having their passage money refunded....</p>
+<p>The German ladies departed down the passage, very <a name=
+"Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>incoherent and very unhappy but no
+longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of her berth,
+feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly wondered,
+while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at the
+cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
+buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally
+seemed busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious
+little bag of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it
+round her neck in spite of the steward's assuring her that it would
+drag her down in the water like a stone tied to a kitten.</p>
+<p>"You're a <i>very</i> cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said,
+as he pushed them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding
+up Anna-Felicitas on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run
+alone.</p>
+<p>The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at
+the foot of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got
+her on deck propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to
+the set of cabins they were in, and darted away and in a minute was
+back again with a big coat which he wrapped round her.</p>
+<p>"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to drown," he said
+briskly, "but mind you don't forget to throw it off, Missie, the
+minute you feel the water."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning
+against the wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference
+to whatever might be going to happen next. Her face was now as
+white as the frill of the night-gown that straggled out from
+beneath her coat, for the journey from the cabin to the deck had
+altogether finished her. <a name="Page_52" id=
+"Page_52"></a>Anna-Rose was thankful that she felt too ill to be
+afraid. Her own heart was black with despair,&mdash;despair that
+Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one, should presently, at
+any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving water, and certainly
+be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of life.</p>
+<p>She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep
+her warm. Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold
+hands and put them away beneath the coat the steward had brought.
+She slid an arm round her and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so
+that she should know somebody was there, somebody who loved her.
+"What's the <i>good</i> of it all&mdash;<i>why</i> were we
+born&mdash;" she wondered, staring at the hideous gray waves as
+they swept up into sight over the side of the ship and away again
+as the ship rose up, and at the wet deck and the torn sky, and the
+miserable-looking passengers in their life-jackets collected
+together round the life-boat.</p>
+<p>Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed,
+kept up a constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly
+smoking cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about
+them, all of them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the
+torpedo to appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed.
+The ship was zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay
+on. An official stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water
+in it and provisions. That the submarine must be mad, as the
+official remarked, to fire on an American ship, didn't console
+anybody, and his further assurance that the matter would not be
+allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt too sure that in
+all probability they themselves were going to rest there, down
+underneath that <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>repulsive icy
+water, after a struggle that was going to be unpleasant.</p>
+<p>The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship left
+the landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be
+sorry for her, came across from the first class, where his
+life-boat was, to watch for the track of the expected torpedo, and
+caught sight of the twins huddled in their corner.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes out
+at the desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home:
+the home that was, that used to be till such a little while ago,
+the home that now seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably
+beautiful and blest, with its daily life of love and laughter and
+of easy confidence that to-morrow was going to be just as good.
+Happiness had been the ordinary condition there, a simple matter of
+course. Its place was taken now by courage. Anna-Rose felt sick at
+all this courage there was about. There should be no occasion for
+it. There should be no horrors to face, no cruelties to endure. Why
+couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must people get killing each
+other? She, for her part, would be behind nobody in courage and in
+the defying of a Fate that could behave, as she felt, so very
+unlike her idea of anything even remotely decent; but it oughtn't
+to be necessary, this constant condition of screwed-upness; it was
+waste of effort, waste of time, waste of life,&mdash;oh the
+<i>stupidity</i> of it all, she thought, rebellious and
+bewildered.</p>
+<p>"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little into a
+small cup.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her.
+She recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had
+much better be <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>sorry for himself
+now, she thought, because he, just as much as they were, was bound
+for a watery bier.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the
+smell of brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar
+strictness on no account to talk to strange men, "I don't
+drink."</p>
+<p>"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.</p>
+<p>"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping
+a drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell
+me where your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on,
+considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."</p>
+<p>The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that
+they had a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine
+hand over fist. Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of
+supposing her to be in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did
+in spite of herself steal into her heart.</p>
+<p>He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some
+pillows.</p>
+<p>"If you <i>will</i> sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the
+pillows behind their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open
+her eyes, and her head hung about so limply that it looked as if it
+might at any moment roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable
+as you can."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange
+Anna-Felicitas's indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw
+little use in being comfortable just a minute or two before
+drowning. "<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Drowning be hanged,"
+said the man.</p>
+<p>"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling
+suddenly quite at home, "except that <i>he</i> would have said
+'Drowning be damned.'"</p>
+<p>The man laughed. "Is he dead?" he asked, busy with
+Anna-Felicitas's head, which defied their united efforts to make it
+hold itself up.</p>
+<p>"Dead?" echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur's
+ever being anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear
+words for such a long time as eternity seemed very odd.</p>
+<p>"You said he <i>used</i> to talk like that."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no he's not dead at all. Quite the contrary."</p>
+<p>The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas's head
+arranged in a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had
+some sort of self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she
+could manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back.
+He was going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going
+to say "You poor things," or words to that effect. That's what the
+people round Uncle Arthur's had said to them. That's what everybody
+had said to them since the war began, and Aunt Alice's friends had
+said it to her too, because she had to have her nieces live with
+her, and no doubt Uncle Arthur's friends who played golf with him
+had said it to him as well, except that probably they put in a damn
+so as to make it clearer for him and said "You poor damned thing,"
+or something like that, and she was sick of the very words poor
+things. Poor things, indeed! "We're with each other," she said
+briefly, lifting her chin.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't think that's enough," said the man. "<a name=
+"Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>Not half enough. You ought to have a
+mother or something."</p>
+<p>"<i>Everybody</i> can't have mothers," said Anna-Rose very
+defiantly indeed, tears rushing into her eyes.</p>
+<p>The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. "There
+now," he said. "That's better. What's the good of catching your
+deaths?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn't gone on about mothers, said that
+with so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to
+her particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a
+chair and sat down beside her.</p>
+<p>She didn't know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation
+to laugh at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily
+comforting. It made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like
+waking up to sunshine and one's morning bath and breakfast after a
+nightmare. He seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked
+him to sit near them. She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had
+said there were very few good men, hardly any in fact except one's
+husband, but this one did seem one of the few exceptions. And she
+thought that by now, he having brought them all those pillows, he
+could no longer come under the heading of strange men. When he
+wasn't looking she put out her hand secretly and touched his coat
+where he wouldn't feel it. It comforted her to touch his coat. She
+hoped Aunt Alice wouldn't have disapproved of seeing her sitting
+side by side with him and liking it.</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose,
+having given her the desired promise not to talk or let
+Anna-Felicitas talk to strange men, and desiring to collect any
+available information for her <a name="Page_57" id=
+"Page_57"></a>guidance in her new responsible position had asked,
+"But when are men <i>not</i> strange?"</p>
+<p>"When you've married them," said Aunt Alice. "After that, of
+course, you love them."</p>
+<p>And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a name="Page_58" id=
+"Page_58"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p>Nothing more was seen of the submarine.</p>
+<p>The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them
+know he had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having
+saved the ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a
+ship, and they the one just man whose presence would have saved
+those cities if he had been in them; and the American passengers
+were equally sure that the submarine, on thinking it over, had
+decided that President Wilson was not a man to be trifled with, and
+had gone in search of some prey which would not have the might and
+majesty of America at its back.</p>
+<p>As the day went on, and the <i>St. Luke</i> left off
+zig-zagging, the relief of those on board was the relief of a
+reprieve from death. Almost everybody was cured of sea-sickness,
+and quite everybody was ready to overwhelm his neighbour with
+cordiality and benevolence. Rich people didn't mind poor people,
+and came along from the first class and talked to them just as if
+they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves. A
+billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
+times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly
+proud of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked
+somebody in a dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale,
+if he had been frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston
+talked quite a long while to an English lady without first having
+made sure that she was well-<a name="Page_59" id=
+"Page_59"></a>connected. What could have been more like heaven? The
+tone on the <i>St. Luke</i> that day was very like what the tone in
+the kingdom of heaven must be in its simple politeness. "And so you
+see," said Anna-Rose, who was fond of philosophizing in season and
+out of season, and particularly out of season, "how good comes out
+of evil."</p>
+<p>She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
+Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr.
+Twist&mdash;such, the amiable stranger had told them, was his
+name&mdash;who had gone to see about tea being brought up to them;
+and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to sit up and take notice, the
+hours of fresh air having done their work, smiled the ready,
+watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It was so nice
+not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If she had
+been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about the
+number and size of one's negative blessings&mdash;all the things
+one hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to
+them once you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and
+yet people grumble.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent
+mood in which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled
+at anybody who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would
+have smiled just like that, with just that friendly, boneless
+familiarity at the devil if he had appeared, or even at Uncle
+Arthur himself.</p>
+<p>The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were
+having the pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the
+realization of this that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good
+coming out of evil. The background, she could not but perceive, was
+a very odd one for their pleasantest day for months&mdash;a
+<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>rolling steamer and a cold wind
+flicking at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out
+to Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly,
+are negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that
+matters. Of what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid
+summer afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so
+beautifully framed in Uncle Arthur?</p>
+<p>No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.</p>
+<p>In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in
+the end.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble
+agreement.</p>
+<p>She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable,
+Anna-Rose remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to
+him than they could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded
+Anna-Felicitas how they used to rub their eyes to try and see more
+clearly, for surely these means of happiness, these elaborate
+arrangements for it all round them, couldn't be for nothing? There
+must be some of it somewhere, if only they could discover where?
+And there was none. Not a trace of it. Not even the faintest little
+swish of its skirts.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a
+long time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's
+death blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas
+said aloud that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was
+true. Their mother's death was something so tender, so beautiful,
+that terrible as it was to them to be left without her they yet
+felt raised up by it somehow, raised on to a higher level than
+where they had been before, closer in their hearts to real things,
+to real <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>values. But Uncle Arthur
+came into possession of their lives as a consequence of that death,
+and he had towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun.
+Suddenly there was no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly
+everything one said and did was wrong. "And you needn't think,"
+Anna-Felicitas had said wisely, "that he's like that because we're
+Germans&mdash;or <i>seem</i> to be Germans," she amended. "It's
+because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice. <i>She's</i> not a
+German. And yet look at her."</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her
+mind's eye, for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a
+wood picnicking, and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> luncheon with Uncle Arthur
+who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she didn't
+like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
+less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what
+she imagined was simply awful,&mdash;Anna-Rose had, I say, looked
+at Aunt Alice in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was
+true.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray
+of tea and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful
+picnic.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him
+quite soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to
+clear his mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas,
+though their clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which
+their flair was done, might be misleading, were no longer children,
+but quite the contrary; that they were, in fact, persons who were
+almost ripe for going to dances, and certainly in another year
+would be perfectly ripe for dances supposing there were any.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>Mr. Twist listened
+attentively, and begged her to tell him any other little thing she
+might think of as useful to him in his capacity of friend and
+attendant,&mdash;both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
+till he had seen them safely landed in New York.</p>
+<p>"I hope you don't think we <i>need</i> anybody," said Anna-Rose.
+"We shall like being friends with you very much, but only on terms
+of perfect equality."</p>
+<p>"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.</p>
+<p>"I thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She hesitated a moment.</p>
+<p>"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.</p>
+<p>"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry
+for us."</p>
+<p>"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.</p>
+<p>"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to&mdash;to our friends."</p>
+<p>"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Which was great waste of your time."</p>
+<p>"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an
+activity in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr.
+Twist's attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, which
+was, as he said, one of mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was
+never sea-sick, he could move about and do things for them that
+might be difficult to do for themselves; as he knew a great deal
+about stewardesses, he could tell them what sort of tip theirs
+expected; as he was American, he could illuminate them about that
+country. He had been doing Red Cross work with an American
+ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home for a short
+visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose <a name="Page_63" id=
+"Page_63"></a>gathered, was ancient and widowed, was getting on.
+His mother, he said, lived in seclusion in a New England village
+with his sister, who had not married.</p>
+<p>"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you,"
+said Mr. Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up&mdash;I
+mean," he added hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's
+less&mdash;well, less completely young."</p>
+<p>"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity.
+"People are completely young the day they're born, and ever after
+that they spend their time becoming less so."</p>
+<p>"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than
+you have. I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than
+I am."</p>
+<p>"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's
+head where it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must
+have got to the stage when one is called a maiden lady."</p>
+<p>"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who
+hadn't till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely
+at him whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be
+either a lady or a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of
+Germans, I think," went on Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at
+the cake Mr. Twist was offering her, "never to let us be anything
+but Its till we've taken on some men."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage,
+and inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.</p>
+<p>"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said
+Anna-Rose, turning to her severely, "you start <a name="Page_64"
+id="Page_64"></a>being indiscreet. Well, I suppose," she added with
+a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or later. Our
+name is Twinkler."</p>
+<p>She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist,
+perceiving he was expected to say something, said that he didn't
+mind that anyhow, and that he could bear something worse in the way
+of revelations.</p>
+<p>"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished,
+for in Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in
+England it was well known.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he
+said.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said,
+speaking very distinctly. "It's <i>von</i> Twinkler."</p>
+<p>"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained
+serene.</p>
+<p>"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen
+that we weren't."</p>
+<p>"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we
+used to have a German father."</p>
+<p>"But only because our mother married him," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "Else we wouldn't have."</p>
+<p>"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it
+has dogged our footsteps ever since."</p>
+<p>"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying
+anybody does. You go into a church, and before you know where you
+are, you're all tangled up with posterity."</p>
+<p>"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at
+her own past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you.
+It's really simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>If there hadn't been a war
+we'd have been all right," said Anna-Felicitas. "But directly
+there's a war, whoever it is you've married, if it isn't one of
+your own countrymen, rises up against you, just as if he were too
+many meringues you'd had for dinner."</p>
+<p>"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against
+you."</p>
+<p>"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We never used to bother about what we were," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "We were just human beings, and so was everybody
+else just human beings."</p>
+<p>"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people
+not being Germans."</p>
+<p>"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because, you see, we're not."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little
+prominent and pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he
+put his head on one side and looked at them, of an attentive
+fox-terrier. "I don't think I quite follow," he said again.</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"It's because you've got into your head that we're German
+because of our father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father,
+when all's said and done?"</p>
+<p>"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."</p>
+<p>"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a
+mother," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's
+always busy. He's always thinking of something else."</p>
+<p>"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight,"
+said Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, <a name="Page_66" id=
+"Page_66"></a>whose habit of drooping still persisted in spite of
+her father's admonishments.</p>
+<p>"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to
+remember that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up
+beautifully for a moment, "but that's about everything."</p>
+<p>"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
+perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander.
+Whereas one's mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't
+bear speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began
+to cry. The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any
+sort were possible.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here,
+Anna-F.," she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't <i>have</i>
+you be sentimental&mdash;I won't <i>have</i> you be
+sentimental...."</p>
+<p>And then she too began to cry.</p>
+<p>Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves,
+there was nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost
+confidence. It was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man.
+A person they hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their
+feelings. Showing their innermost miserable places.</p>
+<p>They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend
+they weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just
+tears,&mdash;odd ones left over from last time, which was years and
+years ago,&mdash;"But <i>really</i> years and years ago," sobbed
+Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,&mdash;"the years one falls down on
+garden paths in, <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>and cuts one's
+knees, and one's mother&mdash;one's mother&mdash;c-c-c-comforts
+one&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and
+pulling out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even
+been unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right
+away."</p>
+<p>And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid
+promptness his Red Cross experience had taught him, started
+competently wiping up their faces.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a name="Page_68"
+id="Page_68"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p>There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
+encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something
+not too determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those
+pictures of efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe
+is familiar,&mdash;eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm
+mouths and chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect,
+offering in capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist
+was the reverse of eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of
+good-looking; that is, he would have been very handsome indeed, as
+Anna-Rose remarked several days later to Anna-Felicitas, when the
+friendship had become a settled thing,&mdash;which indeed it did as
+soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping their eyes and noses that
+first afternoon, it being impossible, they discovered, to have
+one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being friends
+afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged to
+the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
+after which in books you married him; but this having only been
+wiping, said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by
+friendship)&mdash;he would have been very handsome indeed if he
+hadn't had a face.</p>
+<p>"But you have to <i>have</i> a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who
+didn't think it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could
+eat with it and see out of it.</p>
+<p>"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said <a name=
+"Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>Anna-Rose; but secretly she thought that
+having been begun so successfully at his feet, and carried upwards
+with such grace of long limbs and happy proportions, he might as
+well have gone on equally felicitously for the last little bit.</p>
+<p>"I expect God got tired of him over that last bit," she mused,
+"and just put on any sort of head."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that happened to be lying about," agreed
+Anna-Felicitas. "In a hurry to get done with him."</p>
+<p>"Anyway he's very kind," said Anna-Rose, a slight touch of
+defiance in her voice.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>very</i> kind," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And it doesn't matter about faces for being kind," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Not in the least," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And if it hadn't been for the submarine we shouldn't have got
+to know him. So you see," said Anna-Rose,&mdash;and again produced
+her favourite remark about good coming out of evil.</p>
+<p>Those were the days in mid-Atlantic when England was lost in its
+own peculiar mists, and the sunshine of America was stretching out
+towards them. The sea was getting calmer and bluer every hour, and
+submarines more and more unlikely. If a ship could be pleasant,
+which Anna-Felicitas doubted, for she still found difficulty in
+dressing and undressing without being sea-sick and was unpopular in
+the cabin, this ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day
+long, staring at the blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if
+you were living in the middle of a jewel, and tried not to
+remember&mdash;oh, there were heaps of things it was best not to
+remember; and when the rail of the ship moved up across the horizon
+too far into the sky, or moved down across it and showed too much
+water, you <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>just shut your eyes
+and then it didn't matter; and the sun shone warm and steady on
+your face, and the wind tickled the tassel on the top of your
+German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist came and read aloud to you, which
+sent you to sleep quicker than anything you had ever known.</p>
+<p>The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket
+was called "Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an American
+collection of English poetry, professing in its preface to be a
+Short Cut to Culture; and he would read with what at that time, it
+being new to them, seemed to the twins a strange exotic
+pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to Dooty," and the effect was as
+if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian psalm in its ribs, and
+make it leap and giggle.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she didn't
+mind what the ship's rail did with the horizon, opened them very
+round when first Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was
+used to hearing them read by her mother in the adorable husky voice
+that sent such thrills through one, but she listened with the
+courtesy and final gratitude due to the efforts to entertain her of
+so amiable a friend, and only the roundness of her eyes showed her
+astonishment at this waltzing round, as it appeared to her, of Mr.
+Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God. He also read
+"Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur took for a Derby
+winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to refrain from
+stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point of
+having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
+questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on
+deck, which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it
+was because her deck-chair was so very much harder than she
+was.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>Anna-Felicitas, who
+considered that, if these things were short-cuts to anywhere,
+seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got there,
+snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
+off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which
+worried Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment
+less beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more
+than ever, unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being
+administered, to make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again
+by taking and shaking her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of
+waking up suddenly and forgetting to be polite, as one does when
+first one wakes up and hasn't had time to remember one is a lady.
+"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures noo," Mr. Twist would
+finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp of satisfaction at having
+swallowed yet another solid slab of culture; and Anna-Felicitas,
+returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur, with her eyes
+still shut and her head lolling limply, things like, "After all, it
+<i>does</i> rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still doesn't
+like it."</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild
+inquiry, and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately
+explain what Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from
+anything resembling what she had said that Mr. Twist looked more
+mildly inquiring than ever.</p>
+<p>Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too
+sleepy or too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got
+angry, and would get what the Germans call a red head and look at
+Anna-Felicitas very severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would
+close his book and watch with that alert, cocked-up-ear <a name=
+"Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>look of a sympathetic and highly
+interested terrier; but sooner or later the ship would always give
+a roll, and Anna-Felicitas would shut her eyes and fade to paleness
+and become the helpless bundle of sickness that nobody could
+possibly go on being severe with.</p>
+<p>The passengers in the second class were more generally friendly
+than those in the first class. The first class sorted itself out
+into little groups, and whispered about each other, as Anna-Rose
+observed, watching their movements across the rope that separated
+her from them. The second class remained to the end one big group,
+frayed out just a little at the edge in one or two places.</p>
+<p>The chief fraying out was where the Twinkler kids, as the
+second-class young men, who knew no better, dared to call them,
+interrupted the circle by talking apart with Mr. Twist. Mr. Twist
+had no business there. He was a plutocrat of the first class; but
+in spite of the regulations which cut off the classes from
+communicating, with a view apparently to the continued sanitariness
+of the first class, the implication being that the second class was
+easily infectious and probably overrun, there he was every day and
+several times in every day. He must have heavily squared the
+officials, the second-class young men thought until the day when
+Mr. Twist let it somehow be understood that he had known the
+Twinkler young ladies for years, dandled them in their not very
+remote infancy on his already full-grown knee, and had been
+specially appointed to look after them on this journey.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist did not specify who had appointed him, except to the
+Twinkler young ladies themselves, and to them he announced that it
+was no less a thing, being, or creature, than Providence. The
+second-class young men, therefore, in spite of their rising spirits
+as danger <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>lay further behind,
+and their increasing tendency, peculiar to those who go on ships,
+to become affectionate, found themselves no further on in
+acquaintance with the Misses Twinkler the last day of the voyage
+than they had been the first. Not that, under any other conditions,
+they would have so much as noticed the existence of the Twinkler
+kids. In their blue caps, pulled down tight to their eyebrows and
+hiding every trace of hair, they looked like bald babies. They
+never came to meals; their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was,
+feeding them on deck with the care of a mother-bird for its
+fledglings, so that nobody except the two German ladies in their
+cabin had seen them without the caps. The young men put them down
+as half-grown only, somewhere about fourteen they thought, and
+nothing but what, if they were boys instead of girls, would have
+been called louts.</p>
+<p>Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed
+in the way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and
+the Misses Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent
+baldness, and their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt
+have been the objects of advances before New York was reached if it
+hadn't been for Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty in the
+second class on that voyage, the young men resentfully pointed out
+to each other, except these two kids who were too much under it,
+and a young lady of thirty who sat manicuring her nails most of the
+day with her back supported by a life-boat, and polishing them with
+red stuff till they flashed rosily in the sun. This young lady was
+avoided for the first two days, while the young men still
+remembered their mothers, because of what she looked like; but was
+greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely for that
+reason.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>Still, every one couldn't get
+near her. She was only one; and there were at least a dozen active,
+cooped-up young men taking lithe, imprisoned exercise in long,
+swift steps up and down the deck, ready for any sort of enterprise,
+bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So that at last the
+left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy nails was
+less kind to, actually in their despair attempted ghastly
+flirtations with the two German ladies. They approached them with a
+kind of angry amorousness. They tucked them up roughly in rugs.
+They brought them cushions as though they were curses. And it was
+through this <i>rapprochement</i>, in the icy warmth of which the
+German ladies expanded like bulky flowers and grew at least ten
+years younger, the ten years they shed being their most respectable
+ones, that the ship became aware of the nationality of the Misses
+Twinkler.</p>
+<p>The German ladies were not really German, as they explained
+directly there were no more submarines about, for a good woman,
+they said, becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they,
+therefore, were merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal
+as you could find, but the Twinklers were the real thing, they
+said,&mdash;real, unadulterated, arrogant Junkers, which is why
+they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no Junker, said the German
+ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked to except another
+Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck not been
+born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had missed
+it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
+were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
+democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers
+most abound, and knew the sort of thing well.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>It seemed to Mr. Twist, who
+caught scraps of conversation as he came and went, that in the
+cabin the Twinklers must have alienated sympathy. They had. They
+had done more; they had got themselves actively disliked.</p>
+<p>From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into
+their shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this
+prejudice had later flared up into a great and justified dislike.
+The ladies, to begin with, hadn't known that they were von
+Twinklers, but had supposed them mere Twinklers, and the von, as
+every German knows, makes all the difference, especially in the
+case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a race, the ladies knew,
+of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in the Westphalian
+district, but with it were one of the oldest families in Prussia;
+known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
+wherever it went.</p>
+<p>In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated
+the two apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their
+conduct, age, and obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded
+by their questionings, the smaller and more active Twinkler had let
+out her von at them much as one lets loose a dog when one is alone
+and weak against the attacks of an enemy, instead of falling in
+harmoniously with the natural change of attitude of the ladies,
+which became immediately perfectly polite and conciliatory, as well
+as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two young Junkers
+went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most motherly
+questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
+themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be
+permitted to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently,
+after a day or <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>two of such
+uncloaked repugnance to it, left with quantities of it useless on
+their hands and all going sour.</p>
+<p>From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain
+Twinklers they had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin,
+and as von Twinklers they were intolerable in their high-nosed
+indifference.</p>
+<p>It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the
+beginning of the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such
+manifest youth should rise politely and considerately each morning
+very early, and get themselves dressed and out of the way in at the
+most ten minutes, leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful
+putting together bit by bit of that which ultimately emerged a
+perfect specimen of a lady of riper years, but the weedy Twinkler
+insisted on lying in her berth so late that if the ladies wished to
+be in time for the best parts of breakfast, which they naturally
+and passionately did wish, they were forced to dress in her
+presence, which was most annoying and awkward.</p>
+<p>It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but
+you never know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to
+trust them. They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have
+seen; they apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their
+spectacled American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so
+much gustiness, if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the
+weedy one had a most tiresome trick of being sick instantly every
+time Odol was used, or a little brandy was drunk. Odol is most
+refreshing; it has a lovely smell, without which no German bedroom
+is complete. And the brandy was not common schnaps, but an old
+expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell, was a credit to
+anybody's cabin.</p>
+<p>The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed <a name=
+"Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>did persist in using Odol and drinking a
+little brandy, indifferent to the feeble prayer from the upper
+berth which floated down entreating them not to, but in their own
+interests they were forced to give it up. The objectionable child
+did not pray a second time; she passed immediately from prayer to
+performance. Of two disagreeables wise women choose the lesser, but
+they remain resentful.</p>
+<p>The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and
+take herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of
+toilet with those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her
+hair, preparatory to washing her face, with their hairpins.</p>
+<p>When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding
+any, having come to the end of her own, lost no time in
+irresolution but picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her
+pigtails with that.</p>
+<p>It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
+everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an
+outrage, but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When
+they told her sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she
+was instantly to take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in
+a silence that was itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails
+with their buttonhook instead.</p>
+<p>Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and
+asked her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they
+raised their voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they
+later on declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had
+nevertheless acquired by practice in imitation some of the more
+salient Junker characteristics.</p>
+<p>"You are <i>salop</i>," said the upper berth lady,&mdash;which
+<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>is untranslatable, not on
+grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is not, however, a term of
+praise.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that is what you are&mdash;<i>salop</i>," echoed the lower
+berth lady. "And your sister is <i>salop</i> too&mdash;lying in bed
+till all hours."</p>
+<p>"It is shameful for girls to be <i>salop</i>," said the upper
+berth.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was ours,"
+said Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with vehemence.</p>
+<p>"That is because you are <i>salop</i>," said the lower
+berth.</p>
+<p>"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors either."</p>
+<p>"<i>Salop, salop</i>," said the lower berth, beating her hand on
+the wooden edge of her bunk.</p>
+<p>"And&mdash;and I'm sorry."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry, she looked
+angry. And so she was; but it was with herself, for having failed
+in discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have noticed that the
+scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had pounced on them with
+the ill-considered haste of twelve years old. She hadn't been a
+lady,&mdash;she whose business it was to be an example and mainstay
+to Anna-Felicitas, in all things going first, showing her the
+way.</p>
+<p>She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was
+just going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when
+the upper berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of
+herself to have brought you up so badly."</p>
+<p>"And send you off like this before she has taught you even the
+ABC of manners," said the lower berth.</p>
+<p>"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none
+herself."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>Evidently," said the lower
+berth, "she is herself <i>salop</i>."</p>
+<p>The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin
+in Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there
+in her nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful
+flight, her eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top
+of her head.</p>
+<p>The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize
+the significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large
+angry faces as a target. One of the faces would certainly have
+received the sponge and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if
+it hadn't been for the prompt and skilful intervention of
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the
+unusual loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into
+attention and opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were
+saying and saw the sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was
+Anna-Rose who held it, where it would be in another second, and
+hastily putting out a shaking little hand from her top berth,
+caught hold feebly but obstinately of the upright ends of
+Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.</p>
+<p>"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of
+mind and entire absence of candour.</p>
+<p>She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be
+sick, and the excellent child&mdash;<i>das gute Kind</i>, as her
+father used to call her because she, so conveniently from the
+parental point of view, invariably never wanted to be or do
+anything particularly&mdash;without hesitation sacrificed herself
+in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and immediately
+was.</p>
+<p>By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, <a name=
+"Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>all fury had died out. She never could
+see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after one of these
+attacks without forgiving her and everybody else everything.</p>
+<p>She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and
+tuck her blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut,
+murmured, "Christopher&mdash;don't mind <i>them</i>&mdash;" and she
+suddenly realized, for they never called each other by those names
+except in great moments of emotion when it was necessary to cheer
+and encourage, what Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it
+had been done deliberately, she could only whisper back, because
+she was so afraid of crying, "No, no, Columbus dear&mdash;of
+course&mdash;who really cares about <i>them</i>&mdash;" and came
+down off the steps with no fight left in her.</p>
+<p>Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
+retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled
+Twinkler should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a
+crack apart in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be
+going to do next and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness,
+getting dressed, they merely inquired what part of Westphalia she
+came from, and only in the tone they asked it did they convey that
+whatever part it was, it was anyhow a contemptible one.</p>
+<p>"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a
+little, in spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to
+have to be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.</p>
+<p>"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being
+a Twinkler it must be Westphalia."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>We don't really," said
+Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words and making a great
+effort to speak politely. "We come from England."</p>
+<p>"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling.
+"You were born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in
+Westphalia."</p>
+<p>"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only
+circumstance that stops them is if their mothers happen to be
+temporarily absent."</p>
+<p>"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts
+to remain bland.</p>
+<p>"Are you pretending&mdash;pretending to <i>us</i>," said the
+lower berth lady, again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk,
+"that you are not German?"</p>
+<p>"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner,
+"but I don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go
+on being one directly he got to a really neutral place."</p>
+<p>"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly,
+scenting what she had from the first suspected, something sinister
+in the Twinkler background.</p>
+<p>"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause
+of consideration, tying her shoe-laces.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling
+themselves now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly
+from Westphalia?"</p>
+<p>"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
+considering.</p>
+<p>She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with
+a deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was
+remaining calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but
+Prussia," she said.</p>
+<p>"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising
+themselves on their elbows.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>That's where our father
+lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her surprise at their
+surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he died he did
+that there too."</p>
+<p>"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your
+father fled his country."</p>
+<p>"No. <i>You</i> said that," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to
+the door. She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of
+Anna-Felicitas, might not be able to be a lady.</p>
+<p>"After all, it <i>is</i> what you do when you go to heaven," she
+said as she opened the door, unable to resist, according to her
+custom, having the last word.</p>
+<p>"But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it
+were, from afar. "Then&mdash;you were born in Prussia?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the
+door quickly behind her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a name="Page_83"
+id="Page_83"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind&mdash;he
+had the most amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was
+Edward&mdash;took a lively interest in the plans and probable
+future of the two Annas. He also took a lively and solicitous
+interest in their present, and a profoundly sympathetic one in
+their past. In fact, their three tenses interested him to the
+exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief desire was to
+see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting them in
+the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends&mdash;he distrusted Uncle
+Arthur, and therefore his friends&mdash;into the safe and pleasant
+waters of real American hospitality and kindliness.</p>
+<p>He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the
+tap. He reminded himself of that which he had been taught since
+childhood, of the mighty heart of America which, once touched,
+would take persons like the twins right in and never let them out
+again. But it had to be touched. It had, as it were, to be put in
+connection with them by means of advertisement. America, he
+reflected, was a little deaf. She had to be shouted to. But once
+she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...</p>
+<p>He cogitated much in his cabin&mdash;one with a private
+bathroom, for Mr. Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample
+means&mdash;on these two defenceless children. If they had been
+Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons plainly in need of
+relief! As it was, America would be <a name="Page_84" id=
+"Page_84"></a>likely, he feared, to consider that either Germany or
+England ought to be looking after them, and might conceivably
+remain chilly and uninterested.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn't many friends in America, and
+those he had didn't like him. At least that was what Mr. Twist
+gathered from the conversation of Anna-Rose. She didn't positively
+assert but she very candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite
+believe that Uncle Arthur's friends wouldn't be warm ones. Their
+hospitality he could imagine fleeting and perfunctory. They would
+pass on the Twinklers as soon as possible, as indeed why should
+they not? And presently some dreary small job would be found for
+them, some job as pupil-teacher or girls' companion in the sterile
+atmosphere of a young ladies' school.</p>
+<p>As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike,
+Mr. Twist disliked Uncle Arthur. Patriotism was nothing at any time
+to Mr. Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur's particular
+kind of patriotism was very odious to him. To wreak it on these two
+poor aliens! Mr. Twist had no words for it. They had been cut
+adrift at a tender age, an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American
+son and brother, was unable to regard unmoved, and packed off over
+the sea indifferent to what might happen to them so long as Uncle
+Arthur knew nothing about it. Having flung these kittens into the
+water to swim or drown, so long as he didn't have to listen to
+their cries while they were doing it, Uncle Arthur apparently cared
+nothing.</p>
+<p>All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose
+up within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and
+ask him what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him
+whether he called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do
+this, <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>being on a ship heading
+for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of the
+ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,&mdash;but the right
+sort of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards
+you as a sacred and precious charge.</p>
+<p>In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical
+bullying, red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured
+him under-sized and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through
+the soppy green fields of England to his trembling household. He
+was quite disconcerted one day to discover from something Anna-Rose
+said that he was a tall man, and not fat at all, except in one
+place.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye
+view of Uncle Arthur.</p>
+<p>"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of
+her dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck
+when it got to his waistcoat."</p>
+<p>"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to
+explain and describe further if required.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of
+Uncle Arthur, and this time got him right,&mdash;the tall, not
+bad-looking man, clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than
+he, Mr. Twist, had. He had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now
+perceived that he could be hardly more than middle-aged and that
+Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he felt an almost painful sympathy, had
+a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get through before she was done.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word middle-aged as
+correct. "Neither of his ends looks much older than yours do. He's
+aged in the middle. That's the only place. Where the bomb is."</p>
+<p>"I suppose that's why it's called middle-aged," said <a name=
+"Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>Anna-Felicitas dreamily. "One
+middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It must be
+queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself gradually
+rotting."</p>
+<p>These were the sorts of observations, Mr. Twist felt, that might
+prejudice his mother against the twins If they could be induced not
+to say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he
+felt that his house, of all houses in America, should be offered
+them as a refuge whenever they were in need of one. But his mother
+was not, he feared, very adaptable. In her house&mdash;it was
+legally his, but it never felt as if it were&mdash;people adapted
+themselves to her. He doubted whether the twins could or would.
+Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was candour. They
+had no <i>savoir faire</i>. They seemed incapable of anything but
+naturalness, and their particular type of naturalness was not one,
+he was afraid, that his mother would understand.</p>
+<p>She had not been out of her New England village, a place called
+briefly, with American economy of time, Clark, for many years, and
+her ideal of youthful femininity was still that which she had been
+herself. She had, if unconsciously, tried to mould Mr. Twist also
+on these lines, in spite of his being a boy, and owing to his
+extreme considerateness had not yet discovered her want of success.
+For years, indeed, she had been completely successful, and Mr.
+Twist arrived at and embarked on adolescence with the manners and
+ways of thinking of a perfect lady.</p>
+<p>Till he was nineteen he was educated at home, as it were at his
+mother's knee, at any rate within reach of that sacred limb, and
+she had taught him to reverence women; the reason given, or rather
+conveyed, being that he had had and still was having a mother.
+Which <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>he was never to forget. In
+hours of temptation. In hours of danger. Mr. Twist, with his
+virginal white mind, used to wonder when the hours of temptation
+and of danger would begin, and rather wish, in the elegant leisure
+of his half-holidays, that they soon would so that he might show
+how determined he was to avoid them.</p>
+<p>For the ten years from his father's death till he went to
+Harvard, he lived with his mother and sister and was their
+assiduous attendant. His mother took the loss of his father badly.
+She didn't get over it, as widows sometimes do, and grow suddenly
+ten years younger. The sight of her, so black and broken, of so
+daily recurring a patience, of such frequent deliberate brightening
+for the sake of her children, kept Mr. Twist, as he grew up, from
+those thoughts which sometimes occur to young men and have to do
+with curves and dimples. He was too much absorbed by his mother to
+think on such lines. He was flooded with reverence and pity.
+Through her, all women were holy to him. They were all mothers,
+either actual or to be&mdash;after, of course, the proper
+ceremonies. They were all people for whom one leapt up and opened
+doors, placed chairs out of draughts, and fetched black shawls. On
+warm spring days, when he was about eighteen, he told himself
+earnestly that it would be a profanity, a terrible secret sinning,
+to think amorously&mdash;yes, he supposed the word was
+amorously&mdash;while there under his eyes, pervading his days from
+breakfast to bedtime, was that mourning womanhood, that lopped
+life, that example of brave doing without any hope or expectation
+except what might be expected or hoped from heaven. His mother was
+wonderful the way she bore things. There she was, with nothing left
+to look for<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>ward to in the way of
+pleasures except the resurrection, yet she did not complain.</p>
+<p>But after he had been at Harvard a year a change came over Mr.
+Twist. Not that he did not remain dutiful and affectionate, but he
+perceived that it was possible to peep round the corners of his
+mother, the rock-like corners that had so long jutted out between
+him and the view, and on the other side there seemed to be quite a
+lot of interesting things going on. He continued, however, only to
+eye most of them from afar, and the nearest he got to temptation
+while at Harvard was to read "Madame Bovary."</p>
+<p>After Harvard he was put into an engineering firm, for the
+Twists only had what would in English money be five thousand pounds
+a year, and belonged therefore, taking dollars as the measure of
+standing instead of birth, to the middle classes. Aunt Alice would
+have described such an income as ample means; Mrs. Twist called it
+straitened circumstances, and lived accordingly in a condition of
+perpetual self-sacrifice and doings without. She had a car, but it
+was only a car, not a Pierce-Arrow; and there was a bathroom to
+every bedroom, but there were only six bedrooms; and the house
+stood on a hill and looked over the most beautiful woods, but they
+were somebody else's woods. She felt, as she beheld the lives of
+those of her neighbours she let her eyes rest on, who were the
+millionaires dotted round about the charming environs of Clark,
+that she was indeed a typical widow,&mdash;remote, unfriended,
+melancholy, poor.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist might feel poor, but she was certainly comfortable.
+It was her daughter Edith's aim in life to secure for her the
+comfort and leisure necessary for any grief that wishes to be
+thorough. The house was <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>run
+beautifully by Edith. There were three servants, of whom Edith was
+one. She was the lady's maid, the head cook, and the family butler.
+And Mr. Twist, till he went to Harvard, might be described as the
+page-boy, and afterwards in his vacations as the odd man about the
+house. Everything centred round their mother. She made a good deal
+of work, because of being so anxious not to give trouble. She
+wouldn't get out of the way of evil, but bleakly accepted it. She
+wouldn't get out of a draught, but sat in it till one or other of
+her children remembered they hadn't shut the door. When the
+inevitable cold was upon her and she was lamentably coughing, she
+would mention the door for the first time, and quietly say she
+hadn't liked to trouble them to shut it, they had seemed so busy
+with their own affairs.</p>
+<p>But after he had been in the engineering firm a little while, a
+further change came over Mr. Twist. He was there to make money,
+more money, for his mother. The first duty of an American male had
+descended on him. He wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in
+spite of his own tastes being so simple that his income of
+&pound;5000&mdash;it was his, not his mother's, but it didn't feel
+as if it were&mdash;would have been more than sufficient for him.
+Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that might
+comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined an
+expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be
+made to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out
+altogether beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for
+him, and definitely grew up.</p>
+<p>The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him
+to be at home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board
+with her brother Charles, a <a name="Page_90" id=
+"Page_90"></a>clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic
+Refreshment at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of
+which Uncle Charles poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable
+meals&mdash;for he practised the austerities and had no
+wife&mdash;dribbled at its spout. Hold it as carefully as one might
+it dribbled at its spout, and added to the confused appearance of
+the table by staining the cloth afresh every time it was used.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and
+generosity, his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth,
+being all amiability and affection, above the nose was quite
+different. In the middle came his nose, a nose that led him to
+improve himself, to read and meditate the poets, to be tenacious in
+following after the noble; and above were eyes in which simplicity
+sat side by side with appreciation; and above these was the
+forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were inventions.</p>
+<p>He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he
+came into daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood
+he had often fixed up little things for Edith,&mdash;she was three
+years older than he, and was even then canning and preserving and
+ironing,&mdash;little simplifications and alleviations of her
+labour; but they had been just toys, things that had amused him to
+put together and that he forgot as soon as they were done. But the
+teapot revealed to him clearly what his forehead was there for. He
+would not and could not continue, being the soul of
+considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
+every meal&mdash;they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
+supper&mdash;and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at
+every meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful
+with it. He handled it <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>with the
+most delicate precision. He gave it time. He never hurried it. He
+never filled it more than half full. And yet at the end of every
+pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the cloth.</p>
+<p>Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different
+pattern, with a curved spout instead of a straight one.</p>
+<p>The same thing happened.</p>
+<p>Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot
+section trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring
+water, provided by a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant,
+out of each different make of teapot into cups.</p>
+<p>They all dribbled.</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought
+and thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin
+hand; and what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it
+as complete in every detail as Pallas Athene when she very
+similarly sprang, was that now well-known object on every breakfast
+table, Twist's Non-Trickler Teapot.</p>
+<p>In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His
+mother passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still
+would only call a modest competence, but what in England would have
+been regarded as wallowing in money. She left off being
+middle-class, and was received into the lower upper-class, the
+upper part of this upper-class being reserved for great names like
+Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With these Mrs. Twist could not
+compete. She would no doubt some day, for Edward was only thirty
+and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was able to add to
+the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss of the
+elder Twist with less of bleakness in her <a name="Page_92" id=
+"Page_92"></a>resignation. It was as though an east wind veered
+round for a brief space a little to the south.</p>
+<p>Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every
+other reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she
+once more sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist,
+and hung her cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a
+peg. When the novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of
+six, and a great deal of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten
+times of everything else instead of only once, began to wear off,
+Mrs. Twist drooped again, and pulled the departed Twist out of the
+decent forgetfulness of the past, and he once more came to dinner
+in the form of his favourite dishes, and assisted in the family
+conversations by means of copious quotations from his alleged
+utterances.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy
+thousand pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having
+invented and patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths
+of America, and indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to
+receive his percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But
+so much had he changed since his adolescence that he preferred to
+stick to his engineering and his office in New York rather than go
+home and be happy with his mother.</p>
+<p>She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She
+understood his behaviour still less when he went off to France in
+1915, himself equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.</p>
+<p>For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided
+Mrs. Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an
+only son in danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was
+never so much <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>called upon as
+during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest, and there
+was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of the
+funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.</p>
+<p>While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the
+Twinklers&mdash;this was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she
+tried Anna-Rose's patience severely by asking her not once but
+several times whether she didn't think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose
+disliked it from the first because of the suggestion it contained
+that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them as works of
+mercy&mdash;while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at his
+home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
+to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense
+slaughtering of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being
+now the head servant of many instead of three was more than double
+as hard-worked as she used to be, was on her feet those last few
+days without stopping. And she had to go and meet Edward in New
+York as well. Whether Mrs. Twist feared that he might not come
+straight home or whether it was what she said it was, that dear
+Edward must not be the only person on the boat who had no one to
+meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that when it came to
+the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had difficulty in
+maintaining her usual brightness.</p>
+<p>Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the
+<i>St. Luke</i> got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey
+from New York, and during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared
+for. She thought Edith surprisingly thoughtless to be so much
+pleased to go. She examined her flat and sinewy form with
+disapproval when she came in hatted and booted to say good-bye.
+<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>No wonder nobody married Edith.
+And the money wouldn't help her either now&mdash;she was too old.
+She had missed her chances, poor thing.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years
+before, when Edward was still in the school room, who had almost
+married Edith. He was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had
+come to Clark to stay with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to
+do through a long vacation, and had taken to dropping in at all
+hours and interrupting Edith in her housekeeping; and Edith, even
+then completely flat but of a healthy young uprightness and bright
+of eyes and hair, had gone silly and forgotten how to cook, and had
+given her mother, who surely had enough sorrows already, an attack
+of indigestion.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
+necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith.
+And besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry.
+She told herself that she could not bear the thought of poor
+Edith's running the risk of an affliction similar to her own. If
+one hasn't a husband one cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw.
+If Edith married she would certainly lose him unless he lost her.
+Marriage had only two solutions, she explained to her silent
+daughter,&mdash;she would not, of course, discuss with her that
+third one which America has so often flown to for solace and
+relief,&mdash;only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either
+one died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other
+one did. It was only a question of time before one of the married
+was left alone to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it
+always ended black. "And think of my having to see you like
+<i>this</i>" she said, with a gesture indicating her sad dress.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>Edith was intimidated; and
+the young man presently went away whistling. He was the only one.
+Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely from her mind;
+and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet Edward in the
+clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she unconsciously felt a
+faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time to get married
+in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been married at
+twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone through, was
+hardly more gray than Edith's.</p>
+<p>"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself
+after bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable
+to bear the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased
+face, went off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked
+her, if she still had a minute to spare, to help her to the sofa,
+because she felt faint.</p>
+<p>"I expect the excitement has been too much for me," she
+murmured, lying down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined
+in affection and attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and
+settled down to getting her mother well again in time for
+Edward.</p>
+<p>Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York,
+and he accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he mightn't
+otherwise have done.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a name="Page_96" id=
+"Page_96"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<p>When the <i>St. Luke</i> was so near its journey's end that
+people were packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the
+scraps of talk the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried
+condition of mind Mr. Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of
+the days had produced in them, and began to consider their
+prospects with more attention. This attention soon resulted in
+anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being irritable. Anna-Felicitas
+didn't show hers at all.</p>
+<p>It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America
+and never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future
+for them once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about
+a new life and a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer
+it; but when the new world was really upon them, and the new life,
+with all the multitudinous details that would have to be tackled,
+going to begin in a few hours, their hearts became uneasy and sank
+within them. England hadn't liked them. Suppose America didn't like
+them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's
+friends didn't like them either? Their hearts sank to, and remained
+in, their boots.</p>
+<p>Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from
+what Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their
+fellow-passengers, was a chamois-leather bag containing their
+passports, a letter to the bank where their &pound;200 was, a
+letter to those friends of <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>Uncle
+Arthur's who were to be tried first, a letter to those other
+friends of his who were to be the second line of defence supposing
+the first one failed, and ten pounds in two &pound;5 notes.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used
+in bed most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so
+miserable, had given Anna-Rose one of the &pound;5 notes for the
+extra expenses of the journey till, in New York, she should be able
+to draw on the &pound;200, though what expenses there could be for
+a couple of girls whose passage was paid Uncle Arthur was damned,
+he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had secretly added the
+other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it would have to
+be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to be ready
+for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing
+restlessness of the passengers that it would soon be time to go and
+change it. How many dollars ought she to get?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have
+asked him long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the
+end of their journey. Only yesterday there was the same old
+limitless sea everywhere, the same old feeling that they were never
+going to arrive. Now the waves had all gone, and one could actually
+see land. The New World. The place all their happiness or
+unhappiness would depend on.</p>
+<p>She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as
+if she had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and
+was going to say something appropriate and encouraging on the
+Christopher and Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been
+pondering the &pound;5 notes problem, wouldn't listen.</p>
+<p>"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, "<a name=
+"Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>isn't like a shilling or a mark, but on
+the other hand neither is it like a pound."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate
+business.</p>
+<p>"It's four times more than one, and five times less than the
+other," said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how you've got to count.
+That's what Aunt Alice said."</p>
+<p>"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said Anna-Rose, frowning.
+"As if it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange.
+Uncle Arthur said we weren't to forget that."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange,
+and Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who
+had to be kept in her proper place, especially when one was just
+getting to America and she might easily become above herself, said
+that it was something that varied. ("The exchange, you know,
+varies," Uncle Arthur had said when he gave her the &pound;5 note.
+"You must keep your eye on the variations." Anna-Rose was all
+eagerness to keep her eye on them, if only she had known what and
+where they were. But one never asked questions of Uncle Arthur. His
+answers, if one did, were confined to expressions of anger and
+amazement that one didn't, at one's age, already know.)</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose
+out of the corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her
+further.</p>
+<p>"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking
+in the direction he usually appeared from.</p>
+<p>"We won't always have <i>him</i>" remarked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>The young lady of the nails
+appeared at that moment in a hat so gorgeous that the twins stopped
+dead to stare. She had a veil on and white gloves, and looked as if
+she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue the very next minute.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody specially and
+means nothing in particular.</p>
+<p>"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you," said
+Anna-Rose. "There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now,
+remember. I won't."</p>
+<p>"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said Anna-Felicitas
+mildly. "I shall be walking about New York."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>you'll</i> see," said Anna-Rose irritably.</p>
+<p>She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the
+tipping, and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's
+friends, whose names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so
+naturally she was irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood
+this better than Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she said, after a
+moment's pause during which she wondered whether, in the interests
+of Anna-Rose's restoration to calm, she mightn't have to be sick
+again. She did hope she wouldn't have to. She had supposed she had
+done with that. It is true there were now no waves, but she knew
+she had only to go near the engines and smell the oil. "Let's go
+and put on our hats," she suggested, slipping her hand through
+Anna-Rose's arm.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>Anna-Rose let herself be
+led away, and they went to their cabin; and when they came out of
+it half an hour later, no longer with that bald look their caps had
+given them, the sun catching the little rings of pale gold hair
+that showed for the first time, and clad, instead of in the
+disreputable jerseys that they loved, in neat black coats and
+skirts&mdash;for they still wore mourning when properly
+dressed&mdash;with everything exactly as Aunt Alice had directed
+for their arrival, the young men of the second class could hardly
+believe their eyes.</p>
+<p>"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to Anna-Felicitas
+as she passed him, "but you're looking very well to-day."</p>
+<p>"I expect that's because I <i>am</i> well," said Anna-Felicitas
+amiably.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated
+"My!"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by the
+difference the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid days
+of cap and jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do somehow seem
+very splendid."</p>
+<p>"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd make the very angels
+jealous, and get pulling off their haloes and kicking them over the
+edge of heaven."</p>
+<p>"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have
+squeezed them out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing lost in
+admiration at Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge nice hats easily
+at all."</p>
+<p>And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye
+fell on Anna-Felicitas, "<i>Ja, ja, die hat Rasse.</i>"</p>
+<p>And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair that
+spent the night in a different part of the cabin from her head and
+had been seen doing it by <a name="Page_101" id=
+"Page_101"></a>Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and was grudging.
+"<i>Gewiss</i>," she muttered back, "<i>bis auf der Nase. Die Nase
+aber entfremdet mich. Die ist keine echte Junkernase</i>."</p>
+<p>So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came
+a little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for
+there were the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives
+every minute now.</p>
+<p>Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say,
+that does make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light
+lay over New York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air,
+a delicate dry crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got
+close, were delicate too&mdash;delicate pale gold, and green, and
+brown, and they seemed so composed and calm, the twins thought,
+standing there quietly after the upheavals and fidgetiness of the
+Atlantic. New York was well into the Fall, the time of year when it
+gets nearest to beauty. The beauty was entirely in the atmosphere,
+and the lights and shadows it made. It was like an exquisite veil
+flung over an ugly woman, hiding, softening, encouraging hopes.</p>
+<p>Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides.
+Everybody was exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly
+and talkative. They all waved whenever another boat passed. Those
+who knew America pointed out the landmarks to those who didn't. Mr.
+Twist pointed them out to the twins, and so did the young man who
+had remarked favourably on Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as they did
+it simultaneously and there was so much to look at and so many
+boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had actually got to the
+statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her &pound;10 and the
+dollars.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>The young man was saying
+how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and the word dollars made
+Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where
+it very visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I forgot&mdash;I
+must get change. And how much do you think we ought to tip the
+stewardess? I've never tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish&mdash;I
+wish I hadn't to."</p>
+<p>She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to
+someone so much older than herself and who till almost that very
+morning had treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of
+tiresome children. Surely she would be most offended at being
+tipped by people such years younger than herself?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist thought not.</p>
+<p>"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar. That's the figure.
+Not a cent more, or you girls'll get inflating prices and Wall
+Street'll bust up."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place
+where her bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't seemed
+to mind them quite so much last night, and still less that morning,
+and perhaps some little memento&mdash;something that wasn't
+money&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man, bursting
+into hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he was a low
+young man.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
+shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also
+stewards, softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it
+didn't mean they wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he would
+do the tipping for her if she liked.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess <a name=
+"Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>had haunted her at intervals
+throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night. She felt
+that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard
+that she couldn't begin with somebody more her own size.</p>
+<p>"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel," she said, "I
+can give you my &pound;5 notes, and perhaps you would get them
+changed for me and deduct what you think the stewardess ought to
+have."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to stay
+behind with the exuberant young man though she was quite
+unconscious of his presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel,
+where after a great deal of private fumbling, her back turned to
+them, she produced the two much-crumpled &pound;5 notes.</p>
+<p>"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well," said Anna-Rose
+eagerly. "I don't think I <i>could</i> offer him a tip. He has been
+so fatherly to us. And imagine offering to tip one's father."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in
+time. He promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that
+the tips he bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back
+with messages of thanks from the tipped&mdash;such polite ones from
+the stewardess that the twins were astonished&mdash;and gave
+Anna-Rose a packet of very dirty-looking slices of green paper,
+which were dollar bills, he said, besides a variety of strange
+coins which he spread out on a ledge and explained to her.</p>
+<p>"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr. Twist,
+counting out the money.</p>
+<p>"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did <a name=
+"Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>you keep your eye on its variations?"
+she added a little loudly, with a view to rousing respect in
+Anna-Felicitas who was lounging against a seat and showing a total
+absence of every kind of appropriate emotion.</p>
+<p>"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause. "I kept both
+my eyes on all of them."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess
+each with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because
+the exchange was so favourable this had made no difference to the
+&pound;5 notes. Reducing each &pound;5 note into German marks,
+which was the way the Twinklers, in spite of a year in England,
+still dealt in their heads with money before they could get a clear
+idea of it, there would have been two hundred marks; and as it
+took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two hundred marks
+would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside that extra
+complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the
+exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping
+quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said
+Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end of her
+calculation, fifty dollars.</p>
+<p>"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with respectful
+attention. "Here they are."</p>
+<p>"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't be <i>exactly</i>
+fifty dollars. The tips anyhow would alter that."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but you forget the exchange."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
+Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
+sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as
+Anna-Rose industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was
+the better of the two. But even so, the difference entitled
+<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>her to authority on the
+subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her
+calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her method,
+she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise the
+inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held her
+down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and was unable to respect
+her.</p>
+<p>Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to
+rejoice in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from
+asking questions.</p>
+<p>"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a
+little.</p>
+<p>She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her
+bag. They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into her
+pocket, for which also there were too many; but she refused
+Anna-Felicitas's offer to put some of them in hers on the ground
+that sooner or later she would be sure to forget they weren't her
+handkerchief and would blow her nose with them.</p>
+<p>"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to Mr. Twist,
+as she stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous patting to get
+it to look inconspicuous. "We're never going to forget you, Anna-F.
+and me. We'll write to you often, and we'll come and see you as
+often as you like."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched the shore of
+Long Island sliding past. "Of course you've got your relations, but
+relations soon pall, and you may be quite glad after a while of a
+little fresh blood."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several
+other things Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said
+about relations, again with that air of addressing nobody specially
+and meaning nothing <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>in
+particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with the obesity of her
+pocket.</p>
+<p>"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist, whose
+misgivings as to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother grew
+rather than subsided, "I shall certainly come to see you."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said Anna-Felicitas,
+her eyes far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't. He wouldn't let the maids
+have any, so they had to go out and do the following themselves. We
+had a follower once, didn't we, Anna-R.?" she continued her voice
+pensive and reminiscent. "He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite
+old. At least thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he
+<i>could</i> follow. But he did. And he used to come home to tea
+with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of chocolate for us out of his
+pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We ate them and felt
+perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he tried to kiss
+one of us&mdash;I forget which. And that, combined with the
+chocolates, revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we
+told him they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to
+some place where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by
+Uncle Arthur's vengeance, and we said how surprised we were,
+because he was so old and we didn't know followers were as old as
+that ever."</p>
+<p>"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having subdued
+the swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates and then not
+want to kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing, Anna-F. and me.
+Still, we were full of his chocolates; there was no getting away
+from that. So we talked it over after he had gone, and decided that
+next day when he came we'd tell him he might kiss one of us if he
+still wanted to, and we drew <a name="Page_107" id=
+"Page_107"></a>lots which it was to be, and it was me, and I filled
+myself to the brim with chocolates so as to feel grateful enough to
+bear it, but he didn't come."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come again for a long
+while, and when he did there was no follow left in him. Quite the
+contrary."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because
+it was the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her.
+He was used to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of
+Anna-Rose who had looked upon him as her best friend since the day
+he had wiped up her tears; but Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell
+to talk. She had uttered languid and brief observations from time
+to time with her eyes shut and her head lolling loosely on her
+neck, but this was the first time she had been, as it were, an
+ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet, walking about,
+looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in a
+condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was a born mother. The more trouble he was given the
+more attached he became. He had rolled Anna-Felicitas up in rugs so
+often that to be not going to roll her up any more was depressing
+to him. He was beginning to perceive this motherliness in him
+himself, and he gazed through his spectacles at Anna-Felicitas
+while she sketched the rise and fall of the follower, and wondered
+with an almost painful solicitude what her fate would be in the
+hands of the Clouston Sacks.</p>
+<p>Equally he wondered as to the other one's fate; for he could not
+think of one Twinkler without thinking of the other. They were
+inextricably mixed together in the impression they had produced on
+him, and they dwelt together in his thoughts as one person called,
+<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>generally, Twinklers. He stood
+gazing at them, his motherly instincts uppermost, his hearty
+yearning over them now that the hour of parting was so near and his
+carefully tended chickens were going to be torn from beneath his
+wing. Mr. Twist was domestic. He was affectionate. He would have
+loved, though he had never known it, the sensation of pattering
+feet about his house, and small hands clinging to the apron he
+would never wear. And it was entirely characteristic of him that
+his invention, the invention that brought him his fortune, should
+have had to do with a teapot.</p>
+<p>But if his heart was uneasy within him at the prospect of
+parting from his charges their hearts were equally uneasy, though
+not in the same way. The very name of Clouston K. Sack was
+repugnant to Anna-Rose; and Anna-Felicitas, less quick at
+disliking, turned it over cautiously in her mind as one who turns
+over an unknown and distasteful object with the nose of his
+umbrella. Even she couldn't quite believe that any good thing could
+come out of a name like that, especially when it had got into their
+lives through Uncle Arthur. Mr. Twist had never heard of the
+Clouston Sacks, which made Anna-Rose still more distrustful. She
+wasn't in the least encouraged when he explained the bigness of
+America and that nobody in it ever knew everybody&mdash;she just
+said that everybody had heard of Mr. Roosevelt, and her heart was
+too doubtful within her even to mind being told, as he did
+immediately tell her within ear-shot of Anna-Felicitas, that her
+reply was unreasonable.</p>
+<p>Just at the end, as they were all three straining their eyes, no
+one with more anxiety than Mr. Twist, to try and guess which of the
+crowd on the landing-stage were <a name="Page_109" id=
+"Page_109"></a>the Clouston Sacks, they passed on their other side
+the <i>Vaterland</i>, the great interned German liner at its
+moorings, and the young man who had previously been so very
+familiar, as Anna-Rose said, but who was only, Mr. Twist explained,
+being American, came hurrying boldly up.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't miss this," he said to Anna-Felicitas, actually
+seizing her by the arm. "Here's something that'll make you feel
+home-like right away."</p>
+<p>And he led her off, and would have dragged her off but for
+Anna-Felicitas's perfect non-resistance.</p>
+<p>"He <i>is</i> being familiar," said Anna-Rose to Mr. Twist,
+turning very red and following quickly after him. "That's not just
+being American. Everybody decent knows that if there's any laying
+hold of people's arms to be done one begins with the eldest
+sister."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps he doesn't realize that you <i>are</i> the elder," said
+Mr. Twist. "Strangers judge, roughly, by size."</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose,
+not heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you,
+being left sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all
+that. And the worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She
+hasn't nearly come to the end of what she can do in that direction.
+I see it growing on her. Every Sunday she's inches prettier than
+she was the Sunday before. And wherever I take her to live, and
+however out of the way it is, I'm sure the path to our front door
+is going to be black with suitors."</p>
+<p>This dreadful picture so much perturbed her, and she looked up
+at Mr. Twist with such worried eyes, that he couldn't refrain from
+patting her on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>"There, there," said Mr. Twist, and he begged her to be sure to
+let him know directly she was in the least <a name="Page_110" id=
+"Page_110"></a>difficulty, or even perplexity,&mdash;"about the
+suitors, for instance, or anything else. You must let me be of some
+use in the world, you know," he said.</p>
+<p>"But we shouldn't like it at all if we thought you were
+practising being useful on us," said Anna-Rose "It's wholly foreign
+to our natures to enjoy being the objects of anybody's
+philanthropy."</p>
+<p>"Now I just wonder where you get all your long words from," said
+Mr. Twist soothingly; and Anna-Rose laughed, and there was only one
+dimple in the Twinkler family and Anna-Rose had got it.</p>
+<p>"What do you want to get looking at <i>that</i> for?" she asked
+Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the
+<i>Vaterland</i>, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening
+abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was
+treating her to,&mdash;that terse, surprising, swift
+hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was
+hearing in such abundance for the first time.</p>
+<p>The American passengers appeared one and all to be rejoicing
+over the impotence of the great ship. Every one of them seemed to
+be violently pro-Ally, derisively conjecturing the feelings of the
+<i>Vaterland</i> as every day under her very nose British ships
+arrived and departed and presently arrived again,&mdash;the same
+ships she had seen depart coming back unharmed, unhindered by her
+country's submarines. Only the two German ladies, once more
+ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It was incredible
+to them, simply <i>unfassbar</i> as they said in their thoughts,
+that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare lay
+a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything
+belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. Well, these
+Americans, these dollar-grubbing <a name="Page_111" id=
+"Page_111"></a>Yankees, would soon get taught a sharp, deserved
+lesson&mdash;but at this point they suddenly remembered they were
+Americans themselves, and pulled up their thoughts violently, as it
+were, on their haunches.</p>
+<p>They turned, however, bitterly to the Twinkler girl as she
+pushed her way through to her sister,&mdash;those renegade Junkers,
+those contemptible little apostates&mdash;and asked her, after
+hearing her question to Anna-Felicitas, with an extraordinary
+breaking out of pent-up emotion where she, then, supposed she would
+have been at that moment if it hadn't been for Germany.</p>
+<p>"Not here I think," said Anna-Rose, instantly and fatally ready
+as she always was to answer back and attempt what she called
+reasoned conversation. "There wouldn't have been a war, so of
+course I wouldn't have been here."</p>
+<p>"Why, you wouldn't so much as have been born without Germany,"
+said the lady whose hair came off, with difficulty controlling a
+desire to shake this insolent and perverted Junker who could repeat
+the infamous English lie as to who began the war. "You owe your
+very existence to Germany. You should be giving thanks to her on
+your knees for her gift to you of life, instead of jeering at this
+representative&mdash;" she flung a finger out toward the
+<i>Vaterland</i>&mdash;"this patient and dignified-in
+-temporary-misfortune representative, of her power."</p>
+<p>"I wasn't jeering," said Anna-Rose, defending herself and
+clutching at Anna-Felicitas's sleeve to pull her away.</p>
+<p>"You wouldn't have had a father at all but for Germany," said
+the other lady, the one whose hair grew.</p>
+<p>"And perhaps you will tell me," said the first one, "where you
+would have been <i>then</i>."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>I don't believe," said
+Anna-Rose, her nose in the air, "I don't believe I'd have ever been
+at a loss for a father."</p>
+<p>The ladies, left speechless a moment by the arrogance as well as
+several other things about this answer gave Anna-Rose an
+opportunity for further reasoning with them, which she was unable
+to resist. "There are lots of fathers," she said, "in England, who
+would I'm sure have been delighted to take me on if Germany had
+failed me."</p>
+<p>"England!"</p>
+<p>"Take you on!"</p>
+<p>"An English father for you? For a subject of the King of
+Prussia?"</p>
+<p>"I&mdash;I'm afraid I&mdash;I'm going to be sick," gasped
+Anna-Felicitas suddenly.</p>
+<p>"You're never going to be sick in this bit of bathwater, Miss
+Twinkler?" exclaimed the young man, with the instant ungrudging
+admiration of one who is confronted by real talent. "My, what a
+gift!"</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose darted at Anna-Felicitas's drooping head, that which
+she had been going to say back to the German ladies dissolving on
+her tongue. "Oh no&mdash;<i>no</i>&mdash;" she wailed. "Oh
+<i>no</i>&mdash;not in your best hat, Columbus darling&mdash;you
+can't&mdash;it's not done&mdash;and your hat'll shake off into the
+water, and then there'll only be one between us and we shall never
+be able to go out paying calls and things at the same
+time&mdash;come away and sit down&mdash;Mr. Twist&mdash;Mr.
+Twist&mdash;oh, please come&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas allowed herself to be led away, just in time as
+she murmured, and sat down on the nearest seat and shut her eyes.
+She was thankful Anna-Rose's attention had been diverted to her so
+instantly, for it would have been very difficult to be sick with
+the <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>ship as quiet as one's own
+bedroom. Nothing short of the engine-room could have made her sick
+now. She sat keeping her eyes shut and Anna-Rose's attention
+riveted, wondering what she would do when there was no ship and
+Anna-Rose was on the verge of hasty and unfortunate argument. Would
+she have to learn to faint? But that would terrify poor Christopher
+so dreadfully.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas pondered, her eyes shut, on this situation. Up to
+now in her life she had always found that situations solved
+themselves. Given time. And sometimes a little assistance. So, no
+doubt, would this one. Anna-Rose would ripen and mellow. The German
+ladies would depart hence and be no more seen; and it was unlikely
+she and Anna-Rose would meet at such close quarters as a ship's
+cabin any persons so peculiarly and unusually afflicting again. All
+situations solved themselves; or, if they showed signs of not going
+to, one adopted the gentle methods that helped them to get solved.
+Early in life she had discovered that objects which cannot be
+removed or climbed over can be walked round. A little deviousness,
+and the thing was done. She herself had in the most masterly manner
+when she was four escaped church-going for several years by a
+simple method, that seemed to her looking back very like an
+inspiration, of getting round it. She had never objected to going,
+had never put into words the powerful if vague dislike with which
+it filled her when Sunday after Sunday she had to go and dangle her
+legs helplessly for two hours from the chair she was put on in the
+enclosed pew reserved for the <i>hohe gr&auml;fliche
+Herrschaften</i> from the Slosh.</p>
+<p>Her father, a strict observer of the correct and a <a name=
+"Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>pious believer in God for other
+people, attended Divine Service as regularly as he wound the clocks
+and paid the accounts. He <i>repr&auml;sentierte</i>, as the German
+phrase went; and his wife and children were expected to
+<i>repr&auml;sentieren</i> too. Which they did uncomplainingly; for
+when one has to do with determined husbands and fathers it is
+quickest not to complain. But the pins and needles that patient
+child endured, Anna-Felicitas remembered, looking back through the
+years at the bunched-up figure on the chair as at a stranger, were
+something awful. The edge of the chair just caught her legs in the
+pins and needles place. If she had been a little bigger or a little
+smaller it wouldn't have happened; as it was, St. Paul wrestling
+with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas
+perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after
+Sunday bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside
+her, and she heard her own voice floating out into the void above
+the heads of the mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible
+distinctness in a sort of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold
+potato for breakfast,"&mdash;and a second time, in the breathless
+suspension of mumbling that followed upon this: "I only had a cold
+potato for breakfast,"&mdash;and a third time she opened her mouth
+to repeat the outrageous statement, regardless of her mother's
+startled hand laid on her arm, and of Anna-Rose's petrified stare,
+and of the lifted faces of the congregation, and of the bent,
+scandalized brows of the pastor,&mdash;impelled by something that
+possessed her, unable to do anything but obey it; but her father, a
+man of deeds, rose up in his place, took her in his arms, and
+carried her down the stairs and out of the church. And the minute
+she found herself really rescued, and out where <a name="Page_115"
+id="Page_115"></a>the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
+larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as
+affectionately against her father's head as if she were a daughter
+to be proud of, and would have purred if she had had had a purr as
+loudly as the most satisfied and virtuous of cats.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mein Kind</i>," said her father, standing her up on a
+convenient tomb so that her eyes were level with his, "is it then
+true about the cold potato?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her
+legs were feeling like again.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mein Kind</i>," said her father, "do you not know it is
+wrong to lie?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her
+eyes, gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the
+trees.</p>
+<p>"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, <i>Kind</i>, you
+know what a lie is?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her
+satisfaction at being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he
+still stood staring at her she put her hands one on each of his
+cheeks and squeezed his face together and murmured, "Oh, I do
+<i>love</i> you."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><a name="Page_116" id=
+"Page_116"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<p>Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat
+with her eyes shut long after she needn't have.</p>
+<p>She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the
+future so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of
+the Baltic again, where bits of amber where washed up after a
+storm, and the pale rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was
+hardly salt, and the air seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the
+cottage gardens in the little village that clustered round a
+clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in them, for there was
+something in the soil that made lilacs be more wonderful there than
+anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole forest as far as
+one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After rain on a May
+evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running down the
+black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to the
+shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
+the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that
+lifting of one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea
+smell and the lilac. And then there was home to come back to when
+the forest began to look too dark and its deep silence made one's
+flesh creep&mdash;home, and a light in the window where ones mother
+was. Incredible the security of those days, the safe warmth of
+them, the careless roominess....</p>
+<p>"You know if you <i>could</i> manage to feel a little better,
+<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose's
+voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get off this
+ship."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
+self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the
+deck except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last
+alongside the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was
+ashamed of herself for having wandered off so easily and
+comfortably into the past, and left poor Christopher alone in the
+difficult present.</p>
+<p>"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her
+hat a tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for
+anything, especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep.
+Have you&mdash;" she hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are
+they&mdash;are the Clouston Sacks visible yet?"</p>
+<p>"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too,
+and looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here
+sooner to see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them,
+and they looked so like what I think they will look like that I
+went into our cabin again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them.
+They've found the people they were after, and have gone."</p>
+<p>"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and
+I think we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know
+what they're like and they don't know what you're like it may be
+difficult. Heaven forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you,
+but I have to catch a train if I'm to get home to-night, and I
+don't intend to catch it until I've handed you over safely to the
+Sacks."</p>
+<p>"Those Sacks&mdash;" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished
+irrelevantly by remarking that it was the details <a name=
+"Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>of life that were
+discouraging,&mdash;from which Anna Felicitas knew that
+Christopher's heart was once more in her boots.</p>
+<p>"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
+"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but
+at some time when we're more at leisure."</p>
+<p>It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston
+Sacks would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the
+beginning that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at
+least their plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them
+away to the Sack lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family
+mansion. It was, they knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing
+to them. Only Mr. Twist knew how far away it was. He had always
+supposed the Sacks would meet their young charges, stay that night
+in New York, and continue on to Boston next day. The twins were so
+certain they would be met that Mr. Twist was certain too. He had
+concluded, with a growingly empty feeling in his heart as the time
+of separation drew near, that all that now remained for him to do
+on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over to the Sacks. And
+then leave them. And then go home to that mother he loved but had
+for some time known he didn't like,&mdash;go home a bereft and
+lonely man.</p>
+<p>But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been
+Sacks for all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody
+in fact seemed to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said,
+"Are you the Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms;
+the air was full of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate
+kissing of relations; but nobody took any <a name="Page_119" id=
+"Page_119"></a>notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
+waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's
+luggage&mdash;only his was baggage&mdash;was examined, and the
+kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed hither and thither, and broke
+up into groups, and was shot through by interviewers, and got
+packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and thinner, and at last
+was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it was no longer
+possible.</p>
+<p>There were no Sacks.</p>
+<p>To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed
+hall piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly
+and asked if they were intending to meet some young ladies called
+Twinkler. His tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one
+of inquiry, it almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were
+cold. He wandered about uncertainly from group to group, his soft
+felt hat on the back of his head and his brow getting more and more
+puckered; and Anna-Rose, anxiously looking on from afar, became
+impatient at last of these refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and
+thought that perhaps Mr. Twist wasn't making himself clear.</p>
+<p>Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she
+approached a group on her own account and asked them, enunciating
+her words very clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and
+Mrs. Clouston Sack.</p>
+<p>The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at
+her in astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr.
+Twist being turned away for the fifth time in the distance a wave
+of red despair came over her, and she said, reproach in her voice
+and tears in her eyes, "But <i>somebody's</i> got to be the
+Sacks."</p>
+<p>Upon which the group she was addressing stared at her in a more
+astonished silence than ever.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>Mr. Twist came up mopping
+his brow and took he arm and led her back to Anna-Felicitas, who
+was taking care of the luggage and had sat down philosophically to
+await developments on a bag of sulphur. She didn't yet know what
+sulphur looked like on one's clothes after one has sat on it, and
+smiled cheerfully and encouragingly at Anna-Rose as she came
+towards her.</p>
+<p>"There <i>are</i> no Sacks," said Anna-Rose, facing the
+truth.</p>
+<p>"It's exactly like that Uncle Arthur of yours," said Mr. Twist,
+mopping his forehead and speaking almost vindictively. "Exactly
+like him. A man like that <i>would</i> have the sort of friends
+that don't meet one."</p>
+<p>"Well, we must do without the Sacks," said Anna-Felicitas,
+rising from the sulphur bag with the look of serene courage that
+can only dwell on the face of one who is free from care as to what
+has happened to him behind. "And it isn't," she added sweetly to
+Mr. Twist, "as if we hadn't got <i>you</i>."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, suddenly seeing daylight. "Of course.
+What do Sacks really matter? I mean, for a day or two? You'll take
+us somewhere where we can wait till we've found them."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Some nice quiet old-fashioned
+coffee-house sort of place, like the one the Brontes went to in St.
+Paul's Churchyard the first time they were launched into the
+world."</p>
+<p>"Yes. Some inexpensive place."</p>
+<p>"Suited to the frugal."</p>
+<p>"Because although we've got &pound;200, even that will need
+watching or it will go."</p>
+<p>During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead.
+As often as he mopped it it broke out <a name="Page_121" id=
+"Page_121"></a>afresh and had to be mopped again. They were the
+only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He
+couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim,
+locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers
+attentively.</p>
+<p>Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her
+wharves and landing-places with officials specially appointed to
+guard the purity of family life. Family life obviously cannot be
+pure without a marriage being either in it or having at some time
+or other passed through it. The officials engaged in eyeing Mr.
+Twist and the twins were all married themselves, and were well
+acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the Twist and Twinkler
+party as they might, they could see no trace of marriage anywhere
+about it.</p>
+<p>On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it
+amounted to conscious illegality.</p>
+<p>"Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead.</p>
+<p>"These here&mdash;" said the official, jerking his thumb at the
+twins. "They your sisters?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like
+him?"</p>
+<p>"Daughters?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of
+repudiation. "You <i>can't</i> really think we look as much like
+him as all that?"</p>
+<p>"Wife and sister-in-law?"</p>
+<p>Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose
+forgetting her cares for a moment. <a name="Page_122" id=
+"Page_122"></a>But they were flattered, because it was at least a
+proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up.</p>
+<p>"Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters,
+and they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said
+Mr. Twist vehemently.</p>
+<p>"Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out
+his jaw. "This is a free country, and I'll have no darned
+cheek."</p>
+<p>"These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more
+patiently. "They're my friends."</p>
+<p>"Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're
+going to do with them next."</p>
+<p>"Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered
+brow at the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew."</p>
+<p>The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant
+contempt. He had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed
+already. There had been a slump in sinners the past week, and he
+was as full of suppressed energy and as much tormented by it as an
+unexercised and overfed horse. "Step this way," he ordered curtly,
+waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden erection that was apparently an
+office. "Oh, don't you worry about the girls," he added, as his
+prey seemed disinclined to leave them.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist did worry. He saw Ellis Island looming up behind
+the two figures that were looking on in an astonishment that had
+not yet had time to turn into dismay as he was marched off out of
+sight. "I'll be back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"That's as may be," remarked the official grimly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>But he was back; if not in
+a minute in a little more than five minutes, still accompanied by
+the official, but an official magically changed into tameness and
+amiability, desirous to help, instructing his inferiors to carry
+Mr. Twist's and the young ladies' baggage to a taxi.</p>
+<p>It was the teapot that had saved him,&mdash;that blessed teapot
+that was always protruding itself benevolently into his life. Mr.
+Twist had identified himself with it, and it had instantly saved
+him. In the shelter of his teapot Mr. Twist could go anywhere and
+do anything in America. Everybody had it. Everybody knew it. It was
+as pervasive of America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly
+pervasive. It was only less visible because it stayed at home. It
+was more like a wife than Ford's cars were. From a sinner caught
+red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable creator, leapt to the position
+of one who can do no wrong, for he had not only placed his teapot
+between himself and judgment but had accompanied his proofs of
+identity by a suitable number of dollar bills, pressed
+inconspicuously into the official's conveniently placed hand.</p>
+<p>The twins found themselves being treated with distinction. They
+were helped into the taxi by the official himself, and what was to
+happen to them next was left entirely to the decision and
+discretion of Mr. Twist&mdash;a man so much worried that at that
+moment he hadn't any of either. He couldn't even answer when asked
+where the taxi was to go to. He had missed his train, and he tried
+not to think of his mother's disappointment, the thought was so
+upsetting. But he wouldn't have caught it if he could, for how
+could he leave these two poor children?</p>
+<p>"I'm more than ever convinced," he said, pushing his <a name=
+"Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>hat still further off his forehead,
+and staring at the back of the Twinkler trunks piled up in front of
+him next to the driver, while the disregarded official at the door
+still went on asking him where he wished the cab to go to, "that
+children should all have parents."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><a name="Page_125" id=
+"Page_125"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<p>The hotel they were finally sent to by the official, goaded at
+last by Mr. Twist's want of a made-up mind into independent
+instructions to the cabman, was the Ritz. He thought this very
+suitable for the evolver of Twist's Non-Trickler, and it was only
+when they were being rushed along at what the twins, used to the
+behaviour of London taxis and not altogether unacquainted with the
+prudent and police-supervised deliberation of the taxis of Berlin,
+regarded as a skid-collision-and-mutilation-provoking speed, that a
+protest from Anna-Rose conveyed to Mr. Twist where they were
+heading for.</p>
+<p>"An hotel called Ritz sounds very expensive," she said. "I've
+heard Uncle Arthur talk of one there is in London and one there is
+in Paris, and he said that only damned American millionaires could
+afford to stay in them. Anna-Felicitas and me aren't American
+millionaires&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Or damned," put in Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;but quite the contrary," said Anna-Rose, "hadn't you
+better take us somewhere else?"</p>
+<p>"Somewhere like where the Brontes stayed in London," said
+Anna-Felicitas harping on this idea. "Where cheapness is combined
+with historical associations."</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord, it don't matter," said Mr. Twist, who for the first
+time in their friendship seemed ruffled.</p>
+<p>"Indeed it does," said Anna-Rose anxiously.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>You forget we've got to
+husband our resources," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't run away with the idea that because we've got
+&pound;200 we're the same as millionaires," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, "frequently told us that
+&pound;200 is a very vast sum; but he equally frequently told us
+that it isn't."</p>
+<p>"It was when he was talking about having given to us that he
+said it was such a lot," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"He said that as long as we had it we would be rich," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "but directly we hadn't it we would be poor."</p>
+<p>"So we'd rather not go to the Ritz, please," said Anna-Rose, "if
+you don't mind."</p>
+<p>The taxi was stopped, and Mr. Twist got out and consulted the
+driver. The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for
+the twins floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle
+Charles would speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit,
+and approached those he did speak to with caution till they were
+sixty. He regarded them as one of the chief causes of modern
+unrest. He liked them so much that he hated them. He could practise
+abstinence, but not temperance. Uncle Charles was no good as a
+refuge.</p>
+<p>"Well now, see here," said the driver at last, after Mr. Twist
+had rejected such varied suggestions of something small and quiet
+as the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Biltmore, "you tell me
+where you want to go to and I'll take you there."</p>
+<p>"I want to go to the place your mother would stay in if she came
+up for a day or two from the country," said Mr. Twist
+helplessly.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>Get right in then, and
+I'll take you back to the Ritz," said the driver.</p>
+<p>But finally, when his contempt for Mr. Twist, of whose identity
+he was unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy
+pleasantries with him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in
+a street off the less desirable end of Fifth Avenue, and got rid of
+him.</p>
+<p>It was one of those quiet and cheap New York hotels that yet are
+both noisy and expensive. It was full of foreigners,&mdash;real
+foreigners, the twins perceived, not the merely technical sort like
+themselves, but people with yellow faces and black eyes. They
+looked very seedy and shabby, and smoked very much, and talked
+volubly in unknown tongues. The entrance hall, a place of mottled
+marble, with clerks behind a counter all of whose faces looked as
+if they were masks, was thick with them; and it was when they
+turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas passed and Anna-Rose
+was thinking proudly, "Yes, you don't see anything like that every
+day, do you," and herself looked fondly at her Columbus, that she
+saw that it wasn't Columbus's beauty at all but the sulphur on the
+back of her skirt.</p>
+<p>This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in
+the lift to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was
+trying to brush it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best
+one.</p>
+<p>"That's all your grips, ain't it?" said the youth in buttons who
+had come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom
+floor.</p>
+<p>"Our what?" said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. "Do
+you mean our bags?"</p>
+<p>"No. Grips. These here," said the youth.</p>
+<p>"Is that what they're called in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas,
+with the intelligent interest of a traveller <a name="Page_128" id=
+"Page_128"></a>determined to understand and appreciate everything,
+while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the condition of the best
+skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before the youth,
+continued to brush her down as best she could with her
+handkerchief.</p>
+<p>"I don't call them. It's what they are," said the youth. "What I
+want to know is, are they all here?"</p>
+<p>"How interesting that you don't drop your h's," said
+Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him. "The rest of you is so <i>like</i>
+no h's."</p>
+<p>The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he
+didn't follow.</p>
+<p>"Those <i>are</i> all our&mdash;grips, I think," said Anna-Rose
+counting them round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. "Thank
+you very much," she added after a pause, as he still lingered.</p>
+<p>But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in
+England. Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off
+the table, and shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle
+was empty. "Want some ice water?" he inquired.</p>
+<p>"What for?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"What for?" echoed the youth.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's
+manner which seemed to her familiar, "we don't want ice water, but
+we should be glad of a little hot water."</p>
+<p>"You'll get all you want of that in there," said the youth,
+jerking his head towards a door that led into a bathroom. "It's ice
+water and ink that you get out of me."</p>
+<p>"Really?" said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more
+intelligent interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being
+America, a country, she had heard, of <a name="Page_129" id=
+"Page_129"></a>considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his
+person bristling with taps which only needed turning.</p>
+<p>"We don't want either, thank you," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brushing began to grow vehement.
+Why didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and
+hurt his feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he?
+Anna-Felicitas, who was much too pleasantly detached, thought
+Anna-Rose, for such a situation, the door being wide open to the
+passage and the ungetridable youth standing there staring, was
+leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing her hair.</p>
+<p>"Suppose you're new to this country," said the youth after a
+pause.</p>
+<p>"Brand," said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Then p'raps," said the youth, "you don't know that the feller
+who brings up your grips gets a tip."</p>
+<p>"Of course we know that," said Anna-Rose, standing up straight
+and trying to look stately.</p>
+<p>"Then if you know why don't you do it?"</p>
+<p>"Do it?" she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into
+respectfulness by haughtily throwing back her head. "Of course we
+shall do it. At the proper time and place."</p>
+<p>"Which is, as you must have noticed," added Anna-Felicitas
+gently, "departure and the front door."</p>
+<p>"That's all right," said the youth, "but that's only one of the
+times and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is
+the first one."</p>
+<p>"Do I understand," said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified,
+while her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one
+offer people like this?&mdash;"that to America one tips at the
+beginning as well?"</p>
+<p>"Yep," said the youth. "And in the middle too. <a name=
+"Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>Right along through. Never miss an
+opportunity, is as good a slogan as you'll get when it comes to
+tipping."</p>
+<p>"I believe you'd have liked Kipps," said Anna-Felicitas
+meditatively, shaking some dust off her hat and remembering the
+orgy of tipping that immortal young man went in for at the seaside
+hotel.</p>
+<p>"What I like now," said the youth, growing more easy before
+their manifest youth and ignorance, "is tips. Guess you can call it
+Kipps if it pleases you."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose began to fumble nervously in her purse "It's horrid, I
+think, to ask for presents," she said to the youth in deep
+humiliation, more on his account than hers.</p>
+<p>"Presents? I'm not asking for presents. I'm telling you what's
+done," said the youth. And he had spots on his face. And he was
+repugnant to her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose gave him what looked like a shilling. He took it, and
+remarking that he had had a lot of trouble over it went away; and
+Anna-Rose was still flushed by this encounter when Mr. Twist
+knocked and asked if they were ready to be taken down to tea.</p>
+<p>"He might have said thank you," she said indignantly to
+Anna-Felicitas, giving a final desperate brushing to the
+sulphur.</p>
+<p>"I expect he'll come to a bad end," said Anna-Felicitas
+soothingly.</p>
+<p>They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing
+such a thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables
+laid for dinner. It wasn't the custom much in America, explained
+Mr. Twist, to have tea, and no preparations were made for it in
+hotels of that sort. The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be
+discouraged, were showing their detachment from it by sitting in a
+corner of the room playing dominoes. <a name="Page_131" id=
+"Page_131"></a>It was a big room, all looking-glasses and windows,
+and the street outside was badly paved and a great noise of passing
+motor-vans came in and drowned most of what Mr. Twist was saying.
+It was an unlovely place, a place in which one might easily feel
+homesick and that the world was empty of affection, if one let
+oneself go that way. The twins wouldn't. They stoutly refused, in
+their inward recesses, to be daunted by these externals. For there
+was Mr. Twist, their friend and stand-by, still with them, and
+hadn't they got each other? But they felt uneasy all the same; for
+Mr. Twist, though he plied them with buttered toast and macaroons
+and was as attentive as usual, had a somnambulatory quality in his
+attention. He looked like a man who is doing things in a dream. He
+looked like one who is absorbed in something else. His forehead
+still was puckered, and what could it be puckered about, seeing
+that he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a
+clear and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a
+man?</p>
+<p>"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last,
+when he hadn't even heard a question she asked,&mdash;he, the
+polite, the interested, the sympathetic friend of the journey
+across.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in
+his pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at
+and said, "Yes."</p>
+<p>"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+<p>"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in
+my mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.</p>
+<p>"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "<a name=
+"Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>you've got the idea we want such a lot
+of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel quite
+comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant
+friends?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.</p>
+<p>"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but
+as co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.</p>
+<p>"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said
+Anna-Rose, supporting Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"For instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we
+were on it so heavily and so long."</p>
+<p>"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're
+starting a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on
+<i>instantly</i>."</p>
+<p>"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What
+were we made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on
+our own feet?"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends
+with everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it
+seems to give you a lot of satisfaction."</p>
+<p>"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such
+perfect equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as
+objects to be looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all
+be."</p>
+<p>"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed <a name=
+"Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>in her heart she loved and clung to
+Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all you've done for us
+and the way you were so kind to us on the boat,&mdash;we've been
+<i>most</i> obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much indeed,
+I know."</p>
+<p>"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in
+Anna-Felicitas, "and we've got to start life now in earnest."</p>
+<p>"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me
+what it is you propose to do next?"</p>
+<p>"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."</p>
+<p>"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."</p>
+<p>"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved
+abominably," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.</p>
+<p>"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed
+to Boston."</p>
+<p>"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the
+really proper and natural course was for him to have been able to
+take them to his mother. Pity one's mother wasn't&mdash;</p>
+<p>He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on
+the verge of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different
+one.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><a name="Page_134"
+id="Page_134"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<p>"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of
+New York, this one evening, let us go and look at it."</p>
+<p>He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose
+pulled out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe
+determination.</p>
+<p>"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless
+to protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American
+manhood. I only listened with half an ear to all the things you
+both said in the taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise
+of finding myself still with you instead of on the train for Clark,
+and because you both of you do say so very many things. But
+understand once and for all that in this country everything female
+has to be paid for by some man. I'm that man till I've left you on
+the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be Sack&mdash;confound him,"
+finished Mr. Twist suddenly.</p>
+<p>And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
+indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet
+seen in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to
+put him to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an
+established custom, surely," he said more gently.</p>
+<p>So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
+Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy,
+while reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack,
+who was, in their <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>ignorance of
+his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might be going to be
+mothers' helps in the Sack <i>m&eacute;nage</i> for all they
+knew,&mdash;they might, they said, be going to be anything, from
+honoured guests to typists.</p>
+<p>"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins.</p>
+<p>He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked
+down to the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for
+three enchanting miles. The sun had set some time before they got
+there, and had left a clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light
+on the river. Lamps were being lit, and hung like silver globes in
+the thin air. Steep grass slopes, and groups of big trees a little
+deeper yellow than the sky, hid that there were houses and a street
+above them on their right. Up and down the river steamers passed,
+pierced with light, their delicate smoke hanging in the air long
+after they had gone their way. It was so great a joy to walk in all
+this after ten days shut up on the <i>St. Luke</i> and to see such
+blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
+suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible
+not to be cheerful, translated from the <i>St. Luke</i> into such a
+place, trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all
+tingly.</p>
+<p>The world seemed suddenly quite good,&mdash;the simplest,
+easiest of objects to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it
+weigh on one, to laugh rather than cry. They trotted along humming
+bits of their infancy's songs, feeling very warm and happy inside,
+felicitously full of tea and macaroons and with their feet
+comfortably on something that kept still and didn't heave or lurch
+beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than he had been for some
+hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent a telegram to
+his <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>mother, expressing proper
+sorrow at being detained in New York, but giving no reason for it,
+and promising he would be with her rather late the next evening;
+and he had sent a telegram to the Clouston Sacks saying the
+Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed them in New York, would
+arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind was clear again
+owing to the determination of the twins to go to the Sacks. He was
+going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back to
+Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from
+Boston.</p>
+<p>If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks
+who, in Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he
+wouldn't have had the heart to press them to go; and then what
+would he have done with them? Their second and last line of
+defence, supposing they had considered the Sacks had failed and
+were to be ruled out, was in California, a place they spoke of as
+if it were next door to Boston and New York. How could he have let
+them set out alone on that four days' journey, with the possibility
+of once more at its end not being met? No wonder he had been
+abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of his forehead
+going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to the Sacks.
+For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without preparation
+and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York while
+he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist, the
+verb dropping into his mind with the <i>aplomb</i> of an
+inspiration, are the difficulties that beset a man directly he
+begins to twinkle. Already he had earnestly wished to knock the
+reception clerk in the hotel office down because of, first, his
+obvious suspicion of the party before he had heard Mr. Twist's
+name, and <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>because of, second,
+his politeness, his confidential manner as of an understanding
+sympathizer with a rich man's recreations, when he had. The tea,
+which he, had poured out of one of his own teapots, had been
+completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was only this teapot
+that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave Trafficker.
+He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the Twinklers, or
+into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a country,
+Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh from
+where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
+surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
+toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't
+be uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found
+America untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over
+the suspected amorousness of the rich, still putting people into
+uniforms in order to buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question
+him as to his private purities.</p>
+<p>He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
+pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he
+resist the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They
+walked along, talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster
+than he did, especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every
+few steps because of his so much longer legs, his face restored to
+all its usual kindliness as he listened benevolently to their
+remarks, and just when they were beginning to feel as if they soon
+might be tired and hungry a restaurant with lamp-hung gardens
+appeared as punctually as if they had been in Germany, that land of
+nicely arranged distances between meals. They had an extremely
+cheerful little supper out of <a name="Page_138" id=
+"Page_138"></a>doors, with things to eat that thrilled the
+Twinklers in their delicious strangeness; heavenly food, they
+thought it after the rigours of the second-class cooking on the
+<i>St. Luke</i>, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
+lives,&mdash;great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
+advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy
+of the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
+happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist
+was quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other
+tables at the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration,
+and so did the people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked.
+On the ship he had only sometimes been aware of it,&mdash;there
+would come a glint of sunshine and settle on Anna-Rose's little
+cheek where the dimple was, or he would lift his eyes from the
+Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness of Anna-Felicitas's
+eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now, dressed properly, and
+in their dryland condition of cheerful animation, he perceived that
+they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas was more than
+very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most unsuitable
+couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred pounds to
+support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them slip
+about if it should enter their heads to slip about,&mdash;go off
+without explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the
+Clouston Sacks,&mdash;but of course ridiculous as a serious
+background to life. A girl should either have enough money or be
+completely dependent on her male relations. As a girl was usually
+young reflected Mr. Twist, his spectacles with the Broadway lights
+in them blazing <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>on the two
+specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So
+were her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of
+wisdom.</p>
+<p>And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast
+at ten o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their
+grape-fruit in little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of
+American dish ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken
+pie, a page came in with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him
+instantly conspicuous&mdash;a thing he particularly
+disliked&mdash;and handed him a letter.</p>
+<p>The twins had gone.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><a name="Page_140"
+id="Page_140"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<p>They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they
+wrote, no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a
+discussion in their bedroom the night before when they got back in
+which Anna-Rose supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments,
+and it ended in Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to
+her original standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by
+the comfort and security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been
+inclined to slip.</p>
+<p>It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest.
+Anna-Felicitas had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently
+affectionate as a wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason
+into her husband. Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a
+husband, bristled at the mere breath of criticism of her superior
+intelligence and wisdom. She was the leader of the party, the head
+and guide, the one who had the dollars in her pocket, and being the
+eldest naturally must know best. Besides, she was secretly nervous
+about taking Anna-Felicitas about alone. She too had observed the
+stares of the public, and had never supposed that any of them might
+be for her. How was she to get to Boston successfully with so
+enchanting a creature, through all the complications of travel in
+an unknown country, without the support and counsel of Mr. Twist?
+Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents cowed her. The
+strangeness of <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>everything,
+while it delighted her so long as she could peep at it from behind
+Mr. Twist, appalled her the minute she was left alone with it.
+America seemed altogether a foreign country, a strange place whose
+inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a strange language. They
+talked English; or rather what sounded like English till you found
+that it wasn't really.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn
+horror of accepting money or other benefits from people who had no
+natural right to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal
+to. Christopher, after long wrestling restored at last to pride,
+did sit down and write the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's
+breakfast next morning, while Columbus slouched about the room
+suggesting sentences.</p>
+<p>It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for
+them, and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
+Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved
+long words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In
+rolling sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his
+concern, they pointed out that his first duty was to his mother,
+and his second was not to squander his possessions in paying the
+hotel and railway bills of persons who had no sort of claim on him,
+except those general claims of humanity which he had already on the
+<i>St. Luke</i> so amply discharged. They would refrain from paying
+their hotel bill, remembering his words as to the custom of the
+country, though their instincts were altogether against this
+course, but they could and would avoid causing him the further
+expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
+taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without
+him. They promised to write from the Sacks and let <a name=
+"Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>him know of their arrival to the
+address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget him
+as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
+A.-F. Twinkler.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.</p>
+<p>The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening
+before looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on
+the 8.15 for Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at
+seven o'clock, had asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to
+Boston, inquired about the station, etc., and had specially
+requested that Mr. Twist should not be disturbed.</p>
+<p>"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and
+didn't like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you
+knew all about it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.</p>
+<p>"So I did&mdash;so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go
+back to his breakfast for three.</p>
+<p>"So he did&mdash;so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to
+the other clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from
+the expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting
+things to each other.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary
+intensity at the station in getting their tickets, trying to
+understand the black man who seized and dealt with their luggage,
+and closely following him wherever he went in case he should
+disappear, were sitting in a state of relaxation and relief in the
+Boston express, their troubles over for at least several hours.</p>
+<p>The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who
+had children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay
+behind the twins' assumption <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>a
+of severe dignity, and took them in hand and got seats for them in
+the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars, parlour or
+otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to the
+booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
+third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the
+press and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as
+these dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in
+them some time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants
+offering them fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just
+as if they had been in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked
+admiringly, that counting their money they discovered what a hole
+the journey had made in it. But they were too much relieved at
+having accomplished so much on their own, quite uphelped for the
+first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it particularly to
+heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the &pound;200,
+and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train again
+for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
+they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr.
+Twist's purse.</p>
+<p>The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and
+privately in chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger
+should start staring at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her
+back altogether on him; to have one's feet on footstools when they
+were the sort of feet that don't reach the ground; to see the
+lovely autumn country flying past, hills and woods and fields and
+gardens golden in the October sun, while the horrible Atlantic was
+nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly reminiscent of
+English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a bit like
+either; to be able to have the window wide open <a name="Page_144"
+id="Page_144"></a>without getting soot in one's eyes because one of
+the ministering angels&mdash;clad, this one, appropriately to
+heaven, in white, though otherwise black&mdash;pulled up the same
+sort of wire screen they used to have in the windows at home to
+keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve, when they grew
+bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers and cause
+the black angel to spread a little table between them and bring
+clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
+curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to
+have the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose
+mouth was full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee
+from his own private supply at last when they had refused
+regretfully a dozen suggestions to buy&mdash;"Have a bit," he said,
+thrusting it under their noses. "As a gentleman to ladies&mdash;no
+pecuniary obligations&mdash;come on, now;" all this was to the
+twins too interesting and delightful for words.</p>
+<p>They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered,
+and since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant
+in return, intermittent amenities passed between them and the young
+man as he journeyed up and down through the cars.</p>
+<p>"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some
+reluctance, for presently it appeared to the twins that the clam
+broth and the toffee didn't seem to be liking each other now they
+had got together inside them, and also for fear of hurting his
+feelings if they refused, they took some more.</p>
+<p>They nodded and smiled stickily.</p>
+<p>"English, I guess."</p>
+<p>They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest
+working of their toffee-filled jaws.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>Then Anna-Felicitas, her
+cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had given the captain of
+the <i>St. Luke,</i> and said, "Practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r
+in "practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever
+did; but the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his
+way.</p>
+<p>"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for
+her jaws clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to
+be asked that the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to
+us. We'd better decide what we're going to say, and practise saying
+it without hesitation."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.</p>
+<p>"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
+swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid
+it would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise,
+then reflection, and then suspicion."</p>
+<p>"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
+disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is
+German when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like
+Germans. Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In
+God's eye we're not, and that's the principal eye after all."</p>
+<p>Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that
+parents when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties
+they're going to place their children in."</p>
+<p>"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I
+mean," she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be
+questioning the perfect love and forethought of their mother,
+"fathers don't."</p>
+<p>They were silent a little after this, each thinking <a name=
+"Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>things tinged to sobriety by the
+effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam broth and
+the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the Clouston
+Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful security of
+the train and begin to be active again, and quick and clever.
+Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be clever
+till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was so
+impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
+cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she
+hadn't an idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now&mdash;Aunt
+Alice had said, "You must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and
+Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much
+puckered as Mr. Twist's in her desire to get exactly at what
+tactful was in order to be able diligently to be it, asked for
+definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what gentlewomen were
+instinctively.</p>
+<p>"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston
+Anna-Rose repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time
+provided Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition,
+"seeing that we're supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do
+is to behave according to our instincts."</p>
+<p>But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts,
+especially Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being
+older, but even hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in
+unexpected directions according to the other person's behaviour.
+Her instinct, for instance, when engaged by Uncle Arthur in
+conversation had usually been to hit him. Was that tact? Yet she
+knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard that, since first she had
+heard words at all, from every servant, teacher, visitor and
+relation&mdash;except her <a name="Page_147" id=
+"Page_147"></a>mother&mdash;in her Prussian home. Indeed, over
+there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman, for she
+was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
+drip tact.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end,
+when the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea,
+"says that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been
+there."</p>
+<p>"Sensitive&mdash;sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head
+at his cup. "Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly
+whatever else they are. A great country. Everything on a vast
+scale, including sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite
+easy really&mdash;-" He raised a pedagogic finger at the twins.
+"You merely add half as much again to the quantity of your tact as
+the quantity you encounter of their sensitiveness, and it's all
+right."</p>
+<p>"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.</p>
+<p>As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's
+recipe for social success by heart, became more silent. On the
+ship, when the meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in
+sudden panic to her cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have
+been tact. But it was instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once
+again dread took possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to
+get there, to stay in the train and go on and on. She said nothing,
+of course, of her dread to Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine
+that young person's <i>morale</i>, but she did very much wish that
+principles weren't such important things and one needn't have cut
+oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered <a name=
+"Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>severely to Anna-Felicitas, gripping
+her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow passage to the door
+waiting to be let out at Boston.</p>
+<p>On the platform, they both thought, would be the
+Sacks,&mdash;certainly one Sack, and they had feverishly made
+themselves tidy and composed their faces into pleasant smiles
+preparatory to the meeting. But once again no Sacks were there. The
+platform emptied itself just as the great hall of the landing-stage
+had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the Twinklers.</p>
+<p>"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when
+it was finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have
+acquired the meeting habit."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what
+Aunt Alice used to complain about the housemaids,&mdash;neither
+punctual nor methodical."</p>
+<p>"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not
+escape us. I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of
+not having them. We will now proceed to track them to their
+lair."</p>
+<p>For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was
+still there. It was going on further and further away from the
+Sacks. Happy train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But
+she resisted, and engaged a porter.</p>
+<p>Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they
+had been the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand,
+and they knew what an American porter looked like. The porter and a
+taxi were engaged with comparative ease and assurance, and on
+giving the porter, who had staggered beneath the number of their
+grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud on his face, they doubled it
+instantly sooner than have trouble, and trebled it equally quickly
+on his displaying <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>yet further
+dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled
+up round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating
+themselves on how much easier it was to get away from a train than
+to get into one.</p>
+<p>But the minute their activities were over and they had time to
+think, silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They
+both composed their faces to indifference to hide that they were
+nervous, examining the streets they passed through with a calm and
+<i>blas&eacute;</i> stare worthy of a lorgnette. It was the tact
+part of the coming encounter that was chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose,
+and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her conviction that nobody who
+was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly be agreeable. "By
+their friends ye shall know them," thought Anna-Felicitas, staring
+out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also the persistence of
+the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations was
+discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
+wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and
+Anna-Rose being German.</p>
+<p>This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
+particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
+little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a
+hurt finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being
+knocked. Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable
+behaviour of Providence which had led their mother, so safely and
+admirably English, to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry
+somebody who wasn't. Of course there was this to be said for it,
+that she wasn't their mother then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas
+felt sure she wouldn't have. Then, <a name="Page_150" id=
+"Page_150"></a>perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult
+to follow she gave them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's
+arm and gave it a squeeze.</p>
+<p>"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be
+very eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi
+stopped.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><a name="Page_151"
+id="Page_151"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<p>The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and
+almost before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the
+intervening wide pavement and thrust his face through the
+window.</p>
+<p>"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.</p>
+<p>He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open;
+for it seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside
+it in a seething mass.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
+grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."</p>
+<p>"They ain't," said the boy promptly.</p>
+<p>"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her
+surprise.</p>
+<p>"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you
+my Sunday shirt they ain't."</p>
+<p>The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their
+conversations with the lower classes to be talked to about
+shirts.</p>
+<p>The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick
+that it flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going
+off.</p>
+<p>"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself.
+"We'll go up and see for ourselves."</p>
+<p>"You won't see," said the boy.</p>
+<p>"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>You won't see," he said,
+pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do see Sacks up there
+I'm a Hun."</p>
+<p>The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two
+umbrellas, two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged
+appearance repugnant to American ideas of baggage which run on big
+simple lines of huge trunks, an <i>attach&eacute;</i> case, a suit
+case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box. Outside beside the driver
+were two such small and modest trunks that they might almost as
+well have been grips themselves.</p>
+<p>"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
+difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway,
+and pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the
+knapsack lay and into which the basket, now that her body no longer
+kept it in, was rolling.</p>
+<p>"In where?" crackled the boy.</p>
+<p>"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs.
+Clouston Sack are."</p>
+<p>"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the
+boy, increasing the loudness of his crackling.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her
+turn disentangling herself from that which was still inside the
+taxi, and immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all
+and the <i>attach&eacute;</i> case.</p>
+<p>"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they
+don't. One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I
+meant when you said they're expecting you and I said they
+ain't."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say&mdash;" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of
+her breath. "Do you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice,
+"that one of them&mdash;one of them is dead?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>Dead? Bless you, no.
+Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone. Left. Got," said the
+boy.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last
+word, whose meaning escaped her, "oh&mdash;you mean just gone to
+meet us. And missed us. You see," she said, turning to
+Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after all."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack
+had tried to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.</p>
+<p>"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new
+point of view. "Well, I don't know about that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs.
+Clouston Sack who is here?"</p>
+<p>"Mr.," said the boy.</p>
+<p>"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose
+proceeded, followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.</p>
+<p>The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles
+lying on the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No
+hurry about them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to
+take them up when the gurls ask again&mdash;" and he darted after
+the gurls to hand them over to his colleague who worked what he
+called the elevator.</p>
+<p>"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+mildly inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to
+see Mr. Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest
+all the way up, "when it is really a lift?"</p>
+<p>"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.</p>
+<p>"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced
+that it's a lift."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>The boy didn't answer this.
+He was as silent as the other one wasn't; but there was a thrill
+about him too, something electric and tense. He stared at
+Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose, then
+quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
+obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of
+an idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
+entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life
+of the Sacks.</p>
+<p>The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the
+door of a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered,
+the actual door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they
+wished to commit suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of
+their own front door. They would then fall, infinitely far, on to
+the roof of the lift lurking at the bottom.</p>
+<p>The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once
+exposed to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a
+manservant standing in it staring at them.</p>
+<p>Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of
+his lift, approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him
+by saying, "Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and
+whispered in his ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who,
+however, regarded it as some expression peculiarly American and
+were left unmoved by it, "The co-respondents."</p>
+<p>The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only
+been gone a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her
+presence and authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted
+co-respondents to be about the place if she had been there, but on
+the other hand she wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole <a name=
+"Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>possession now. Nobody knew where Mrs.
+Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
+among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In
+his heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart,
+for the servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently
+explained, was all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore
+uncertainly at the twins, his brain revolving round their colossal
+impudence in coming there before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as
+had time to get, as it were, cold.</p>
+<p>"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear
+little voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was
+pulled open and the gentleman himself appeared.</p>
+<p>"I heard a noise of arrival&mdash;" he said, stopping suddenly
+when he saw them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's
+voice&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the
+bright conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr.
+Clouston Sack?"</p>
+<p>She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to
+him and held out their hands.</p>
+<p>"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have
+noticed it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He
+looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the
+manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was
+a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on
+his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly
+and had wriggled up to the rim of his collar.</p>
+<p>"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>There hasn't been much
+time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's less than two months
+since there were all those letters."</p>
+<p>"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"</p>
+<p>"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that
+she was unnerved.</p>
+<p>"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish
+brightness.</p>
+<p>Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear
+the last few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of
+the lift-boy, lingering and he further saw the expression on his
+servant's face Even to his bewilderment it was clear what he was
+thinking.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the
+dining-room. "Come in, come in," he said distractedly.</p>
+<p>They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant
+lingered a moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy
+dropped away in his lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen.
+"I'm darned," was all he could articulate. "I'm darned."</p>
+<p>"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on
+getting inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her
+determined cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"</p>
+<p>"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead.
+"Excuse me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day&mdash;it
+makes me stupid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm <i>very</i> sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.</p>
+<p>"And so am I&mdash;<i>very</i>," said Anna-Felicitas, equally
+solicitous. "Have you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy
+like that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh thank you&mdash;it's good of you, it's good of you. <a name=
+"Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>The effect, you see, is that I can't
+think very clearly. But do tell me&mdash;why luggage?
+Luggage&mdash;luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."</p>
+<p>"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't
+there&mdash;isn't there always luggage in America too when people
+come to stay with one?"</p>
+<p>"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand
+to his forehead again.</p>
+<p>"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;I know. You've told me that."</p>
+<p>"So naturally we've come."</p>
+<p>"But <i>is</i> it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them
+distractedly.</p>
+<p>"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs.
+Sack, which is the same thing&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it
+were. It ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to
+meet us in New York, or where?"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's&mdash;gone."</p>
+<p>"Gone where?"</p>
+<p>"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh,"
+he went on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him,
+he fought with and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in
+the hall I thought&mdash;I had a moment's hope&mdash;for a minute I
+believed&mdash;she had come back. So I went out. Else I couldn't
+have seen you. I'm not fit to see strangers&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice,
+were so much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile
+that the twins viewed him <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>with
+the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion and passed no
+judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an American
+one naturally behaved like that.</p>
+<p>"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call
+us strangers. We're the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;I know&mdash;you keep on telling me that," said
+Mr. Sack. "But I can't call to mind&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're
+the nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit&mdash;as I'm sure,"
+Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for
+being."</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
+pretty girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile
+all over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly
+unvain as a person intent on something else would be.</p>
+<p>"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she
+continued, "because he showed us your answers back. You invited us
+to come and stay with you. And, as you perceive, we've done
+it."</p>
+<p>"Then it must have been months ago&mdash;months ago," said Mr.
+Sack, "before all this&mdash;do I remember something about it? I've
+had such trouble since&mdash;I've been so distracted one way and
+another&mdash;it may have slipped away out of my memory under the
+stress&mdash;Mrs. Sack&mdash;" He paused and looked round the room
+helplessly. "Mrs. Sack&mdash;well, Mrs. Sack isn't here now."</p>
+<p>"We're <i>very</i> sorry you've had trouble," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though.
+Man that is born of woman is full of misery. <a name="Page_159" id=
+"Page_159"></a>That's what the Burial Service says, and it ought to
+know."</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you
+a pretty&mdash;" he again began.</p>
+<p>"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"I wish I knew&mdash;I wish I could hope&mdash;but she's gone
+for a long while, I'm afraid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said
+miserably.</p>
+<p>There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each
+other.</p>
+<p>"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a
+little pull.</p>
+<p>"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
+warning.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind
+his back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas,
+forgetful of what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge
+of the table and began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.</p>
+<p>"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with
+friendly and interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt
+Alice&mdash;that's Uncle Arthur's wife, the one we're the nieces
+of&mdash;seemed to put up with the utmost contumely from their
+husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been something awful
+to yours."</p>
+<p>"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her.
+I do worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in
+Boston. I was as proud of her as any man has ever been of his
+wife."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>Then why did she go?"
+asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and
+I'm interested."</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack went because I was able&mdash;I was so
+constructed&mdash;that I could be fond of other people as well as
+of her," said Mr. Sack.</p>
+<p>"Well, <i>that's</i> nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."</p>
+<p>"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very
+politely indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall
+nevertheless continue to like other people as well. You, for
+instance. Will she mind that?"</p>
+<p>"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack,
+walking about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than
+addressing anybody, "but that I liked other people so
+<i>much</i>."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like
+over-eating whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got
+the resulting ache."</p>
+<p>"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is
+so full of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's
+eyes to them?"</p>
+<p>"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack.
+"Exactly. That's what I did."</p>
+<p>"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say
+anything against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet
+really, you know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty&mdash;" he began
+again, with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut
+short by Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were
+beginning to press.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed
+as the situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never
+to stay with people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they
+have a mother or other female relative living with them. She was
+most particular about it, and said whatever else we did we weren't
+ever to do this. So I'm afraid," she continued in her politest
+voice, determined to behave beautifully under circumstances that
+were trying, "much as we should have enjoyed staying with you and
+Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay with, seeing that she isn't
+we manifestly can't."</p>
+<p>"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his
+bewildered eyes to her. "Were you going to?"</p>
+<p>"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are,
+unless you can produce a mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired
+Anna-Felicitas, who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if
+possible to stay in it, and who besides was sure that in their
+forlorn situation a Sack <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>in
+the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the
+look of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair.
+He badly wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand
+he seemed to her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic
+helplessness her own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany,
+had had the day he caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked
+at Anna-Felicitas, while she was trying to get him out of it, with
+just the same expression on his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he
+walked about the room twisting and untwisting his fingers behind
+his back. Only, her Irish terrier hadn't had a Gibson profile.
+Also, he had looked much more efficient.</p>
+<p>"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack stared at her.</p>
+<p>"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack stared at her.</p>
+<p>"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the
+circumstances&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more
+turns in front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect
+his thoughts, "that I&mdash;that we&mdash;had arranged to look
+after you?"</p>
+<p>"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur
+Abinger. Of course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote
+bidding us welcome. He showed us the letter."</p>
+<p>"Abinger. Abinger. Oh&mdash;<i>that</i> man," said Mr. Sack, his
+mind clearing.</p>
+<p>"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.</p>
+<p>"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly <a name=
+"Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>quite clear, "you must be&mdash;why,
+you <i>are</i> the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals
+since we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said
+Anna-Rose with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say
+good-bye."</p>
+<p>"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas,
+"but where are we to go to?"</p>
+<p>"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of
+her size, "Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's
+other friends. But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train
+and go to Clark, to Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><a name="Page_164" id=
+"Page_164"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<p>And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother,
+son and daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired
+after a long afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to
+strike and, with the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and
+announce supper, but waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet
+recovered from an elaborate welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the
+lovely twilight of a golden day, were hastening up the winding road
+from the station towards them. Silent, and a little exhausted, the
+unconscious Twists sat in their drawing-room, a place of marble and
+antimacassars, while these light figures, their shoes white with
+the dust of a country-side that had had no rain for weeks, sped
+every moment nearer.</p>
+<p>The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through
+quiet, delicious evening country, and there was one little star
+twinkling encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed
+Clark would be. At the station there had been neither porter nor
+conveyance, nor indeed anybody or anything at all except
+themselves, their luggage, and a thin, kind man who represented
+authority. Clark is two miles away from its station, and all the
+way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a cluster of
+those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way places
+till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
+immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening
+sky.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>You can't miss it,"
+encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along after your noses
+till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate. I'll look after
+the menagerie&mdash;" thus did he describe the Twinkler luggage.
+"Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get there.
+Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
+arriving this very day. <i>I</i> wouldn't have forgotten you. No,
+not for a dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.</p>
+<p>"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+"when he isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."</p>
+<p>"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as
+they walked off. "He's a <i>great</i> friend of ours."</p>
+<p>"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum;
+and as the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he
+had been interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the
+train.</p>
+<p>"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road
+does. Give yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about
+stick to it. You'll meet other roads, but don't you take any notice
+of them."</p>
+<p>Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the
+twins went up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be
+going to see their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had,
+ever since the collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him
+very much. As they hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet
+fields, between yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing
+duskier and the beckoning star lighter, they remembered Mr. Twist's
+extraordinary kindness, his devoted and unfailing care, with the
+warmest feelings of gratitude and affection. Even <a name=
+"Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often
+had he rearranged her head when it was hopelessly rolling about;
+how often had he fed her when she felt better enough to be hungry.
+Anna-Felicitas was very hungry. She still thought highly of pride
+and independence, but now considered their proper place was after a
+good meal. And Anna-Rose, with all the shameless cheerfulness of
+one who for a little has got rid of her pride and is feeling very
+much more comfortable in consequence remarked that one mustn't
+overdo independence.</p>
+<p>"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm so dreadfully hungry. I
+do so terribly want supper. And I'm sure it's supper-time, and the
+Twists will have finished and we mightn't get any."</p>
+<p>"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!" exclaimed Anna-Rose,
+proud and confident.</p>
+<p>But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they
+raced the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist
+doorstep panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head
+maid's surprised and ungarnished inquiry as to what they wanted,
+when she opened the door and found them there.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she could
+speak.</p>
+<p>Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked, thinking
+perhaps they might be a deputation of elder school children sent to
+recite welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe return from the
+seat of war. Yet she knew all the school children and everybody
+else in Clark, and none of them were these.</p>
+<p>"No&mdash;from the station," panted Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We didn't see any village," panted Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling with her
+breath.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>Amanda eyed them. "Having
+supper," she said curtly.</p>
+<p>"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I hope he isn't
+eating it all."</p>
+<p>"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting on her
+dignity. "The Miss Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"The who?" said Amanda.</p>
+<p>"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still more
+dignity, for there was that in Amanda's manner which roused the
+Junker in her.</p>
+<p>"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda briefly.</p>
+<p>"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of
+conviction, "that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise
+he'll show no resentment whatever."</p>
+<p>Amanda half shut the door.</p>
+<p>"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into
+what was left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that
+we're totally unaccustomed to the doorstep?"</p>
+<p>Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
+herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and
+equal America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but
+taken aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that
+did it. She wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except
+on Sundays when the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she
+wasn't used to politeness. That so much of it should come out of
+objects so young rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.</p>
+<p>She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through
+it; instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.</p>
+<p>"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have <a name=
+"Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>arrived," said Anna-Rose, looking
+every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of Anna-Rose, but
+every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want of
+discipline, was sheer Junker.</p>
+<p>Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life,
+was stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was
+about to fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and
+ill-considered assertion that if he was her master she was his
+mistress and so there now, when the bell which had rung once
+already since they had been standing parleying rang again and more
+impatiently, and the dining-room door opened and a head appeared.
+The twins didn't know that it was Edith's head, but it was.</p>
+<p>"Amanda&mdash;" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the
+nearest she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice;
+but she stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked
+like a crowd. "Oh&mdash;" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh&mdash;" And
+was for withdrawing her head and shutting the door.</p>
+<p>But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light
+shining behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with
+outstretched hands.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," they both said cordially. "<i>Don't</i> go away
+again."</p>
+<p>Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly
+feeding mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held
+it to behind her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was
+taken and shaken even as Mr. Sack's had been.</p>
+<p>"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively <a name=
+"Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>moving her nose, a particularly
+delicate instrument, round among the various really heavenly smells
+that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them out and
+guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed
+into her mouth.</p>
+<p>The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr.
+Twist suddenly appeared in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances
+changed colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was
+stirred, and they were red now, and seemed translucent with the
+bright light behind him shining through them.</p>
+<p>The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they
+were to see him again. It was as if for years they had been
+separated from their dearest friend. The few hours since the night
+before had been enough to turn their friendship and esteem for him
+into a warm proprietary affection. They felt that Mr. Twist
+belonged to them. Even Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she
+beheld him were bright with pleasure.</p>
+<p>"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in
+her voice, and catching hold of his arm.</p>
+<p>"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of
+his other arm.</p>
+<p>"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"They weren't our difficulties&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"They were the Sacks'&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But they reacted on us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And so here we are."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>Who is it, Edward?" asked
+the voice inside.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose
+eagerly.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got
+there," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they
+did that," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas</p>
+<p>"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we
+turned straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.</p>
+<p>"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in
+that moment of excitement not without complacency at her own
+aptness.</p>
+<p>"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.</p>
+<p>"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because of perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten
+it all, and we so dreadfully hungry&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and
+more insistently.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the
+situation in his mind.</p>
+<p>He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have
+been natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her,
+if she hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to
+his fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined
+to the first-class passengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he
+had hardly spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the
+women.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's
+becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled <a name="Page_171"
+id="Page_171"></a>with ladies. Sin would be bad enough&mdash;for
+Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even with ladies it
+is possible to sin&mdash;but marriage for Edward would be even
+worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had
+at least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and
+done with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but
+there was no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy
+thing, and you don't repent of holy things,&mdash;at least, you
+oughtn't to. If, as ill-advised young men so often would, Edward
+wanted as years went on to marry in spite of his already having an
+affectionate and sympathetic home with feminine society in it, then
+it seemed to Mrs. Twist most important, most vital to the future
+comfort of the family, that it should be someone she had chosen
+herself. She had observed him from infancy, and knew much better
+than he what was needed for his happiness; and she also knew, if
+there must be a wife, what was needed for the happiness of his
+mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about the
+second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of
+hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the
+slums of a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the
+Twinklers into her mental range. Not during those first hours,
+anyhow. There would be plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient
+unto the day would be the Twinklers thereof.</p>
+<p>But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had
+said nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his
+mother asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained
+him, he said as many another honest man, pressed by the searching
+affection of relations, has said before him, <a name="Page_172" id=
+"Page_172"></a>that it was business. Now it appeared that he would
+have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't business.
+It was these."</p>
+<p>His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially
+he hated to have lied,&mdash;at the moment, one plunged in spurred
+by sudden necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating
+one's degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his
+mother, he well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her.
+She had been so terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh
+from praying,&mdash;for before he went to Harvard he used to
+pray&mdash;he had on one or two occasions for a few minutes
+endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer fright at the effect of
+his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her to forget it and
+forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded by his
+having lied.</p>
+<p>The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with
+a sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in
+France, to come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling
+one's way about among tender places ...</p>
+<p>"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third
+time.</p>
+<p>"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to
+know who we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"</p>
+<p>"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full
+satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't
+run anywhere.</p>
+<p>"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.</p>
+<p>"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.</p>
+<p>Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed
+out. She was gazing at the Twinklers <a name="Page_173" id=
+"Page_173"></a>with the same kind eyes her brother had, but without
+the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and anxiety
+were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the twins
+hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually
+have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.</p>
+<p>"Edith&mdash;Edward&mdash;Amanda," called the voice, this time
+with unmistakable anger.</p>
+<p>For one more moment Mr. Twist stood uncertain, looking down at
+the happy confident faces turned up to him exactly, as
+Anna-Felicitas had just said, like flowers turning to the sun.
+Visions of France flashed before him, visions of what he had known,
+what he had just come back from. His friends over there, the gay
+courage, the helpfulness, the ready, uninquiring affection, the
+breadth of outlook, the quick friendliness, the careless assumption
+that one was decent, that one's intentions were good,&mdash;why
+shouldn't he pull some of the splendid stuff into his poor, lame
+little home? Why should he let himself drop back from heights like
+those to the old ridiculous timidities, the miserable habit of
+avoiding the truth? Rebellion, hope, determination, seized Mr.
+Twist. His eyes shone behind his spectacles. His ears were two red
+flags of revolution. He gripped hold of the twins, one under each
+arm.</p>
+<p>"You come right in," he said, louder than he had ever spoken in
+his life. "Edith, see these girls? They're the two Annas. Their
+other name is Twinkler, but Anna'll see you through. They want
+supper, and they want beds, and they want affection, and they're
+going to get it all. So hustle with the food, and send the Cadillac
+for their baggage, and fix up things for them as comfortably as you
+know how. And as for Mrs. Sack," he said, looking first at one twin
+and then <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>at the other, "if it
+hadn't been for her running away from her worthless
+husband&mdash;I'm convinced that fellow Sack is worthless&mdash;you
+might never have come here at all. So you see," he finished,
+laughing at Anna-Rose, "how good comes out of evil."</p>
+<p>And with the sound of these words preceding him he pushed open
+the dining-room door and marched them in.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><a name="Page_175"
+id="Page_175"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<p>At the head of the table sat his mother; long, straight, and
+grave. She was in the seat of authority, the one with its back to
+the windows and its face to the door, from whence she could see
+what everybody did, especially Amanda. Having seen what Amanda did,
+she then complained to Edith. She didn't complain direct to Amanda,
+because Amanda could and did give notice.</p>
+<p>Her eyes were fixed on the door. Between it and her was the
+table, covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and
+therefore, according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious
+days, all the food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in
+together, and Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten
+oyster patties lay on Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected
+champagne had bubbled itself flat. Her hand still held her fork,
+but loosely, as an object that had lost its interest, and her eyes
+and ears for the last five minutes had not departed from the
+door.</p>
+<p>At first she had felt mere resigned annoyance that Amanda
+shouldn't have answered the bell, but she didn't wish to cast a
+shadow over Edward's homecoming by drawing poor Edith's attention
+before him to how very badly she trained the helps, and therefore
+she said nothing at the moment; then, when Edith, going in search
+of Amanda, had opened the door and let in sounds of argument, she
+was surprised, for she knew no one so intimately that they would be
+likely to <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>call at such an
+hour; but when Edward too leapt up, and went out and stayed out and
+failed to answer her repeated calls, she was first astonished, then
+indignant, and then suddenly was overcome by a cold foreboding.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist often had forebodings, and they were always cold.
+They seized her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief
+functions was to comfort and reassure her for as long a while each
+time as was required to reach the stage of being able to shake them
+off. Here was one, however, too icily convincing to be shaken off.
+It fell upon her with the swiftness of a revelation. Something
+unpleasant was going to happen to her; something perhaps worse than
+unpleasant,&mdash;disastrous. And something immediate.</p>
+<p>Those excited voices out in the hall,&mdash;they were young,
+surely, and they were feminine. Also they sounded most intimate
+with Edward. What had he been concealing from her? What
+disgracefulness had penetrated through him, through the son the
+neighbourhood thought so much of, into her very home? She was a
+widow. He was her only son. Impossible to believe he would betray
+so sacred a position, that he whom she had so lovingly and proudly
+welcomed a few hours before would allow his&mdash;well, she really
+didn't know what to call them, but anyhow female friends of whom
+she had been told nothing, to enter that place which to every
+decent human being is inviolable, his mother's home. Yet Mrs. Twist
+did instantly believe it.</p>
+<p>Then Edward's voice, raised and defiant&mdash;surely
+defiant?&mdash;came through the crack in the door, and every word
+he said was quite distinct. Anna; supper; affection ... Mrs. Twist
+sat frozen. And then <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>the door
+was flung open and Edward tumultuously entered, his ears crimson,
+his face as she had never seen it and in each hand, held tightly by
+the arm, a girl.</p>
+<p>Edward had been deceiving her.</p>
+<p>"Mother&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," said the girls together, and actually with
+smiles.</p>
+<p>Edward had been deceiving her. That whole afternoon how quiet he
+had been, how listless. Quite gentle, quite affectionate, but
+listless and untalkative. She had thought he must be tired; worn
+out with his long journey across from Europe. She had made
+allowances for him; been sympathetic, been considerate. And look at
+him now. Never had she seen him with a face like that. He
+was&mdash;Mrs. Twist groped for the word and reluctantly found
+it&mdash;rollicking. Yes; that was the word that exactly described
+him&mdash;rollicking. If she hadn't observed his languor up to a
+few minutes ago at supper, and seen him with her own eyes refuse
+champagne and turn his back on cocktails, she would have been
+forced to the conclusion, dreadful though it was to a mother, that
+he had been drinking. And the girls! Two of them. And so young.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had known Edward, as she sometimes informed Edith,
+all his life, and had not yet found anything in his morals which
+was not blameless. Watch him with what loving care she might she
+had found nothing; and she was sure her mother's instinct would not
+have failed her. Nevertheless, even with that white past before
+her&mdash;he hadn't told her about "Madame Bovary"&mdash;she now
+instantly believed the worst.</p>
+<p>It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst. Clark was very
+small, and therefore also very virtuous. Each inhabitant was the
+careful guardian of his neigh<a name="Page_178" id=
+"Page_178"></a>hour's conduct. Nobody there ever did anything that
+was wrong; there wasn't a chance. But as Nature insists on a
+balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil. They were
+minds active in suspicion. They leapt with an instantaneous agility
+at the worst conclusions. Nothing was ever said in Clark, but
+everything was thought. The older inhabitants, made fast prisoners
+in their mould of virtue by age, watched with jealous care the
+behaviour of those still young enough to attract temptation. The
+younger ones, brought up in inhibitions, settled down to
+wakefulness in regard to each other. Everything was provided and
+encouraged in Clark, a place of pleasant orchards and gentle
+fields, except the things that had to do with love. Husbands were
+there; and there was a public library, and social afternoons, and
+an Emerson society. The husbands died before the wives, being less
+able to cope with virtue; and a street in Clark of smaller houses
+into which their widows gravitated had been christened by the
+stationmaster&mdash;a more worldly man because of his three miles
+off and all the trains&mdash;Lamentation Lane.</p>
+<p>In this village Mrs. Twist had lived since her marriage, full of
+dignity and honour. As a wife she had been full of it, for the
+elder Mr. Twist had been good even when alive, and as a widow she
+had been still fuller, for the elder Mr. Twist positively improved
+by being dead. Not a breath had ever touched her and her children.
+Not the most daring and distrustful Clark mind had ever thought of
+her except respectfully. And now here was this happening to her; at
+her age; when she was least able to bear it.</p>
+<p>She sat in silence, staring with sombre eyes at the three
+figures.</p>
+<p>"Mother&mdash;" began Edward again; but was again <a name=
+"Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>interrupted by the twins, who said
+together, as they had now got into the habit of saying when
+confronted by silent and surprised Americans, "We've come."</p>
+<p>It wasn't that they thought it a particularly good
+conversational opening, it was because silence and surprise on the
+part of the other person seemed to call for explanation on theirs,
+and they were constitutionally desirous of giving all the
+information in their power.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," they then repeated, loosening themselves from
+Mr. Twist and advancing down the room with outstretched hands.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist came with them. "Mother," he said, "these are the
+Twinkler girls. Their name's Twinkler. They&mdash;-"</p>
+<p>Freed as he felt he was from his old bonds, determined as he
+felt he was on emulating the perfect candour and simplicity of the
+twins and the perfect candour and simplicity of his comrades in
+France, his mother's dead want of the smallest reaction to this
+announcement tripped him up for a moment and prevented his going
+on.</p>
+<p>But nothing ever prevented the twins going on. If they were
+pleased and excited they went on with cheerful gusto, and if they
+were unnerved and frightened they still went on,&mdash;perhaps even
+more volubly, anxiously seeking cover behind a multitude of
+words.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had not yet unnerved and frightened them, because
+they were too much delighted that they had got to her at all. The
+relief Anna-Rose experienced at having safely piloted that
+difficult craft, the clumsy if adorable Columbus, into a
+respectable Port was so immense that it immediately vented itself
+in words of warmest welcome to the lady in the chair to her own
+home.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>We're <i>so</i> glad to
+see you here," she said, smiling till her dimple seemed to be
+everywhere at once hardly able to refrain from giving the lady a
+welcome hug instead of just inhospitably shaking her hand. She
+couldn't even shake her hand, however, because it still held,
+immovably, the fork. "It would have been too awful," Anna-Rose
+therefore finished, putting the heartiness of the handshake she
+wanted to give into her voice instead, "if <i>you</i> had happened
+to have run away too."</p>
+<p>"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband," Anna-Felicitas
+explained, smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who
+actually having got oyster patties on her plate hadn't bothered to
+eat them. "But of course you couldn't," she went on, remembering in
+time to be tactful and make a Sympathetic reference to the lady's
+weeds; which, indeed, considering Mr. Twist had told her and
+Anna-Rose that his father had died when he was ten, nearly a
+quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their heads up
+astonishingly and stayed very fresh. And true to her German
+training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose
+in her contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's
+right hand, fork and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious
+kiss of a well brought up Junker.</p>
+<p>Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this empty of
+Junkers. She had never even heard of them till the war, and
+pronounced their name, and so did the rest of Clark following her
+lead, as if it had been junket, only with an r instead of a t at
+the end. She didn't therefore recognize the action; but even she,
+outraged as she was, could not but see its grace. And looking up in
+sombre hostility at the little head bent over her hand and at the
+dark line of eyelashes on the <a name="Page_181" id=
+"Page_181"></a>the flushed face, she thought swiftly, "<i>She's</i>
+the one."</p>
+<p>"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously
+and sitting on it with determination, "it's like this. (Sit down,
+you two, and get eating. Start on anything you see in this show
+that hits your fancy. Edith'll be fetching you something hot, I
+expect&mdash;soup, or something&mdash;but meanwhile here's enough
+stuff to go on with.) You see, mother&mdash;" he resumed, turning
+squarely to her, while the twins obeyed him with immense alacrity
+and sat down and began to eat whatever happened to be nearest them,
+"these two girls&mdash;well, to start with they're
+twins&mdash;-"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She couldn't
+conceive why he should lie. Twins the world over matched in size
+and features; it was notorious that they did. Also, it was the
+custom for them to match in age, and the tall one of these was at
+least a year older than the other one. But still, thought Mrs.
+Twist, let that pass. She would suffer whatever it was she had to
+suffer in silence.</p>
+<p>The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating.
+Perfectly at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved
+with an easy naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous.
+But still&mdash;let that too pass. These strangers helped
+themselves and helped each other, as if everything belonged to
+them; and the tall one actually asked her&mdash;her, the mistress
+of the house&mdash;if she could get <i>her</i> anything. Well, let
+that pass too.</p>
+<p>"You see, mother&mdash;" began Mr. Twist again.</p>
+<p>He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous
+hold one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about
+for words; what a deeply <a name="Page_182" id=
+"Page_182"></a>rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking
+in one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her
+quickly wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction
+that they could do what they liked with a man if they had had the
+bringing up of him till he was seven, were pretty near the truth.
+It took a lot of shaking off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of
+obedience of one's childhood.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to
+bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist
+his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how
+warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and
+helped each other. Then he rejected that as priggish.</p>
+<p>"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across
+them&mdash;across these two girls&mdash;they're both called Anna,
+by the way, which seems confusing but isn't really&mdash;I came
+across them on the boat&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He again stopped dead.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed
+on Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of
+oyster patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what
+Mrs. Twist was accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas
+was behaving badly with the patties, and not even attempting to
+conceal, as the decent do, how terribly they interested her.</p>
+<p>"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her
+eyes on her son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he
+had told her that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody
+except men. Another lie. Well, let that pass too ...</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming
+spectacles. He well knew the weakness of <a name="Page_183" id=
+"Page_183"></a>his position from his mother's point of view; but
+why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling, narrow
+one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
+stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the
+old system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious
+to avoid offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive.
+Let her for once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind
+thing. But as he stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't
+very well start moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their
+presence. He couldn't tell her they were orphans, alone in the
+world, helpless, poor, and so unfortunately German, with them
+sitting there. If he did, there would be trouble. The twins seemed
+absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he had no doubt their
+ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of sympathy being
+invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those things he
+was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand. Or,
+if she understood, appreciate.</p>
+<p>He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and
+then ask his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while
+Edith was looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot,
+explain them to his mother, describe their situation, commend them
+to her patience and her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing
+extraordinarily hard that Edith would be quick.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his
+mother's. "Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar
+gentleness, balancing a piece of patty on her fork, "that you
+haven't yet mentioned us to your mother?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>And Anna-Rose, struck in
+her turn at such an omission, paused too with food on the way to
+her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"</p>
+<p>"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.</p>
+<p>"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to
+their mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her
+everything from the beginning."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected
+support, bowed her head&mdash;it could hardly be called a
+nod&mdash;in her son's direction. "You see&mdash;" the movement
+seemed to say, "even these ..."</p>
+<p>"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
+addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last
+night, he has been what I think can be quite accurately described
+as our faithful two-footed companion."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends.
+Practically inseparable."</p>
+<p>"So that it really is <i>very</i> surprising," said
+Anna-Felicitas to Mr. Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother
+about us."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy
+in that room.</p>
+<p>He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very
+wise, you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded,
+"but you may take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother,
+come into the drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these
+girls. I expect I ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he
+led her to the door, "but confound it all, I've only been home
+about a couple of hours."</p>
+<p>"Five," said Mrs. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>Five then. What's five? No
+time at all."</p>
+<p>"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say
+confound, Edward?"</p>
+<p>"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank
+rebellion.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><a name="Page_186"
+id="Page_186"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<p>This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he
+broke loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with
+her in the drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and
+down his bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in
+long white wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale,
+his mouth pulled together as tight as it would go.</p>
+<p>His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only
+simply not understood, but she had said things when at last she did
+speak, after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of
+an incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him.
+If she hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she
+hated him, but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their
+children. It was stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed
+in the fundamental rightness of that which is called nature. She
+had accused him of gross things&mdash;she, his mother, who from her
+conversation since he could remember was unaware, he had judged, of
+the very existence of such things. Those helpless children ... Mr.
+Twist stamped as he strode. Well, he had made her take that back;
+and indeed she had afterwards admitted that she said it in her
+passion of grief and disappointment, and that it was evident these
+girls were not like that.</p>
+<p>But before they reached that stage, for the first time <a name=
+"Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>in his life he had been saying
+straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as if she had
+been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the twins,
+asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them, and
+explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its
+tragedy, as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion
+at that moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in
+candour, he had told his mother that here was her chance of doing a
+fine and beautiful thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist
+suddenly began, on her side, to talk.</p>
+<p>She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only
+started when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came
+to offering her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to
+do something really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing
+nothing else but noble and beautiful things, and doing them with
+the most single-minded devotion to duty and the most consistent
+disregard of inclination, could keep silence no longer. Had she not
+borne her great loss without a murmur? Had she not devoted all her
+years to bringing up her son to be a good man? Had she ever
+considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her efforts to set an
+example of patience in grief, of dignity in misfortune? She began
+to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at the things this
+strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the manner of
+their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
+unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their
+delivery.</p>
+<p>Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because
+for years, away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted
+his mother; for years he had, <a name="Page_188" id=
+"Page_188"></a>shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
+unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he
+had doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her
+honesty, her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately,
+before he went to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was
+cruel. Nevertheless this unexpected naked justification of his
+doubts was shattering to him.</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew
+him inside out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the
+long years of his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and
+rather disposed, also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for
+him, so easy had he been to manage, so ready to do everything she
+wished. Now it appeared that she no more knew Edward than if he had
+been a stranger in the street.</p>
+<p>The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a
+horrible thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of
+the younger generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his
+shoulder and take comfort in the thought that this break between
+them was entirely his mother's fault, for however much he believed
+it to be her fault the belief merely made him wretched; he had none
+of the pitiless black pleasure to be got from telling himself it
+served her right. So naturally kind was he&mdash;weak, soft,
+stupid, his mother shook out at him&mdash;that through all his own
+shame at this naked vision of what had been carefully dressed up
+for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and affection, he was
+actually glad, when he had time in his room to think it over, glad
+she should be so passionately positive that he, and only he, was in
+the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the painful
+things of late <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>Mr. Twist could
+least bear to see a human being humiliated.</p>
+<p>That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding
+about his room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a
+son had fallen, trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to
+see clear about the future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope
+for that yet. The future seemed one confused lump. All he could see
+really clear of it was that he was going, next day, and taking the
+twins. He would take them to the other people they had a letter to,
+the people in California, and then turn his face back to Europe, to
+the real thing, to the greatness of life where death is. Not an
+hour longer than he could help would he or they stay in that house.
+He had told his mother he would go away, and she had said, "I hope
+never to see you again." Who would have thought she had so much of
+passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much of it in
+him?</p>
+<p>Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so
+could fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that
+basis of suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct,
+though not through his brain, shot the conviction that his mother
+was jealous of the twins,&mdash;jealous of the youth of the twins,
+and of their prettiness, and goodness, and of the power, unknown to
+them, that these things gave them. His brain was impervious to such
+a conviction, because it was an innocent brain, and the idea would
+never have entered it that a woman of his mother's age, well over
+sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his instinct knew it.</p>
+<p>The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was,
+"You have killed me. You have <a name="Page_190" id=
+"Page_190"></a>killed your own mother. And just because of those
+girls."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could
+find, search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point
+of view. It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.</p>
+<p>Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she
+didn't try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do,
+faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly,
+as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf
+to her even when she used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of
+authority, she said to herself she must leave her son to God. God
+knew. God would judge. And Clark too would know; and Clark too
+would judge.</p>
+<p>Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her
+second great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful
+to feel, to resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she
+could from Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect
+him; but she would try to protect him even now, as she had always
+protected him, from earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however,
+surely know in time, protect as she might, and judge between her
+and Edward. God knew already, and was already judging. God and
+Clark.... Poor Edward.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<p>The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by
+Edith, in the happy conviction that they had settled down
+comfortably for some time, were surprised to find at breakfast that
+they hadn't.</p>
+<p>They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of
+restfulness on her part that struck them while they were finishing
+their supper, and to which at last they drew her attention. She was
+so kind, and so like Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with
+hospitable eyes and wore an expression of real benevolence, it
+didn't escape their notice that she seemed to be listening to
+something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and to be expecting something
+that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several times to the door
+through which her brother and mother had disappeared, and out into
+whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came back
+after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.</p>
+<p>At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions
+hindered any real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned
+conversation was impossible if one of the parties persisted in not
+being in the room, and inquired of her whether it were peculiar to
+her, or typical of the inhabitants of America, to keep on being
+somewhere else. Edith smiled abstractedly at them, said nothing,
+and went out again.</p>
+<p>She was longer away this time, and the twins having <a name=
+"Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>eaten, among other things, a great
+many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they hadn't eaten
+lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those they
+had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
+and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where
+there weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was
+staring listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like
+having committed murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the
+body long after you were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed,
+and said that she wished now she hadn't committed
+meringues,&mdash;anyhow so many of them.</p>
+<p>Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they
+were very tired after their long day, and suggested their going
+upstairs to their rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the
+baggage had come, and she was sure they would like to have nice hot
+baths and go to bed.</p>
+<p>The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their
+part to seek out her mother and brother first and bid them
+good-night, on the ground that her mother and brother were busy;
+and while the twins were expressing polite regret, and requesting
+her to convey their regret for them to the proper quarter in a flow
+of well-chosen words that astonished Edith, who didn't know how
+naturally Junkers make speeches, she hurried them by the
+drawing-room door through which, shut though it was, came sounds of
+people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy indeed; and
+Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr. Twist's voice
+as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately as she
+knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that
+before.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>Edith said nothing, but
+continued quickly up the stairs.</p>
+<p>They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and
+that each bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with
+admiration and pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle
+Arthur's, and at home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all.
+The baths there had been vessels brought into one's bedroom every
+night, into which servants next morning poured water out of
+buckets, having previously pumped the water into the bucket from
+the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in possession of these
+facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and plaited their
+hair for them, and she was much astonished,&mdash;both at the
+conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in
+other countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should
+hail from Pomerania.</p>
+<p>Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with
+the ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany
+when she went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more
+thoughtful than ever, though she still smiled at them, for how
+could she help it? Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at
+the Twinklers even if they didn't happen to be one's own dear
+brother's <i>protegees</i>. And when they came out, very clean and
+with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath, she not only smiled at
+them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed them
+good-night.</p>
+<p>Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,&mdash;one of
+the satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with
+you. Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little
+things, thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger
+with which, <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>being now
+thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.</p>
+<p>"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas
+sleepily, as Edith tucked her up and kissed her.</p>
+<p>"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose,
+also sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and
+in spite of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance
+and uncritical faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil
+outside the drawing-room door a little surprised.</p>
+<p>At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
+appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing
+was not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's
+lodging and breakfast between, as it were, two trains.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins
+remarked solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced
+the fact.</p>
+<p>"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
+Edith&mdash;Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in
+bed&mdash;"Why, we've unpacked."</p>
+<p>"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>They found difficulty in believing their ears.</p>
+<p>"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an
+astonished pause.</p>
+<p>"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own
+teapot. He had made up his mind to be very short with the Annas
+until they were safely out of the house, and not permit himself to
+be entangled by them in controversy. Also, he didn't want to look
+at them if he could help it. He was afraid that if he did he might
+be unable not to take them both in his arms and beg their pardon
+for the whole horridness of the world.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>But if he didn't look at
+them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly surprised eyes were
+fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.</p>
+<p>"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
+troubled and upset.</p>
+<p>"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for
+at all times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell
+us where you think we're going to."</p>
+<p>"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not
+only at the thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a
+sense of outraged faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have
+observed, is strictly limited."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith,
+whose eyes were red, informed them that they were <i>en route</i>
+for California.</p>
+<p>"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."</p>
+<p>She held her head up straight.</p>
+<p>"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after
+a silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her
+nose, because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or
+Anna-Felicitas, to notice that her eyes had gone and got tears in
+them. She angrily wished she hadn't got such damp eyes. They were
+no better than swamps, she thought&mdash;undrained swamps; and
+directly fate's foot came down a little harder than usual, up oozed
+the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the leader of an expedition
+behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original Christopher. She
+pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle was able to
+leave off looking down her nose.</p>
+<p>But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle
+dignity that he was obviously tired of them.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>Not at all," said Mr.
+Twist.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said
+gently, "I'm afraid your denial carries no weight."</p>
+<p>"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining
+it with care, "are that I'm coming with you."</p>
+<p>"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was
+here that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.</p>
+<p>"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning
+his teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that
+I&mdash;well, I happen to have some business to do in California,
+and I may as well do it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a
+different route or train, so you see your theory <i>is</i> rather
+dished, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if
+you really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off
+somewhere else so soon?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in
+spite of his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said
+shortly, "but you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture
+and stick to facts. I'm going to take you to California, and hand
+you over to your friends. That's all you know, and all you need to
+know."</p>
+<p>"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose</p>
+<p>"And if our friends have run away?" suggested
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot
+down with a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in
+America?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>Thus it was that two hours
+later the twins found themselves at the Clark station once more,
+once more starting into the unknown, just as if they had never done
+it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves to the sudden
+change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth, almost with
+the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left alone on
+the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the mutability
+of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war began
+what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
+Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
+retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since
+the days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their
+home in Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled
+as the pine trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at
+the elusiveness of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be
+caught up with and at the trouble it was giving them.</p>
+<p>They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want
+now to have time to become familiar with some one place and people.
+Already however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and
+each other that after all, since the Sacks had failed them,
+California was their real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had
+never been part of their plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't
+even know it existed. It was a side-show; just a little thing of
+their own, an extra excursion slipped in between the Sacks and the
+Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there some time, perhaps even
+for months,&mdash;anyhow, time to mend their stockings in, which
+were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how new they were;
+but ultimately California was the place they had to go to. <a name=
+"Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>It was only that it was a little
+upsetting to be whisked out of Clark at a moment's notice.</p>
+<p>"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the
+train and have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as
+the car moved away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her
+handkerchief from the doorstep.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent
+her many messages.</p>
+<p>"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.</p>
+<p>But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he
+really began to be himself again. Up to then&mdash;all that first
+day, and the next morning in New York where he took them to the
+bank their &pound;200 was in and saw that they got a cheque-book,
+and all the day after that waiting in the Chicago hotel for the
+train they were to go on in to California&mdash;Mr. Twist was
+taciturn.</p>
+<p>They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening
+with cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in
+their compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that
+their spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till
+breakfast next morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted
+a little; and as the day went on it lifted still more. They were
+going to be three days together in that train, and it would be
+impossible for Mr. Twist, they were sure, to go on being taciturn
+as long as that. It wasn't his nature. His nature was
+conversational. And besides, shut up like that in a train, the
+sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want to
+talk.</p>
+<p>So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
+observation car, though there was nothing to observe except
+limitless flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins
+suggested that he should <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>now
+begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was bound to
+get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that his
+mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
+with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously
+long ago, when they landed in America.</p>
+<p>"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting
+another cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week
+yet."</p>
+<p>And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty
+serious havoc in America considering they had only been in it five
+days. He and his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at
+Clark sitting there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his
+return, with nothing at all that he could see to look forward to
+and live for except the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as
+duty; every plan upset; the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his
+sister and of himself completely altered,&mdash;it was a pretty big
+bag in the time, he thought, flinging the match back towards
+Chicago.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad
+tumble, and is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that
+these great ruptures cannot take place without aches and doubts. He
+ached, and he doubted and he also knew through his aches and doubts
+that he was free at last from what of late years he had so
+grievously writhed under&mdash;the shame of pretence. And the
+immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely, the
+Annas.</p>
+<p>It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had
+happened; and who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark
+and the immediate effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn't
+have lapsed after all, in spite of the feelings and determinations
+he had <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>brought back with him
+from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and
+gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love,
+when he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He
+might have trailed on like that for years&mdash;Mr. Twist didn't
+like the picture of his own weakness, but he was determined to look
+at himself as he was&mdash;trailed along languidly when he was at
+home, living another life when he was away, getting what he
+absolutely must have, the irreducible minimum of personal freedom
+necessary to sanity, by means of small and shabby deceits. My
+goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of the littleness
+of them!</p>
+<p>He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas
+sitting alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him.
+They had on the blue caps again which made them look so bald and
+cherubic, and their eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines
+of rails that went back and back to a point in the distance. The
+dear little things; the dear, dear little things,&mdash;so
+straightforward, so blessedly straight and simple, thought Mr.
+Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this. Fancy
+<i>anybody</i>, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
+opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.</p>
+<p>The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned
+and looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud
+had lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of
+welcome.</p>
+<p>"It's pleasant to see you back again," said Anna-Felicitas
+heartily, who was next to him.</p>
+<p>"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"It hasn't been like the same place, the world hasn't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been away."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>Since you walked out of
+the dining-room that night at Clark," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Of course we know you can't always be with us," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas, "for these
+last few days, I would suggest that we should be happy. As happy as
+we used to be on the <i>St. Luke</i> when we weren't being
+sea-sick." And she thought she might even go so far as to enjoy
+hearing the "Ode to Dooty," now.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three days we shall
+have disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let us be happy
+while we can. Who knows what their maw will be like? But whatever
+it's like," she added firmly, "we're going to stick in it."</p>
+<p>"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that you're a little
+restored to your normal condition, you'll tell us what has been the
+matter."</p>
+<p>"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that something
+<i>has</i> been the matter."</p>
+<p>"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas, "and putting
+two and two together, and perhaps you'll tell us what it was, and
+then we shall know if we're right."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he continued
+benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see&mdash;" He hesitated, and
+pushed his hat off his forehead. "I wonder if you'd
+understand&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas assured him.</p>
+<p>"These caps make us look more stupid than we are," Anna-Rose
+assured him, deducing her own appearance from that of
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>Encouraged, but doubtful of
+their capabilities of comprehension on this particular point, Mr.
+Twist embarked rather gingerly on his explanations. He was going to
+be candid from now on for the rest of his days, but the preliminary
+plunges were, he found, after all a little difficult. Even with the
+pellucidly candid Annas, all ready with ears pricked up attentively
+and benevolently and minds impartial, he found it difficult. It was
+because, on the subject of mothers, he feared he was up against
+their one prejudice. He felt rather than knew that their attitude
+on this one point might be uncompromising,&mdash;mothers were
+mothers, and there was an end of it; that sort of attitude, coupled
+with extreme reprobation of himself for supposing anything
+else.</p>
+<p>He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly
+they got wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was
+very soon for they were giving their minds to it as they promised
+and Mr. Twist's hesitations were illuminating, they
+interrupted.</p>
+<p>"So we were right," they said to each other.</p>
+<p>"But you don't know yet what I'm going to say," said Mr. Twist.
+"I've only started on the preliminaries."</p>
+<p>"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding</p>
+<p>"We didn't think so at the time," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark,"
+said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had
+happened."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only
+say "Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly shocked, I
+suppose."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>Oh no," they said airily
+and together.</p>
+<p>"No?"</p>
+<p>"You see&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You see&mdash;" began Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"You see, as a general principle," said Anna-Felicitas, "it's
+reprehensible to quarrel with one's mother."</p>
+<p>"But we've not been able to escape observing&mdash;" said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"In the course of our brief and inglorious career," put in
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;that there are mothers and mothers," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he presently
+added, "Yes?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily and
+together.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><a name="Page_204"
+id="Page_204"></a>CHAPTER XIX</p>
+<p>After this brief <i>&eacute;claircissement</i> the rest of the
+journey was happy. Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to
+California and not be happy.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up
+or no break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant feeling
+of adventure. Every now and then the realization of this feeling
+gave his conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke. He was
+having the best of it in this business; he was the party in the
+quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of
+battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh
+places and people who had never heard of him. Just being in a
+train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was
+extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there would be gloom and
+stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not
+moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side, naturally
+increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was gone,
+and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel, thought
+Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the desert
+at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
+colours,&mdash;in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the
+best of it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who
+don't know him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are ready
+to be friendly. He must, of course, go far <a name="Page_205" id=
+"Page_205"></a>enough; not stay near at hand in some familiar place
+and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful. Well, he was
+going far enough. Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far as
+he could go. Certainly he was having the best of it in being the
+one in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself
+cynically thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then,
+take care to be the one who did go.</p>
+<p>But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in
+everywhere, and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper
+to one who has been cutting himself off for good and all from his
+early home. For the life of him he couldn't help feeling
+extraordinarily light and free. Edith&mdash;yes, there was Edith,
+but some day he would make up to Edith for everything. There was no
+helping her now: she was fast bound in misery and iron, and didn't
+even seem to know it. So would he have been, he supposed, if he had
+never left home at all. As it was, it was bound to come, this
+upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth would have burst
+the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of course, to have been
+any bands; or, there being bands, he ought long ago to have burst
+them.</p>
+<p>He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked
+determined. Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his
+own weak past. Well, it was done at last, and never
+again&mdash;never, never again, he said to himself, sniffing in
+through his open window the cold air of the desert at sunrise.</p>
+<p>By that route, the Santa F&eacute;, it is not till two or three
+hours before you get to the end of the journey that summer meets
+you. It is waiting for you at a place called San Bernardino. There
+is no trace of it before. Up to then you are still in October; and
+then you get to <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>the top of the
+pass, and with a burst it is June,&mdash;brilliant, windless,
+orange-scented.</p>
+<p>The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when
+the miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer,
+with a great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded
+by the scent of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and
+new and very aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the
+black waiters began to perspire, the passengers called for cold
+things to eat, and the twins pulled off their knitted caps and
+jerseys.</p>
+<p>From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the
+twins could only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light
+that did it, the extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there
+were orchards after orchards of orange trees covered with fruit,
+white houses smothered in flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall
+groups of eucalyptus trees giving an impression of elegant
+nakedness, long lines of pepper trees with frail fern-like
+branches, and these things continued for the rest of the way; but
+they would have been as nothing without that beautiful, great bland
+light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and their
+July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this. Here
+was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
+threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer
+as it might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm,
+and radiant. When the train stopped they could see how not a breath
+of wind stirred the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves
+of the magnolia trees glistened motionless in the sun. The train
+went slowly and stopped often, for there seemed to be one long
+succession of gardens and villages. After the empty, wind-driven
+<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>plains they had come through,
+those vast cold expanses without a house or living creature in
+sight, what a laughing plenty, what a gracious fruitfulness, was
+here. And when they went back to their compartment it too was full
+of summer smells,&mdash;the smell of fruit, and roses, and
+honey.</p>
+<p>For the first time since the war began and with it their
+wanderings, the twins felt completely happy. It was as though the
+loveliness wrapped them round and they stretched themselves in it
+and forgot. No fear of the future, no doubt of it at all, they
+thought, gazing out of the window, the soft air patting their
+faces, could possibly bother them here. They never, for instance,
+could be cold here, or go hungry. A great confidence in life
+invaded them. The Delloggs, sun-soaked and orange-fed for years in
+this place, couldn't but be gentle too, and kind and calm.
+Impossible not to get a sort of refulgence oneself, they thought,
+living here, and absorb it and give it out again. They pictured the
+Delloggs as bland pillars of light coming forward effulgently to
+greet them, and bathing them in the beams of their hospitality. And
+the feeling of responsibility and anxiety that had never left
+Anna-Rose since she last saw Aunt Alice dropped off her in this
+place, and she felt that sun and oranges, backed by &pound;200 in
+the bank, would be difficult things for misfortune to get at.</p>
+<p>As for Mr. Twist, he was even more entranced than the twins as
+he gazed out of the window, for being older he had had time to see
+more ugly things, had got more used to them and to taking them as
+principally making up life. He stared at what he saw, and thought
+with wonder of his mother's drawing-room at Clark, of its gloomy,
+velvet-upholstered discomforts, of the cold <a name="Page_208" id=
+"Page_208"></a>mist creeping round the house, and of that last
+scene in it, with her black figure in the middle of it, tall and
+thin and shaking with bitterness. He had certainly been in that
+drawing-room and heard her so terribly denouncing him, but it was
+very difficult to believe; it seemed so exactly like a nightmare,
+and this the happy normal waking up in the morning.</p>
+<p>They all three were in the highest spirits when they got out at
+Los Angeles and drove across to the Southern Pacific
+station&mdash;the name alone made their hearts leap&mdash;to catch
+the afternoon train on to where the Delloggs lived, and their
+spirits were the kind one can imagine in released souls on their
+first arriving in paradise,&mdash;high, yet subdued; happy, but
+reverential; a sort of rollicking awe. They were subdued, in fact,
+by beauty. And the journey along the edge of the Pacific to
+Acapulco, where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this
+kind of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran
+for miles close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand
+between it and the surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It
+happened to be even in that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually
+wonderful one, and none of the three had ever seen anything in the
+least like it. They could but sit silent and stare. The great sea,
+that little line of lovely islands flung down on it like a chain of
+amethysts, that vast flame of sky, that heaving water passionately
+reflecting it, and on the other side, through the other windows, a
+sharp wall of black mountains,&mdash;it was fantastically
+beautiful, like something in a poem or a dream.</p>
+<p>By the time they got to Acapulco it was dark. Night followed
+upon the sunset with a suddenness that astonished the twins, used
+to the leisurely methods <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>of
+twilight on the Baltic; and the only light in the country outside
+the town as they got near it was the light from myriads of great
+stars.</p>
+<p>No Delloggs were at the station, but the twins were used now to
+not being met and had not particularly expected them; besides, Mr.
+Twist was with them this time, and he would see that if the
+Delloggs didn't come to them they would get safely to the
+Delloggs.</p>
+<p>The usual telegram had been sent announcing their arrival, and
+the taxi-driver, who seemed to know the Dellogg house well when Mr.
+Twist told him where they wanted to go, apparently also thought it
+natural they should want to go exactly there. In him, indeed, there
+did seem to be a trace of expecting them,&mdash;almost as if he had
+been told to look out for them; for hardly had Mr. Twist begun to
+give him the address than glancing at the twins he said, "I guess
+you're wanting Mrs. Dellogg"; and got down and actually opened the
+door for them, an attention so unusual in the taxi-drivers the
+twins had up to then met in America that they were more than ever
+convinced that nothing in the way of unfriendliness or unkindness
+could stand up against sun and oranges.</p>
+<p>"Relations?" he asked them through the window as he shut the
+door gently and carefully, while Mr. Twist went with a porter to
+see about the luggage.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon?" said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Relations of Delloggses?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose. "Friends."</p>
+<p>"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the driver, leaning with both his arms on the
+window-sill in the friendliest possible manner, and chewing gum and
+eyeing them with thoughtful interest.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>Then he said, after a pause
+during which his jaw rolled regularly from side to side and the
+twins watched the rolling with an interest equal to his interest in
+them, "From Los Angeles?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose. "From New York."</p>
+<p>"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Well I call that a real compliment," said the driver slowly and
+deliberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that
+way, and without being relations&mdash;I call that a real
+compliment, and a friendship that's worth something. Anybody can
+come along from Los Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come
+from New York," and he eyed them now with admiration.</p>
+<p>The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
+fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them
+quaint.</p>
+<p>"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.</p>
+<p>"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.</p>
+<p>The twins thought this over.</p>
+<p>The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out
+very white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before
+getting to Los Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in
+what Anna-Felicitas called their favourable-impression-on-arrival
+garments,&mdash;those garments Aunt Alice had bought for them on
+their mother's death, expressing the wave of sympathy in which she
+found herself momentarily engulfed by going to a very good and
+expensive dressmaker; and in the black perfection of these clothes
+the twins looked like two well-got-up and very attractive young
+crows. These were the clothes they had put on on leaving the ship,
+and had been so obviously admired in, <a name="Page_211" id=
+"Page_211"></a>to the uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it
+was in these clothes that they had arrived within range of Mr.
+Sack's distracted but still appreciative vision, and in them that
+they later roused the suspicions and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was
+in these clothes that they were now about to start what they hoped
+would be a lasting friendship with the Delloggs, and remembering
+they had them on they decided that perhaps it wasn't only sun and
+oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but also the effect on
+him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.</p>
+<p>This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old
+friends, then," he remarked, after a period of reflective
+jaw-rolling. "Must be, to come all that way."</p>
+<p>"Well&mdash;not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her
+respect for truth and her gratification at being thought old enough
+to be somebody's old friend.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in
+her respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."</p>
+<p>The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
+observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said,
+"You'll miss Mr. Dellogg."</p>
+<p>"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up her ears, "Shall we?"</p>
+<p>"We don't mind missing Mr. Dellogg," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
+Mrs. Dellogg we wouldn't like to miss."</p>
+<p>The driver looked puzzled.</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that would be too awful," said Anna-Rose, who didn't
+want a repetition of the Sack dilemma. "You did say," she asked
+anxiously, "didn't you, that we were going to miss Mr.
+Dellogg?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>The driver, looking first
+at one of them and then at the other, said, "Well, and who
+wouldn't?"</p>
+<p>And this answer seemed so odd to the twins that they could only
+as they stared at him suppose it was some recondite form of
+American slang, provided with its own particular repartee which,
+being unacquainted with the language, they were not in a position
+to supply. Perhaps, they thought, it was of the same order of
+mysterious idioms as in England such sentences as I don't think,
+and Not half,&mdash;forms of speech whose exact meaning and proper
+use had never been mastered by them.</p>
+<p>"There won't be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many
+a year," said the driver, shaking his head. "Ah no. And that's
+so."</p>
+<p>"Isn't he coming back?" asked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The driver's jaws ceased for a moment to roll. He stared at
+Anna-Rose with unblinking eyes. Then he turned his head away and
+spat along the station, and then, again fixing his eyes on
+Anna-Rose, he said, "Young gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a
+table-turner, and a psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and
+anything else you please, and get what comfort you can out of your
+coming backs and the rest of the blessed truck, but I know better.
+And what I know, being a Christian, is that once a man's dead he's
+either in heaven or he's in hell, and whichever it is he's in, in
+it he stops."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak. "Are we to understand,"
+she inquired, "that Mr. Dellogg&mdash;" She broke off.</p>
+<p>"That Mr. Dellogg is&mdash;" Anna-Rose continued for her, but
+broke off too.</p>
+<p>"That Mr. Dellogg isn't&mdash;" resumed Anna-Felicitas with
+determination, "well, that he isn't alive?"</p>
+<p>"Alive?" repeated the driver. He let his hand <a name="Page_213"
+id="Page_213"></a>drop heavily on the window-sill. "If that don't
+beat all," he said, staring at her. "What do you come his funeral
+for, then?"</p>
+<p>"His funeral?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, if you don't know that he ain't?"</p>
+<p>"Ain't&mdash;isn't what?"</p>
+<p>"Alive, of course. No, I mean dead. You're getting me all
+tangled up."</p>
+<p>"But we haven't."</p>
+<p>"But we didn't."</p>
+<p>"We had a letter from him only last month."</p>
+<p>"At least, an uncle we've got had."</p>
+<p>"And he didn't say a word in it about being dead&mdash;I mean,
+there was no sign of his being going to be&mdash;I mean, he wasn't
+a bit ill or anything in his letter&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice,
+"it ain't exactly usual is it&mdash;I put it to you squarely, and
+say it ain't <i>exactly</i> usual (there may be exceptions, but it
+ain't exactly <i>usual</i>) to come to a gentleman's funeral, and
+especially not all the way from New York, without some sort of an
+idea that he's dead. Some sort of a <i>general</i> idea, anyhow,"
+he added still more sarcastically; for his admiration for the twins
+had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a suspicion was growing
+on him that with incredible and horrible levity, seeing what the
+moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up the time
+waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
+wreaths, by making game of him.</p>
+<p>"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his
+voice aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got
+down from his seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired
+white faces and helped them into his taxi,&mdash;only for genuine
+mourners, <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>real sorry ones,
+going to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg,
+would he, a free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls,
+well-cared for gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all
+this way, I guess sent by your parents to represent them properly,
+and properly fitted out in nice black clothes and all, and you
+start making fun. Pretending. Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me
+about the funeral. Messing me up in a lot of words. I don't like
+it. I'm a father myself, and I don't like it. I don't like to see
+daughters going on like this when their father ain't looking. It
+don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you Easterners&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at
+each other in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way
+Uncle Arthur's friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's
+mere approach. People who had been living with their husbands all
+their lives ran away just as the twins came on the scene; people
+who had been alive all their lives went and died, also at that very
+moment. It almost seemed as if directly anybody knew that they, the
+Twinklers, were coming to stay with them they became bent on
+escape. They could only look at each other in stricken astonishment
+at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of what the driver
+said. They could only sit and look at each other.</p>
+<p>And then Mr. Twist came hurrying across from the baggage office,
+wiping his forehead, for the night was hot. Behind him came the
+porter, ruefully balancing the piled-up grips on his truck.</p>
+<p>"I'm sorry to have been so&mdash;" began Mr. Twist, smiling
+cheerfully: but he stopped short in his sentence and left off
+smiling when he saw the expression in the <a name="Page_215" id=
+"Page_215"></a>four eyes fixed on him. "What has happened?" he
+asked quickly.</p>
+<p>"Only what we might have expected," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg's dead," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You don't say," said Mr. Twist; and after a pause he said
+again, "You don't say."</p>
+<p>Then he recovered himself. "I'm very sorry to hear it, of
+course," he said briskly, picking himself up, as it were, from this
+sudden and unexpected tumble, "but I don't see that it matters to
+you so long as Mrs. Dellogg isn't dead too."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but&mdash;" began Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg isn't <i>very</i> dead, you see," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked from them to the driver, but finding no
+elucidation there and only disapproval, looked back again.</p>
+<p>"He isn't dead and settled <i>down</i>," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Not <i>that</i> sort of being dead," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's
+<i>just</i> dead."</p>
+<p>"Just got to the stage when he has a funeral," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"His funeral, it seems, is imminent," said Anna-Felicitas. "Did
+you not give us to understand," she asked, turning to the driver,
+"that it was imminent?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know about imminent," said the driver, who wasn't going
+to waste valuable time with words like that, "but it's
+to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"And you see what that means for us," said Anna-Felicitas,
+turning to Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist did.</p>
+<p>He again wiped his forehead, but not this time because the night
+was hot.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a><a name="Page_216" id=
+"Page_216"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<p>Manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into a house where
+there is going to be a funeral next day, even if one has come all
+the way from New York and has nowhere else to go. Equally
+manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into it after the
+funeral till a decent interval has elapsed. But what the devil, Mr.
+Twist asked himself in language become regrettably natural to him
+since his sojourn at the front, is a decent interval?</p>
+<p>This Mr. Twist asked himself late that night, pacing up and down
+the sea-shore in the warm and tranquil darkness in front of the
+Cosmopolitan Hotel, while the twins, utterly tired out by their
+journey and the emotions at the end of it, crept silently into
+bed.</p>
+<p>How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover,
+that is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning
+is it legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations
+incurred before she was a widow,&mdash;with, in fact, the
+Twinklers? Delicacy itself would shrink from doing it under a week
+thought Mr. Twist, or even under a fortnight, or even if you came
+to that, under a month; and meanwhile what was he to do with the
+Twinklers?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he
+wouldn't have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he
+so passionately did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on
+to the tablecloth&mdash;was sometimes swept by brief but
+tempestuous <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>revulsions of
+feeling, and though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment
+describe them mentally and without knowing it in the very words of
+Uncle Arthur, as those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he
+knew. They couldn't help the death of the man Dellogg. They were
+the victims, from first to last, of a cruel and pursuing fate; but
+it is natural to turn on victims, and Mr. Twist was for an instant,
+out of the very depth of his helpless sympathy, impatient with the
+Twinklers.</p>
+<p>He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth
+together, while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet.
+Across the road the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced
+by a thousand lights. Very few people were about and no one at all
+was on the sands. There was an immense noise of what sounded like
+grasshoppers or crickets, and also at intervals distant choruses of
+frogs, but these sounds seemed altogether beneficent,&mdash;so
+warm, and southern, and far away from less happy places where in
+October cold winds perpetually torment the world. Even in the dark
+Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was beautiful. He could
+imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed over the twins
+safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this place and
+seeing them every day,&mdash;perhaps even, as he had pictured to
+himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs.
+Now all that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg
+couldn't help being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help
+resenting it. It was so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was
+so like what one of that creature Uncle Arthur's friends would
+do.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frankly unreasonable, <a name=
+"Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>but then he was very much taken aback
+and annoyed. What was he to do with the Annas? He was obviously not
+a relation of theirs&mdash;and indeed no profiles could have been
+less alike&mdash;and he didn't suppose Acapulco was behind other
+parts of America in curiosity and gossip. If he stayed on at the
+Cosmopolitan with the twins till Mrs. Dellogg was approachable
+again, whenever that might be, every sort of question would be
+being asked in whispers about who they were and what was their
+relationship, and presently whenever they sat down anywhere the
+chairs all round them would empty. Mr. Twist had seen the kind of
+thing happening in hotels before to other people,&mdash;never to
+himself; never had he been in any situation till now that was not
+luminously regular. And quite soon after this with the chairs had
+begun to happen, the people who created these vacancies were told
+by the manager&mdash;firmly in America, politely in England, and
+sympathetically in France&mdash;that their rooms had been engaged a
+long time ago for the very next day, and no others were
+available.</p>
+<p>The Cosmopolitan was clearly an hotel frequented by the virtuous
+rich. Mr. Twist felt that he and the Annas wouldn't, in their eyes,
+come under this heading, not, that is, when the other guests became
+aware of the entire absence of any relationship between him and the
+twins. Well, for a day or two nothing could happen; for a day or
+two, before his party had had time to sink into the hotel
+consciousness and the manager appeared to tell him the rooms were
+engaged, he could think things out and talk them over with his
+companions. Perhaps he might even see Mrs. Dellogg. The funeral, he
+had heard on inquiring of the hall porter was next day. It was to
+be a brilliant affair, said the porter. Mr. Dellogg had been a
+prominent inhabitant, <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>free
+with his money, a supporter of anything there was to support. The
+porter talked of him as the taxi-driver had done, regretfully and
+respectfully; and Mr. Twist went to bed angrier than ever with a
+man who, being so valuable and so necessary, should have neglected
+at such a moment to go on living.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't sleep very well that night. He lay in his rosy
+room, under a pink silk quilt, and most of the time stared out
+through the open French windows with their pink brocade curtains at
+the great starry night, thinking.</p>
+<p>In that soft bed, so rosy and so silken as to have been worthy
+of the relaxations of, at least, a prima donna, he looked like some
+lean and alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business
+to. He hadn't thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of
+his teapot put him in the right position for doing so, because his
+soul was too simple for him to desire or think of anything less
+candid to wear in bed than flannel, and he still wore the blue
+flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In that beautiful bed his
+pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head, so frugal of hair,
+didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow prepared for
+the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And finding he
+couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
+spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as
+nobody was there to see him,&mdash;which, Mr. Twist sometimes
+thought when he caught sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time,
+is one of the comforts of being virtuously unmarried,&mdash;nobody
+minded.</p>
+<p>His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with
+and contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a
+difficult position who have Mr. <a name="Page_220" id=
+"Page_220"></a>Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
+dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer
+emotions, Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a
+detached and concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do
+with it; faced by the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness
+got in the ways of any clear vision.</p>
+<p>About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and
+strewn with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he
+suddenly had an idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real
+good one. He would place the Annas in a school.</p>
+<p>Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
+answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school
+would give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought
+never to have left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and
+overflowing natures like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing
+as a finishing school for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas
+should go, and once in it there they should stay put, thought Mr.
+Twist in vigorous American, gathering up his mouth defiantly.</p>
+<p>Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily.
+He would seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his
+position to the twins by turning himself into their guardian, and
+then get them at once into the best school there was. As their
+guardian he could then pay all their expenses, and faced by this
+legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon persuaded of the propriety
+of his paying whatever there was to pay.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go
+to sleep after that. Even three months' school&mdash;the period he
+gave Mrs. Dellogg for her acutest <a name="Page_221" id=
+"Page_221"></a>grief&mdash;would do. Tide them over. Give them room
+to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his
+spectacles, snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with
+the instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.</p>
+<p>But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure.
+The twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to
+school. They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one
+of the trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in
+honour of the heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of
+heliotrope that was in the warm air, had put on white summer
+frocks.</p>
+<p>Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and
+more angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out
+on to the great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at
+breakfast. They instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr.
+Twist had thought this wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now
+perceived his mistake. Not a head that wasn't turned to look at
+them, not a newspaper that wasn't lowered. They were immediate
+objects of interest and curiosity, entirely benevolent interest and
+curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about them, and the
+wives of the rich husbands&mdash;those halves of the virtuous-rich
+unions which provided the virtuousness&mdash;smiled as they passed,
+and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins'
+chairs for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so
+respectful, and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done
+it that night in New York at supper, and at all the <a name=
+"Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>meals in the train in spite of the
+train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes
+one have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this
+agreeable practice in private.</p>
+<p>They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the
+properly treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous
+politeness on a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept.
+They themselves had obviously slept well, for their faces were
+cherubic in their bland placidity, and already after one night wore
+what Mr. Twist later came to recognize as the Californian look, a
+look of complete unworriedness.</p>
+<p>Yet they ought to have been worried. Mr. Twist had been terribly
+worried up to the moment in the night when he got his great idea,
+and he was worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts.
+They didn't look as though they would easily be put to school. His
+idea still seemed to him magnificent, a great solution, but would
+the Annas be able to see it? They might turn out impervious to it;
+not rejecting it, but simply non-absorbent. As they slowly and
+contentedly ate their grape-fruit, gazing out between the spoonfuls
+at the sea shining across the road through palm trees, and looking
+unruffled itself, he felt it was going to be rather like suggesting
+to two cherubs to leave their serene occupation of adoring eternal
+beauty and learn lessons instead. Still, it was the one way out, as
+far as Mr. Twist could see, of the situation produced by the death
+of the man Dellogg. "When you've done breakfast," he said, pulling
+himself together on their reaching the waffle stage, "we must have
+a talk."</p>
+<p>"When we've done breakfast," said Anna-Rose, "we must have a
+walk."</p>
+<p>"Down there," said Anna-Felicitas, pointing with <a name=
+"Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>her spoon. "On the sands. Round the
+curve to where the pink hills begin."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg's death," said Mr. Twist, deciding it was necessary
+at once to wake them up out of the kind of happy somnolescence they
+seemed to be falling into, "has of course completely
+changed&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"How unfortunate," interrupted Anna-Rose, her eyes on the palms
+and the sea and the exquisite distant mountains along the back of
+the bay, "to have to be dead on a day like this."</p>
+<p>"It's not only his missing the fine weather that makes it
+unfortunate," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"You mean," said Anna-Rose, "it's our missing him."</p>
+<p>"Precisely," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Well, we know that," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.</p>
+<p>"We knew it last night, and it worried us," said Anna-Rose.
+"Then we went to sleep and it didn't worry us. And this morning it
+still doesn't."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist dryly. "You don't look particularly
+worried, I must say."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're not. People who find they've
+got to heaven aren't usually worried, are they."</p>
+<p>"And having got to heaven," said Anna-Rose, "we've thought of a
+plan to enable us to stay in it."</p>
+<p>"Oh have you," said Mr. Twist, pricking up his ears.</p>
+<p>"The plan seemed to think of us rather than we of it," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "It came and inserted itself, as it were, into our
+minds while we were dressing."</p>
+<p>"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist firmly,
+feeling sure that the twins' plan would be the sort that ought to
+be instantly nipped in the bud.</p>
+<p>He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have
+you? Is it about schools?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>He stared at her in
+silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was very much
+surprised. "It is."</p>
+<p>"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it
+will tide us over."</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect
+harmony of ideas.</p>
+<p>"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is&mdash;-" began Anna-Rose in
+her clear little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables
+round them.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of
+doors," he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the
+other tables, and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say
+next.</p>
+<p>"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.</p>
+<p>On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the
+harmony of ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed,
+something very like heated argument began almost as soon as they
+were seated on some rocks round the corner of the shore to the west
+of the hotel and they became aware, through conversation, of the
+vital difference in the two plans.</p>
+<p>The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with
+a profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a
+school in the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go
+to it for three months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs.
+Dellogg wanted to recover in.</p>
+<p>Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could
+only nod approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared
+that the twins didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity
+except as teachers. Professors, they said; professors of languages
+and literatures. <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>They could
+speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most
+people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an
+extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English
+and German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot
+about Heine, for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by
+heart and whose sad life in Paris&mdash;</p>
+<p>"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist.
+"You're not old enough."</p>
+<p>Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked
+at each other in surprised indignation.</p>
+<p>"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I
+don't see how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't
+grown up. And there can be no doubt as to which we are."</p>
+<p>And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their
+chairs for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things
+like that for children.</p>
+<p>"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing
+his hand down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words.
+"Nobody would take you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the
+pair of you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Perambulator&mdash;?"</p>
+<p>"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the
+same thing, anyway?"</p>
+<p>And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation
+became so heated that for a time it was molten.</p>
+<p>The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were
+outraged. Go to school? To a place they had never been to even in
+their suitable years? They, two independent grown-ups with
+&pound;200 in the bank and <a name="Page_226" id=
+"Page_226"></a>nobody with any right to stop their doing anything
+they wanted to? Go to school now, like a couple of little
+suck-a-thumbs?</p>
+<p>It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
+expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
+perambulator faces if he liked&mdash;they didn't care, but they did
+desire him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they
+would be now taking their proper place in society, that they had
+already done a course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not
+open to any but adults, and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not
+given them all that money to fritter away on paying for belated
+schooling.</p>
+<p>"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the
+discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how
+completely she had been stirred.</p>
+<p>"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose
+icily.</p>
+<p>"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and
+undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting
+chronologically confused as well?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the
+Twinklers when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his
+rock, his face supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while
+the twins watched him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he
+pushed his hat back and began slowly to rub his ear.</p>
+<p>"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said,
+continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.</p>
+<p>The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest
+against any necessity for such knowledge <a name="Page_227" id=
+"Page_227"></a>on his part, but he interrupted them. "If you don't
+mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when you're
+both a little more composed."</p>
+<p>"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Less ruffled, then."</p>
+<p>"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as
+this is important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say,
+to-morrow. I suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood
+and steadying our minds&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."</p>
+<p>"&mdash;and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I
+haven't told you all my plan yet"&mdash;Mr. Twist hadn't had time
+to inform them of his wish to become their guardian, owing to the
+swiftness with which he had been engulfed in their
+indignation,&mdash;"but whether you approve of it or not, what is
+quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much
+longer."</p>
+<p>"Because it's so dear?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it isn't so much <i>that</i>,&mdash;the proprietor is a
+friend of mine, or anyhow he very well might be&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid
+bedroom and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in
+silken beds, and the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be
+pure gold.</p>
+<p>"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending
+money," said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find
+a salaried position in a school without loss of time."</p>
+<p>"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we
+ought to start looking for such a situation at once" said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>Not to-day," said Mr.
+Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope of getting them,
+once they were used to it, to come round to his plan. "To-day, this
+one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us all
+good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And
+it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."</p>
+<p>He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off
+theirs.</p>
+<p>"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he
+added artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those
+hills."</p>
+<p>And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having
+spent the whole day exploring the charming environs of
+Acapulco,&mdash;having been seen at different periods going over
+the Old Mission in tow of a monk who wouldn't look at them but kept
+his eyes carefully fixed on the ground, sitting on high stools
+eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in the town that has
+the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at the foot of a
+cliff along the top of which a great hedge of rose-coloured
+geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove of ilexes
+on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from somewhere in
+the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through eucalyptus
+woods across the fields towards the foot of the
+mountains,&mdash;they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking
+of tea, to a delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round
+a restaurant and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one
+of the many American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people
+not living in the cottages can come and have meals at the
+restaurant, so we'll go right in and have tea."</p>
+<p>And it was just because they couldn't get tea&mdash;any <a name=
+"Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>other meal, the proprietress said, but
+no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help Eight Hours Bill
+which obliged her to do without domestics during the afternoon
+hours&mdash;that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><a name="Page_230"
+id="Page_230"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<p>But she didn't come by it at once.</p>
+<p>They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the
+scented road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and
+they got into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for
+tea, and her brain was still unvisited by inspiration.</p>
+<p>They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being
+thwarted in their desire to sit at a little green table under
+whispering trees and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish
+to have it at the Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been
+corrupted by Europe, and the twins, who had the habits of their
+mother, couldn't imagine doing without it in the afternoon, and
+they would have it in the hotel sooner than not have it at all. It
+was brought to them after a long time of waiting. Nobody else was
+having any at that hour, and the waiter, when at last one was
+found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they were
+serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
+and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been
+breakfast.</p>
+<p>Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and
+distaste, as well as the place they were sitting in and its
+rocking-chairs and marble and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly
+smitten by her idea.</p>
+<p>It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were,
+between the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in
+the middle of a piece of toast <a name="Page_231" id=
+"Page_231"></a>and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
+eating and looked at her.</p>
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come
+off?"</p>
+<p>At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away,
+for experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came
+undone.</p>
+<p>"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said,
+mildly sarcastic.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ich gratuliere</i>," said Anna-Rose, also mildly
+sarcastic.</p>
+<p>"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous,"
+she said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of
+course. That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering
+about schools."</p>
+<p>There was a new expression on her face that silenced the
+comments rising to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of
+whom had tired feet and were therefore disposed to sarcasm.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her
+face continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as
+if a curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in
+her usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight.
+She reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind,
+of Moses when he came down from receiving the Law on the
+mountain.</p>
+<p>"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking
+of Moses, "if it's only more commandments."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding
+in her fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the
+rocks," she said getting up&mdash;"where we sat this morning." And
+she marched out, <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>followed by
+the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any
+one who is thoroughly determined.</p>
+<p>It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
+Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock
+she had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and
+expounded her idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and
+listless, for once was shaken into burning activity. She threw off
+her hat directly she got on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if
+it were a pulpit, and with her hands clasped round her knees poured
+out her plan, the long shafts of the setting sun bathing her in
+bright flames and making her more like Moses than ever,&mdash;if,
+that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as Anna-F., thought
+Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and beard.</p>
+<p>It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration was.
+It reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of
+course, a far more complicated matter than that little device of
+his, and would have to be thought out very carefully and approached
+very judiciously, but the wealth of detail she was already ready
+with immensely impressed him. She even had a name for the thing;
+and it was when he heard this name, when it flashed into her talk
+with the unpremeditatedness of an inspiration, that Mr. Twist
+became definitely enthusiastic.</p>
+<p>He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in
+his blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the
+name. He saw what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it
+on hoarding-on signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching
+the public attention and sticking there.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>The idea, of course, was
+fantastic, unconventional, definitely outside what his mother and
+that man Uncle Arthur would consider proper, but it was outside the
+standards of such people that life and fruitfulness and interest
+and joy began. He had escaped from the death-like grip of his
+mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself forcibly expulsed the Annas
+from his, and now that they were all so far away, instead of still
+timorously trying to go on living up to those distant sterile ideas
+why shouldn't they boldly go out into the light and colour that was
+waiting everywhere for the free of spirit?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to
+be said for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with
+no perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm,
+himself taking the very opposite view as to the proper thing for
+the twins to do from the one he had taken in the night and on the
+rocks that morning. School? Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright
+shoots of everlastingness&mdash;this is what they looked like to
+him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting sun&mdash;in such a
+place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of the Annas,
+were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by giving a
+big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He
+himself would hover beneficently in the background over the
+undertaking.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas's idea was to use Uncle Arthur's &pound;200 in
+renting one of the little wooden cottages that seemed to be
+plentiful, preferably one about five miles out in the country, make
+it look inside like an English cottage, all pewter and chintz and
+valances, make it look outside like the more innocent type of
+German wayside inn, with green tables and spreading trees, get
+<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>a cook who would concentrate
+on cakes, real lovely ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and
+start an inn for tea alone that should become the fashion. It ought
+to be so arranged that it became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose
+would do the waiting. The prices would be very high, indeed
+exorbitant&mdash;this Mr. Twist regarded as another
+inspiration,&mdash;so that it should be a distinction, give people
+a <i>cachet</i>, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a
+prominent position in the road in front of it, where every
+motor-car would be bound to see it, there would be a real wayside
+inn signboard, such as inns in England always have, with its name
+on it.</p>
+<p>"If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial
+arms of Germany and England emblazoned on it," interrupted Mr.
+Twist, "just to show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality."</p>
+<p>"We might call it The Christopher and Columbus," interrupted
+Anna-Rose, who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on
+Anna-Felicitas's words.</p>
+<p>"Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer," said Mr. Twist, "and
+have a big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on
+it&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "It is The Open Arms. That is its
+name."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed
+his head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.</p>
+<p>He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it
+that not a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a
+name. The whole thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while
+Anna-Felicitas still talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay
+little assault on the purses of millionaires, in whom <a name=
+"Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>the district abounded judging from the
+beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day,&mdash;but a
+joke and a gay assault that would at the same time employ and
+support the Annas; solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day
+long had been regarding them much as one does a difficult
+mathematical problem.</p>
+<p>It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to
+Anna-Felicitas's many, when at last she paused for want of breath.
+The inn, he said, should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was
+over after the expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved
+by the Annas as interest on their invested capital&mdash;they
+listened with eager respect to these business-like
+expressions&mdash;would be handed over to the American Red Cross.
+"That," explained Mr. Twist, "would seal the inn as both
+respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to
+make it."</p>
+<p>And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or
+questioning in the general excitement, that he would have himself
+appointed their legal guardian.</p>
+<p>They didn't go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there
+was so much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had
+to suppress them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting
+through into their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the
+tables round them were obviously trying to hear, they went out once
+again on to the sea-front and walked up and down till late
+continuing the discussion, mostly simultaneously as regards the
+twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in with practical suggestions
+whenever they stopped to take breath.</p>
+<p>He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were
+going out one by one in the Cosmopolitan <a name="Page_236" id=
+"Page_236"></a>bedroom windows, where the virtuous rich, exhausted
+by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with boredom and
+respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he stayed
+alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the
+next day.</p>
+<p>There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be
+found, and the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed,
+must be secured at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan
+and preside over the twins until they all proceeded in due season
+to The Open Arms. She must be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided
+Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled in managing a cook, business-like,
+intellectual, and obedient. Her feminine tact would enable her to
+appear to preside while she was in reality obeying. She must
+understand that she was there for the Annas, and that the Annas
+were not there for her. She must approach the situation in the
+spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country, who
+receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight
+of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr.
+Twist didn't want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those
+blessed little girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon
+in their hands of being able to give her notice, and it would
+considerably dim the reputation of The Open Arms if there were a
+too frequent departure from it of middle-aged ladies.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as
+he paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself.
+That youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament,
+which leaped about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy
+lamb when the sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great
+fun; and the business side of him was feeling <a name="Page_237"
+id="Page_237"></a>that it was not only great fun but probably an
+extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.</p>
+<p>The ignorant Annas&mdash;bless their little hearts, he thought,
+he who only the night before on that very spot had been calling
+them accursed&mdash;believed that their &pound;200 was easily going
+to do everything. This was lucky, for otherwise there would have
+been some thorny paths of argument and convincing to be got through
+before they would have allowed him to help finance the undertaking;
+probably they never would have, in their scrupulous independence.
+Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on the usefulness of his
+teapot. At last he was going to be able to do something, thanks to
+it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to France&mdash;that
+was duty. His lavishness to his mother&mdash;that again was duty.
+But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
+always longed for,&mdash;a chance to help and make happy, and be
+with and watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet
+kind women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....</p>
+<p>It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by
+Nature to be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through
+him, forgot and turned him into a man.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><a name="Page_238"
+id="Page_238"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<p>The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days
+later they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted
+of course, for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing
+ever is <i>exactly</i>, but full of possibilities to the eye of
+imagination, and there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the
+little house.</p>
+<p>It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists
+because of its beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a
+slope of green fields scattered over with live oaks that gently
+descended down towards the sea. Its back windows, and those parts
+of it that a house is ashamed of, were close up to a thick grove of
+eucalyptus which continued to the foot of the mountains. It had an
+overrun little garden in front, separated from the fields by a
+riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few orange, and lemon, and
+peach trees on its west side, the survivors of what had once been
+intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees on the other,
+between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge wistaria
+clambered over its dilapidated face. Somebody had once planted
+syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of
+pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an
+impenetrable screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from
+the road.</p>
+<p>It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay,
+being made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open
+Arms. Every motorist coming <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>up
+that road would see the signboard outside the pepper trees, and
+would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and pass
+through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas,
+and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher
+class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the
+house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A
+farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of
+confining himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was
+the only appropriate drink for a farmer the agent
+maintained&mdash;he was the president of the local
+Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League&mdash;he put his money as he
+earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a bit
+was done for.</p>
+<p>The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in
+every way except situation; but situation being the first
+consideration, Mr. Twist agreed with the twins, who had fallen in
+love with the neglected little house whose shabbiness was being so
+industriously hidden by roses, that this was the place, and a week
+later it and its garden had been bought&mdash;Mr. Twist didn't tell
+the twins he had bought it, in order to avoid argument, but it was
+manifestly the simple thing to do&mdash;and over and round and
+through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many diligent and
+determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the middle-aged
+lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the matter
+of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide what
+it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.
+"And everything so cheap too!" exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose
+&pound;200 was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow's
+cruse.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>This belief, however,
+received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist, who was too busy
+now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy chintzes, and it
+was finally shattered when the various middle-aged ladies who
+responded to Mr. Twist's cry for help in the advertising columns of
+the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as salary
+more than the whole Twinkler capital.</p>
+<p>The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then
+once more were saved by an inspiration,&mdash;this time
+Anna-Rose's.</p>
+<p>"I know," she exclaimed, her face clearing. "We'll make it
+Co-operative."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to
+think out a way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly
+with his money, for in spite of his going to be their guardian they
+remained difficult on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn't,
+of course, tell what in Anna-Rose's mind the word co-operative
+stood for, but felt confident that whatever it stood for he could
+manipulate it into covering his difficulties.</p>
+<p>"What is co-operative?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect
+for a sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that
+and seem to know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but
+it sat very loosely in her head, at no point touching anything
+else.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you heard of Co-operative Stores?" inquired
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Yes but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, then."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?" persisted
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"One run on co-operative lines, of course," said Anna-<a name=
+"Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>Rose grandly. "Everybody pays for
+everything, so that nobody particular pays for anything."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I mean," said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be
+clearer, "it's when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes
+and things out of what you get."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas. "And will they wait quite quietly
+till we've got it?"</p>
+<p>"Of course, if we're all co-operative."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but
+knew of old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.</p>
+<p>"See here now," said Mr. Twist weightily, "if that isn't an
+idea. Only you've got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is
+profit-sharing. And as this undertaking is going to be a big
+success there will be big profits, and any amount of cakes and
+salaries will be paid for as glibly and easily as you can say your
+ABC."</p>
+<p>And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going
+to stay in California, and that he intended during this time to be
+book-keeper, secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides
+Advertiser-in-Chief, which was, he said, the most important post of
+all; and if they would be so good as to leave this side of it
+unquestioningly to him, who had had a business training, he would
+undertake that the Red Cross, American or British, whichever they
+decided to support, should profit handsomely.</p>
+<p>Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial
+backer of The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the
+twins admirable. It <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>cleared
+away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought chintzes
+and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even ceased
+to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their
+background,&mdash;indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for
+it gave them confidence that she must at such a price be the right
+one, because nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the
+right one would have the face to demand so much.</p>
+<p>This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of
+course, she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard&mdash;the Miss
+Twinklers blushed and felt ashamed of themselves because they
+hadn't, and indistinctly murmured something about having heard of
+Cornelius K. Vanderbilt, though, and wouldn't he do&mdash;had a
+great deal of very beautiful snow-white hair, while at the same
+time she was only middle-aged. She firmly announced, when she
+perceived Mr. Twist's spectacles dwelling on her hair, that she
+wasn't yet forty, and her one fear was that she mightn't be
+middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly mentioned
+middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and fingers
+and feet couldn't possibly be described as coming under that
+heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be
+regarded as having overshot the mark. But its turning white had
+nothing to do with age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed
+over. No hair could have stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton
+took that final step. She had been considering the question of age,
+she informed Mr. Twist, from every aspect before coming to the
+interview, for she didn't want to make a mistake herself nor allow
+the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she had arrived at the
+conclusion that what with her hair being too old <a name="Page_243"
+id="Page_243"></a>and the rest of her being too young, taken
+altogether she struck an absolute average and perfectly fulfilled
+the condition required; and as she wished to live in the country,
+town life disturbing her psychically too much, she was willing to
+give up her home and her circle&mdash;it was a real
+sacrifice&mdash;and accept the position offered by the Miss
+Twinklers. She was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time
+she was very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she
+liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for
+equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper
+alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise,&mdash;she
+was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her.
+Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans.
+Especially if they were war ones.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took
+quite a long time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause
+in which one could do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to
+which Mr. Twist had motored the twins, starting at daybreak that
+morning in order to see this lady, that the personal interview took
+place, and by lunch-time they had been personally interviewing her
+for three hours without stopping. It seemed years. The twins longed
+to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton's
+spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it
+affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation
+and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one
+might have dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be
+interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the
+Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be
+<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>interviewed directly after
+lunch, and they were dying for some food.</p>
+<p>The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he
+knew she was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and
+must have; that hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it,
+would be a shield through which no breath of misunderstanding as to
+the singleness of purpose with which the inn was run would ever
+penetrate. He would have settled it with her in five minutes if she
+could have been got to listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to
+listen; and when it became clear that no amount of patient waiting
+would bring him any nearer the end of what she had to say Mr. Twist
+was forced to take off his coat, as it were, and plunge abruptly
+into the very middle of her flow of words and convey to her as
+quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life against the
+stream, that she was engaged. "Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,"&mdash;he
+called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton's
+rushing words, "engaged." She would be expected at the
+Cosmopolitan, swiftly continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly
+anxious to have her at the Cosmopolitan as the twins were
+particularly anxious not to,&mdash;for for the life of them they
+couldn't see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up before they
+started inhabiting the cottage,&mdash;within three days&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist, it can't be done," broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and
+mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist's head. "It
+absolutely&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Within a week, then," he called out quickly, holding up the
+breaking of the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened
+the door. "And good<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>morning
+Mrs. Bilton&mdash;my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we have
+to hurry away&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The cook was engaged that afternoon. Mr. Twist appeared to have
+mixed up the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying
+the luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room,
+he found them waiting for him in the passage outside the door
+looking excited.</p>
+<p>"The cook's come," whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards
+the shut door. "She's a man."</p>
+<p>"She's a Chinaman," whispered Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was surprised. He thought he had an appointment with a
+woman,&mdash;a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a
+specialist in pastries and had immaculate references, but the
+Chinaman assured him that he hadn't, and that his appointment was
+with him alone, with him, Li Koo. In proof of it, he said,
+spreading out his hands, here he was. "We make cakies&mdash;li'l
+cakies&mdash;many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo, observing
+doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his person he
+whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit out of
+a hat, and offered them to the twins.</p>
+<p>They ate. He was engaged. It took five minutes.</p>
+<p>After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her
+appointment, an over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that
+she was the coloured lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman
+had written.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been
+clever. Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his
+cakes. Besides, they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently
+out of flowers and honey and cream,&mdash;cakes which, combined
+with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>Mrs. Bilton's hair, would
+make the fortune of The Open Arms.</p>
+<p>The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in
+spite of the <i>douceur</i> and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and
+she was so much disappointed that they could hear her being it out
+loud all the way along the passage and down the stairs, and the
+nature of her expression of her disappointment was such that Mr.
+Twist, as he tried by animated conversation to prevent it reaching
+the twins' ears, could only be thankful after all that Li Koo had
+been so clever. It did, however, reach the twins' ears, but they
+didn't turn a hair because of Uncle Arthur. They merely expressed
+surprise at its redness, seeing that it came out of somebody so
+black.</p>
+<p>Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to
+creep over the countryside. They crept along the roads where
+motorists were frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners
+and over hedges. They were taciturn advertisements, and just said
+three words in big, straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue
+ground:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS</h3>
+<p>People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it
+must be the name of a book. They had better get it. Other people
+would have got it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat,
+and was probably a religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were
+usually religious. A few considered it sounded a little improper,
+and as though the book, far from being religious, would not be
+altogether nice; but only very proper people who distrusted
+everything, even arms took this view.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>After a week the same
+advertisements appeared with three lines added:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS<br />
+YES<br />
+BUT<br />
+WHY? WHERE? WHAT?</h3>
+<p>and then ten days after that came fresh ones:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS<br />
+WILL OPEN<br />
+WIDE</h3>
+<p>On November 20th at Four P.M.</p>
+<h3>N.B. WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.</h3>
+<p>And while the countryside&mdash;an idle countryside, engaged
+almost wholly in holiday-making and glad of any new
+distraction&mdash;began to be interested and asked questions, Mr.
+Twist was working day and night at getting the thing ready.</p>
+<p>All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging,
+hurrying, criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing. His
+heart and soul and brain was in this, his business instincts and
+his soft domestic side. His brain, after working at top speed
+during the day with the architect, the painter and decorator, the
+furnisher, the garden expert, the plumbing expert, the
+electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate agent, and numberless
+other persons, during the night meditated and evolved
+advertisements. There was to be a continual stream week by week
+after the inn was <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>opened of
+ingenious advertisements. Altogether Mr. Twist had his hands
+full.</p>
+<p>The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually
+being the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort. It was to
+be as like an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be
+got to be going on his own and the twins' recollections and the
+sensationally coloured Elizabethan pictures in the architect's
+portfolio. It didn't disturb Mr. Twist's unprejudiced American mind
+that an English inn embowered in heliotrope and arum lilies and
+eucalyptus trees would be odd and unnatural, and it wouldn't
+disturb anybody else there either. Were not Swiss mountain chalets
+to be found in the fertile plains along the Pacific, complete with
+fir trees specially imported and uprooted in their maturity and
+brought down with tons of their own earth attached to their roots
+and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss rocks, so
+that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves was
+the next a bit of frowning northern landscape? And were there not
+Italian villas dotted about also? But these looked happier and more
+at home than the chalets. And there were buildings too, like small
+Gothic cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a
+woman who has come to a party in the wrong clothes. But no matter.
+Nobody minded. So that an English inn added to this company, with a
+little German beer-garden&mdash;only there wasn't to be any
+beer&mdash;wouldn't cause the least surprise or discomfort to
+anybody.</p>
+<p>In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English
+inn was the signboard out in the road. With the best will in the
+world, and the liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist,
+the architect couldn't <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>in
+three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient
+red-brick Elizabethan pothouse. He got a thatched roof on to it by
+a miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a
+real antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads
+in a San Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a
+basis for any wished-for hark-back later on when there was more
+time to the old girl's epoch&mdash;thus did he refer to Great Eliza
+and her spacious days&mdash;and meanwhile it gave the building, he
+alleged, a considerable air; but as this door in that fine climate
+was hooked open all day long it didn't disturb the gay, the almost
+jocose appearance of the place when everything was finished.</p>
+<p>Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very
+much as people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the
+opening, as he sat astride a green chair at the bottom of the
+little garden, where a hedge of sweetbriar beautifully separated
+the Twinkler domain from the rolling fields that lay between it and
+the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork; and the conclusion was
+forced upon him&mdash;reluctantly, for it was the last thing he had
+wanted The Open Arms to do&mdash;that the thing looked as if it
+were winking at him.</p>
+<p>Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head,
+staring, that was what it seemed to be doing. How was that? He
+studied it profoundly, his head on one side. Was it that it was so
+very gay? He hadn't meant it to be gay like that. He had intended a
+restrained and disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness,
+with those sweet maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest
+doves in and out among its tea-tables; but one small thing had been
+added to another small thing at their suggestion, each small thing
+<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>taken separately apparently
+not mattering at all and here it was almost&mdash;he hoped it was
+only his imagination&mdash;winking at him. It looked a familiar
+little house; jocular; very open indeed about the arms.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<p>Various things had happened, however, before this morning of the
+great day was reached, and Mr. Twist had had some harassing
+experiences.</p>
+<p>One of the first things he had done after the visit to Los
+Angeles was to take steps in the matter of the guardianship. He had
+written to Mrs. Bilton that he was the Miss Twinklers' guardian,
+though it was not at that moment true. It was clear, he thought,
+that it should be made true as quickly as possible, and he
+therefore sought out a lawyer in Acapulco the morning after the
+interview. This was not the same lawyer who did his estate business
+for him; Mr. Twist thought it best to have a separate one for more
+personal affairs.</p>
+<p>On hearing Mr. Twist's name announced, the lawyer greeted him as
+an old friend. He knew, of course, all about the teapot, for the
+Non-Trickler was as frequent in American families as the Bible and
+much more regularly used; but he also knew about the cottage at the
+foot of the hills, what it had cost&mdash;which was
+little&mdash;and what it would cost&mdash;which was
+enormous&mdash;before it was fit to live in. The only thing he
+didn't know was that it was to be used for anything except an
+ordinary <i>pied-&agrave;-terre</i>. He had heard, too, of the
+presence at the Cosmopolitan of the twins, and on this point, like
+the rest of Acapulco, was a little curious.</p>
+<p>The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been able
+to give any accurate description of the relationship of the
+Twinklers to Mr. Twist. Its <a name="Page_252" id=
+"Page_252"></a>paragraph announcing his arrival had been obliged
+merely to say, while awaiting more detailed information, that Mr.
+Edward A. Twist, the well-known Breakfast Table Benefactor and
+gifted inventor of the famous Non-Trickler Teapot, had arrived from
+New York and was staying at the Cosmopolitan Hotel with
+<i>entourage</i>; and the day after this the lawyer, who got about
+a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging climate, happening
+to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a friend, had
+seen the <i>entourage</i>.</p>
+<p>It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way
+upstairs, followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even
+without the boy and the canary it was a conspicuous object. The
+lawyer asked his friend who the cute little girls were, and was
+interested to hear he was beholding Mr. Edward A. Twist's
+<i>entourage</i>. His friend told him that opinion in the hotel was
+divided about the precise nature of this <i>entourage</i> and its
+relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally
+supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by
+parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put
+to one of the young ladies' finishing schools in that agreeable
+district. The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the
+Cosmopolitan mind with the Twinklers. Houses were always being
+taken in that paradise by wealthy persons from unkinder climates.
+He would live in it three months in the year, thought the
+Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep in this way an occasional
+eye on his charges. The hotel guests regarded the Twinklers at this
+stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill, for they had up to
+then only been seen and not heard; and as one of their leading
+characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if anybody
+<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>looked a little surprised,
+which everybody usually did quite early in conversation with them,
+this was at that moment, the delicate moment before Mrs. Bilton's
+arrival, fortunate.</p>
+<p>The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much
+as other honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly
+congratulating him, when he heard what he had come for, on his
+taste in wards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a
+matter of taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans,
+and he had been asked&mdash;he cleared his throat&mdash;asked by
+their relatives, by, in fact, their uncle in England, to take over
+their guardianship and see that they came to no harm.</p>
+<p>The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had
+wards at all they might as well be cute wards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he had
+had no choice.</p>
+<p>The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued to look at
+him intelligently.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as
+might have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the
+purchase of the cottage because this was a private and personal
+matter&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with really almost
+too much intelligence.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified,
+but the lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness
+was natural to him when visited for the first time by a new client,
+and that there should be frankness between lawyers and clients he
+considered essential. If, he held, the client wouldn't <a name=
+"Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>be frank, then the lawyer must be; and
+he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the
+lawyer cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that
+the <i>entourage</i> must have some very weak spots about it
+somewhere.</p>
+<p>"There's another way out of it of course, Mr. Twist," he said,
+when he had done rapidly describing the different steps to be
+taken. There were not many steps. The process of turning oneself
+into a guardian was surprisingly simple and swift.</p>
+<p>"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking very big and
+astonished. "Out of what?"</p>
+<p>"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't occurred to
+you. Upon my word now, I do wonder."</p>
+<p>"But I'm not in any little diff&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"The elder of these two girls, now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for him to be
+sensible.</p>
+<p>"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist, "They're twins."</p>
+<p>"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our
+twins better than that over here. But come now&mdash;hasn't it
+occurred to you you might marry one of them, and so become quite
+naturally related to them both?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.</p>
+<p>"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly
+opening.</p>
+<p>"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in
+free-and-easiness.</p>
+<p>"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his <a name=
+"Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>mouth together, "cut that line of joke
+out. I'm here on serious business. I haven't come to be facetious.
+Least of all about those children&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer pleasantly.
+"Children, you call them. How old are they? Seventeen? My wife was
+sixteen when we married. Oh quite so, quite so. Certainly. By all
+means. Well then, they're to be your wards. And you don't want it
+known how recently they've become your wards&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it. The
+relationship is to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I shall
+be dumb of course, but most things get into the press here. Let me
+see&mdash;" He pulled a sheet of paper towards him and took up his
+fountain pen. "Just oblige me with particulars. Date of birth.
+Place of birth. Parentage&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.</p>
+<p>None came.</p>
+<p>"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist presently, his
+forehead puckered.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen. "Quite so. Not known
+your young friends long enough yet."</p>
+<p>"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr. Twist stiffly,
+"but we happen to have found more alive topics of conversation than
+dates and parents."</p>
+<p>"Ah. Parents not alive."</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor children
+wouldn't be knocking about in a strange country."</p>
+<p>"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his pen
+across his forefinger.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly <a name=
+"Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>he remembered his mother's peculiar
+horror when he told her the girls he was throwing away his home
+life for and breaking her heart over were Germans. It had acted
+upon her like the last straw. And since then he had felt
+everywhere, with every one he talked to, in every newspaper he
+read, the same strong hostility to Germans, so much stronger than
+when he left America the year before.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this
+matter of the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He
+suddenly saw innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The
+Open Arms if it was known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the
+guardianship idea than that such difficulties should arise. He
+hadn't thought; he hadn't had time properly to think; he had been
+so hustled and busy the last few days....</p>
+<p>"They come from England," he said, looking at the lawyer very
+straight.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely, by
+evading, he hoped to put off the day when their nationality would
+be known. Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known later
+on when everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved them for
+themselves and accordingly wouldn't care.</p>
+<p>"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I asked because I
+overheard them talking the other day as they passed through the
+hall of your hotel. They were talking about a canary. The r in the
+word seemed a little rough. Not quite English, Mr. Twist? Not quite
+American?"</p>
+<p>"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been a good deal
+abroad."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>Quite so. At school, no
+doubt."</p>
+<p>He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
+forefinger.</p>
+<p>"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at Mr.
+Twist,&mdash;"could you let me have them soon? I tell you what.
+You're in a hurry to fix this. I'll call round to-night at the
+hotel, and get them direct from your young friends. Save time. And
+make me acquainted with a pair of charming girls."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held out his
+hand. "Not to-night. We're engaged to-night. To-morrow will be soon
+enough. I'll send round. I'll let you know. I believe I'm going to
+think it over a bit. There isn't any such terrible hurry,
+anyhow."</p>
+<p>"There isn't? I understood&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in
+the long run."</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well,
+I'm always at your service, at any time." And he shook hands
+heartily with Mr. Twist and politely opened the door for him.</p>
+<p>Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever
+that there was something very weak somewhere about the
+<i>entourage</i>.</p>
+<p>As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he
+gone to the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the
+world that he was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would
+have believed it if he had come in one day and said it was settled,
+and nobody outside would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After
+all, you couldn't see if a man was a guardian or not just by
+looking at him. Well, he would do no more about it, it was much too
+<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs.
+Bilton go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges.
+Anyway he had all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had
+been to go to the lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however
+distinctly and frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the
+Twinkler guardian, that he wasn't.</p>
+<p>It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with
+clearness, that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told
+them that evening that owing to technical difficulties, with the
+details of which he wouldn't trouble them, the guardianship was
+off, were pleased.</p>
+<p>"We want to be bound to you," said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very
+soft and her voice very gentle, "only by ties of affection and
+gratitude."</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were
+going to say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable
+after all to get it out, and only said, rather inaudibly,
+"Yes."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><a name="Page_259"
+id="Page_259"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<p>Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the
+end of that week.</p>
+<p>It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing
+should occur at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud;
+yet it did get under a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too,
+before Mrs. Bilton's arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her
+snowy-haired respectability would have spread over the twins like a
+white whig. They would have been safe. His party would have been
+unassailable. But no; those Twinklers, in spite of his exhortation
+whenever he had a minute left to exhort in, couldn't, it seemed,
+refrain from twinkling,&mdash;the word in Mr. Twist's mind covered
+the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of language, their
+affable desire to explain.</p>
+<p>He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the
+excited interest they took in the progress of the inn made them
+happy to hang about it most of the time of the delicate and
+dangerous week before Mrs. Bilton came; but they too had things to
+do,&mdash;shopping in Acapulco choosing the sea-blue linen frocks
+and muslin caps and aprons in which they were to wait at tea, and
+buying the cushions and flower-pots and canary that came under the
+general heading, in Anna-Rose's speech, of feminine touches. So
+they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go without a
+qualm.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>Mind and not say anything
+to anybody about this, won't you," he would say hastily, making a
+comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they went.</p>
+<p>"Of course we won't."</p>
+<p>"I meant, nobody is to know what it's really going to be.
+They're to think it's just a <i>pied-&agrave;-terre.</i> It would
+most ruin my advertisement scheme if they&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But of <i>course</i> we won't. Have we ever?" the twins would
+answer, looking very smug and sure of themselves.</p>
+<p>"No. Not yet. But&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with
+whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as
+he needs must, to God and their own discretion.</p>
+<p>Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler
+characteristic. But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton's arrival grew
+near, and nothing had happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr.
+Twist, from the pleasant looks of the other guests when the twins
+went in and out of the restaurant to meals, that nothing had
+happened. His heart grew lighter. On the last afternoon, when Mrs.
+Bilton was actually due next day, his heart was quite light, and he
+saw them leave him to go back and rest at the hotel, because they
+were tired by the accumulated standing about of the week,
+altogether unconcernedly.</p>
+<p>The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was,
+indeed, one of complete benevolence. They didn't even mind the
+canary. Who would not be indulgent towards two such sweet little
+girls and their pet bird, even if it did sing all day and most of
+the night without stopping? The Twinkler girls were like two little
+bits of snapped-off sunlight, or bits of white <a name="Page_261"
+id="Page_261"></a>blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their
+shining youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently.
+But if the guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive.
+Everybody knew who Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers?
+Were they relations of his? <i>Prot&eacute;g&eacute;es</i>?
+Charges?</p>
+<p>The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which
+information as to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in
+its embarrassment at being ignorant to take refuge in French,
+because French may so easily be supposed to mean something. The
+paper had little knowledge of, but much confidence in, French.
+<i>Entourage</i> had seemed to it as good a word as any other, as
+indeed did <i>client&egrave;le</i>. It had hesitated between the
+two, but finally chose <i>entourage</i> because there happened to
+be no accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were
+amused at the word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable;
+and, until the last afternoon, only the manager didn't like the
+Twinklers. He didn't like them because of the canary. His
+sympathies had been alienated from the Miss Twinklers the moment he
+heard through the chambermaid that they had tied the heavy canary
+cage on to the hanging electric light in their bedroom. He said
+nothing, of course. One doesn't say anything if one is an hotel
+manager, until the unique and final moment when one says
+everything.</p>
+<p>On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton's advent the twins,
+tired of standing about for days at the cottage and in shops,
+appeared in the hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn't
+go to their room to rest because they didn't feel inclined for the
+canary, and they sat down very happily in the comfortable
+rocking-chairs with which the big hall abounded, and, propping
+<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>their dusty feet on the lower
+bar of a small table, with friendly and interested eyes they
+observed the other guests.</p>
+<p>The other guests also observed them.</p>
+<p>It was the first time the <i>entourage</i> had appeared without
+its companion, and the other guests were dying to know details
+about it. It hadn't been sitting in the hall five minutes before a
+genial old gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas's friendly eye and
+instantly drew up his chair.</p>
+<p>"Uncle gone off by himself to-day?" he asked; for he was of the
+party in the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked
+difference in profiles, to the relationship theory, and he made a
+shot at the relationship being that of uncle.</p>
+<p>"We haven't got an uncle nearer than England," said
+Anna-Felicitas affably.</p>
+<p>"And we only got him by accident," said Anna-Rose, equally
+affably.</p>
+<p>"It was an unfortunate accident," said Anna-Felicitas,
+considering her memories.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed. How was that?"</p>
+<p>"By the usual method, if an uncle isn't a blood uncle," said
+Anna-Rose. "We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married
+her. So we have to have him."</p>
+<p>"It was sheer bad luck," said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on
+that distant image.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Just bad luck. He might so easily have
+married some one else's aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs
+go and fall on ours."</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated on
+this, with an affectionate eye&mdash;he was
+affectionate&mdash;resting in turn on each Anna.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>Then Mr. Twist," he went
+on presently&mdash;"we all know him of course&mdash;a public
+benefactor&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, <i>isn't</i> he," said Anna-Rose radiantly.</p>
+<p>"A boon to the breakfast-table&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, <i>isn't</i> he," said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. "He
+<i>is</i> so pleasant at breakfast."</p>
+<p>"Then he&mdash;Mr. Twist&mdash;Teapot Twist we call him where I
+live&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Teapot Twist?" said Anna-Rose. "I think that's irreverent."</p>
+<p>"Not at all. It's a pet name. A sign of our affection and
+gratitude. Then he isn't your uncle?"</p>
+<p>"We haven't got a real uncle nearer than heaven," said
+Anna-Felicitas, her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the
+image of Onkel Col.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated, on
+this too, his thirsty heart&mdash;he had a thirsty heart, and found
+difficulty in slaking it because of his wife&mdash;very indulgent
+toward the twins.</p>
+<p>Then he said: "That's a long way off."</p>
+<p>"What is?" asked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The place your uncle's in."</p>
+<p>"Not too far really," said Anna-Felicitas softly. "He's safe
+there. He was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he
+got there at last through his own carelessness."</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Sheer carelessness," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "How was that?"</p>
+<p>"Well, you see where we lived they didn't have electric light,"
+began Anna-Rose, "and one night&mdash;the the night he went to
+heaven&mdash;he put the petroleum lamp&mdash;"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>And she was about to relate
+that dreadful story of Onkle Col's end which has already been
+described in these pages as unfit for anywhere but an appendix for
+time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas put out a
+beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't bear to remember Onkle Col's end. It had
+haunted her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping
+tongues of flame. And it wasn't only tongues of flame. There were
+circumstances connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the
+war had damped down lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She
+could at least now talk of him calmly, and also speculate with
+pleasure on the probable aspect of Onkle Col in glory, but she
+still couldn't bear to hear the details of his end.</p>
+<p>At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very
+upright and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce,
+came down the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old
+gentleman, crossed straight over and sat down briskly next to them
+smiling benevolently.</p>
+<p>"Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I," she
+said, pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and
+smiling at the group.</p>
+<p>She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next
+winter, but it being warm just then in California they were cotton
+socks because wool made her hands too hot.</p>
+<p>The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.</p>
+<p>"I'm just crazy to hear about you," said the brisk lady,
+knitting with incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over
+everybody. "You're fresh from Europe, aren't you? What say? Quite
+fresh? My, aren't you cute little things. Thinking of making a long
+stay in the <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>States? What say?
+For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid.
+Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I
+guess they won't let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist
+looking after you meanwhile? What say? There isn't any meanwhile?
+Well, I don't quite&mdash;Mr. Twist your uncle, or cousin? What
+say? No relation at all? H'm, h'm. No relation at all, is he. Well,
+I guess he's an old friend of your parents, then. What say? They
+didn't know him? H'm, h'm. They didn't know him, didn't they. Well,
+I don't quite&mdash;What say? But you know him? Yes, yes, so I see.
+H'm, h'm. I don't quite&mdash;" Her needles flew in and out, and
+her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old
+gentleman, who was gazing with thirsty appreciation at
+Anna-Felicitas, could struggle out of his chair.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the
+silence that had fallen on the lady, "Mr. Twist, regarded as a man,
+is old, but regarded as a friend he is new."</p>
+<p>"Brand new," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"H'm, h'm," said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and
+looking first at one twin and then at the other. "H'm, h'm, h'm.
+Brand new, is he. Well, I don't quite&mdash;" Her smiles had now to
+struggle with the uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening
+visibly.</p>
+<p>"Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?" asked the old
+gentleman, who was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent
+owing to his affectionate heart and his not being a lady.</p>
+<p>"We met Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of
+alluding to him, "on the steamer."</p>
+<p>"Not before? You didn't meet Mr. Twist before the <a name=
+"Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>steamer?" exclaimed the lady, the last
+of her smiles flickering out. "Not before the steamer, didn't you.
+Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen him. H'm, h'm,
+h'm."</p>
+<p>"We would have met him before if we could," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.</p>
+<p>"I should think so," said Anna-Rose. "It has been the great
+retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them."</p>
+<p>"Why now," said the old gentleman smiling, "I shouldn't call it
+so particularly late in them."</p>
+<p>But the knitting lady didn't smile at all, and sat up very
+straight and said "H'm, h'm, h'm" to her flashing needles as they
+flew in and out; for not only was she in doubt now about the cute
+little things, but she also regretted, on behalf of the old
+gentleman's wife who was a friend of hers, the alert interest of
+his manner. He sat there so very much awake. With his wife he never
+seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not seen him except with his
+wife.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't run away with the idea that we're younger than we
+really are," Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Why no, I won't," he answered with a liveliness that deepened
+the knitting lady's regret on behalf of his wife. "When I run away
+you bet it won't be with an idea."</p>
+<p>And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he
+whom she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And
+wasn't what he had just said very like what the French call a
+<i>double entendre?</i> She hadn't a husband herself, but if she
+had she would wish him to be at least as quiet when away from her
+as when with her, and at least as free from <i>double
+entendres</i>. <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>At least.
+Really more. "H'm, h'm, h'm," she said, clicking her needles and
+looking first at the twins and then at the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you
+two?" she asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these
+remarkable and unusual lines of <i>badinage</i>.</p>
+<p>"Quite," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Once we had got him," amended Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes," said the knitting lady, "so you say. H'm, h'm, h'm.
+Once you had got him. I don't quite&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the
+old gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can
+say is I wish I had been on that boat."</p>
+<p>"Here's Mrs. Ridding," said the knitting lady quickly, relief in
+her voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. "My, Mrs. Ridding,"
+she added when the lady drew within speaking distance, "you do look
+as though you needed a rest."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had
+been approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out
+on the verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was
+the one drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so
+much recovering from; and the nicer they were the longer it took.
+The meals at the Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really
+all one's time was taken up getting over them.</p>
+<p>She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old
+gentleman had married her in her youth, when <a name="Page_268" id=
+"Page_268"></a>she hadn't had time to have had so many. He and she
+were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone on being the
+same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of his wife
+to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife, and
+the older he got in years&mdash;his heart very awkwardly retained
+its early freshness&mdash;the younger he wanted her; and, instead,
+the older he got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The
+old gentleman felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why
+should he have to be married to this old lady? Never in his life
+had he wanted to marry old ladies; and he thought it very hard that
+at an age when he most appreciated bright youth he should be forced
+to spend his precious years, his crowning years when his mind had
+attained wisdom while his heart retained freshness, stranded with
+an old lady of costly habits and inordinate bulk just because years
+ago he had fallen in love with a chance pretty girl.</p>
+<p>He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
+impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.</p>
+<p>"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back
+again," said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself
+down carefully and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair
+that didn't rock, and fanning herself with a small fan she carried
+on the end of a massive gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the
+twins while she spoke.</p>
+<p>"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as
+young as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but
+with her eyes continuing to explore the twins.</p>
+<p>They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and
+Anna-Felicitas said politely, "Really?" and Anna-<a name="Page_269"
+id="Page_269"></a>Rose, feeling she too ought to make some comment,
+said, "Isn't that very unusual?"</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she
+didn't know what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because
+then the other person launched into affirmations or denials with
+the reasons for them, and was quite happy.</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in
+silence.</p>
+<p>"Because," explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn't
+quite follow, "nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to
+remember it."</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It
+was quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was
+constantly reminding him. "Old stranger," he thought resentfully,
+as he carefully arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn't like
+her back. Why should he have to pay bills for putting expensive
+clothes on it? He didn't want to. It was all a dreadful
+mistake.</p>
+<p>"You're the Twinkler girls," said the old lady abruptly.</p>
+<p>They made polite gestures of agreement.</p>
+<p>The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight
+and saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every
+responsibility.</p>
+<p>"Where does your family come from?" was the next question.</p>
+<p>This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of
+Pomerania. They hadn't wanted to talk about Pomerania once since
+the war began; and they felt very distinctly in their bones that
+America, though she was a neutral, didn't like Germany any more
+than the belligerents did. It had been their intention to arrange
+<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>together the line they would
+take if asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and
+so exciting since their arrival that they had forgotten to.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all.
+Anna-Felicitas, therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved,
+plunged in.</p>
+<p>"Our family," she said gently, "can hardly be said to come so
+much as to have been."</p>
+<p>The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on
+Anna-Felicitas's face.</p>
+<p>The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the
+management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.</p>
+<p>"How's that?" asked the old lady, finally deciding that she
+hadn't understood.</p>
+<p>"It's extinct," said Anna-Felicitas. "Except us. That is, in the
+direct line."</p>
+<p>The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not
+being so numerous or so clear in America as in some other
+countries.</p>
+<p>"You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"The only ones left that matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "There
+are branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they're so
+unimportant that we don't know them."</p>
+<p>"Mere twigs," said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing
+Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose
+unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you got any parents?" asked the old lady.</p>
+<p>"We used to have," said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her
+darling mother was going to be asked about.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>The old gentleman gave a
+sudden chuckle. "Why yes," he said, forgetting his wife's presence
+for an instant, "I guess you had them once, or I don't see
+how&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Albert," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of
+Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give
+Columbus a hand. "There's just us. And we&mdash;" she paused a
+moment, and then plunged&mdash;"we come from England."</p>
+<p>"Do you?" said the old lady. "Now I shouldn't have said that. I
+can't say just why, but I shouldn't. Should you, Miss Heap?"</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss
+Heap enigmatically, her needles flying.</p>
+<p>"It's because we've been abroad a great deal with our parents, I
+expect," said Anna-Rose rather quickly. "I daresay it has left its
+mark on us."</p>
+<p>"Everything leaves its mark on one," observed Anna-Felicitas
+pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the old lady. "I know what it is now. It's the
+foreign r. You've picked it up. Haven't they, Miss Heap."</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't like to say what they haven't picked up, Mrs.
+Ridding," said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid we have," said Anna-Rose, turning red. "We've been
+told that before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it
+up."</p>
+<p>And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one
+had picked it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.</p>
+<p>She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a
+moment.</p>
+<p>"Albert, if you talk so much you won't be able to <a name=
+"Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>sleep to-night," she said. "I can't
+get Mr. Ridding to remember we've got to be careful at our age,"
+she added to the knitting lady.</p>
+<p>"You seem to be bothered by your memory," said Anna-Rose
+politely, addressing the old gentleman "Have you ever tried making
+notes on little bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I
+think you would probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do
+that. Or rather he made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them
+where he would see them."</p>
+<p>"Uncle Arthur," explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, "is an
+uncle of ours. The one," she said turning to the old gentleman, "we
+were just telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on
+marrying our aunt. Uncle, that is, by courtesy," she added, turning
+to the old lady, "not by blood."</p>
+<p>The old lady's eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one
+spoke, but she said nothing.</p>
+<p>"But Aunt Alice," said Anna-Rose, "is our genuine aunt. Well, I
+was going to tell you," she continued briskly, addressing the old
+gentleman. "There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every
+day and every week, but still he had to be reminded of them each
+time, and Aunt Alice had a whole set of the regular ones written
+out on bits of cardboard, and brought them out in turn. The Monday
+morning one was: Wind the Clock, and the Sunday morning one was:
+Take your Hot Bath, and the Saturday evening one was: Remember your
+Pill. And there was one brought in regularly every morning with his
+shaving water and stuck in his looking-glass: Put on your
+Abdominable Belt."</p>
+<p>The knitting needles paused an instant.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these
+recollections, her long limbs sunk in her chair in a position
+<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>of great ease and comfort,
+"and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put
+on what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we
+wrote a slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table:
+Don't forget your Trousers."</p>
+<p>The knitting needles paused again.</p>
+<p>"But the results of that were dreadful," added Anna-Felicitas,
+her face sobering at the thought of them.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done
+it, in a fit of high spirits, though she never had high
+spirits&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And wouldn't have been allowed to if she had," explained
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And he thought she was laughing at him," said Anna-Rose,
+"though we have never seen her laugh&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And I don't believe he has either," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"So there was trouble, because he couldn't bear the idea of her
+laughing at him, and we had to confess."</p>
+<p>"But that didn't make it any better for Aunt Alice."</p>
+<p>"No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not
+keeping us stricter."</p>
+<p>"So," said Anna-Felicitas, "after the house had been steeped in
+a sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we
+were being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by
+writing a final one&mdash;a nice one&mdash;and leaving it on his
+plate at breakfast: Kiss your Wife. But instead of kissing her
+he&mdash;" She broke off, and then finished a little vaguely: "Oh
+well, he didn't."</p>
+<p>"Still," remarked Anna-Rose, "it must be pleasant not to be
+kissed by a husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to
+say, which is why we reminded him of it. He used to forget that
+more regularly <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>than almost
+anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were
+just the opposite&mdash;the husband was for ever trying to kiss the
+person who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Like the people on Keats's Grecian
+Urn."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "And that sort of husband, must be even
+worse.</p>
+<p>"Oh, much worse," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the
+chairs. "I shall refrain altogether from husbands," she said
+placidly. "I shall take something that doesn't kiss."</p>
+<p>And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek
+resting on her hand, what he, or it, would look like.</p>
+<p>There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a
+creature Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it
+would have; and the other three were, as before, silent.</p>
+<p>Then the old lady said, "Albert," and put out her hand to be
+helped on to her feet.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up.
+His face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty
+keeping back things he wanted to say.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into
+her brocaded bag.</p>
+<p>"Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert," said the old
+lady. "It's time we went and had our nap."</p>
+<p>"I ain't going to," said the old gentleman suddenly.</p>
+<p>"What say? What ain't you going to, Albert?" said the old lady,
+turning her slow eyes round to him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>Nap," said the old
+gentleman, his face very red.</p>
+<p>It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay
+where he was and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap
+because somebody else wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an
+old lady, anyway? Never in his life had he wanted to nap with old
+ladies. It was all a dreadful mistake.</p>
+<p>"Albert," said his wife looking at him.</p>
+<p>He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.</p>
+<p>"You're quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding," said
+Miss Heap, walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit
+hers. "I should say it was essential that he should be kept quiet
+in the afternoons. You should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than
+he does. <i>Much</i> more," she added significantly.</p>
+<p>"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of
+us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>This was the last the twins heard.</p>
+<p>They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady
+began to heave into activity, and they stood watching the three
+departing figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had
+all been in the middle of an interesting conversation?</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it's American to go away in the middle," remarked
+Anna-Rose, following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the
+lift.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it is," said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two
+ladies had their backs to him while preceding him into the lift,
+turned quickly round on his heels and waved his hand before he
+himself went in.</p>
+<p>The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such
+goodwill that the old gentleman couldn't <a name="Page_276" id=
+"Page_276"></a>resist giving one more wave. He was seen doing it by
+the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as she let
+herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he mustn't
+exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his drops
+again.</p>
+<p>That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she
+had got her breath again, she said, "Albert, there's just one thing
+in the world I hate worse than a fool, and that's an old fool."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><a name="Page_277"
+id="Page_277"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<p>That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up
+from the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss
+Twinklers' canary wouldn't sing.</p>
+<p>"But it can't help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of
+door she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't
+either if you were a canary," she added, reasoning with the
+messenger.</p>
+<p>"It's just got to help it," said he.</p>
+<p>"But why shouldn't it sing?"</p>
+<p>"Complaints."</p>
+<p>"But it always has sung."</p>
+<p>"That is so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in
+this hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while.
+Take it easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think."</p>
+<p>"But it won't sit quiet and think."</p>
+<p>"Well, I've told you," he said, going away.</p>
+<p>This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the
+Cosmopolitan about a week before by the lawyer, and it had
+piercingly sung ever since. It sang, that is, as long as there was
+any light, real or artificial, to sing by. The boy who carried it
+from the shop for the twins said its cage was to be hung in a
+window in the sun, or it couldn't do itself justice. But electric
+light also enabled it to do itself justice, the twins discovered,
+and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too, singing as
+loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn't been a real <a name=
+"Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>canary at all, but something clever
+and American with a machine inside it.</p>
+<p>Secretly the twins didn't like it. Shocked at its loud
+behaviour, they had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but
+Anna-Rose was determined to have it at The Open Arms because of her
+conviction that no house showing the trail of a woman's hand was
+without a canary. That, and a workbag. She bought them both the
+same day. The workbag didn't matter, because it kept quiet; but the
+canary was a very big, very yellow bird, much bigger and yellower
+than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted civilization, and
+quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping quiet for a
+minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great many
+lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and
+similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that
+they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones
+on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She
+thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and
+all of them of the biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.</p>
+<p>The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive
+from the first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent
+toward its owners, those cute little relations or charges or
+whatever they were of Teapot Twist's, that they bore its singing
+without complaint. But on the evening of the day the Annas had the
+interesting conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap,
+two definite complaints were lodged in the office, and one was from
+Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss Heap.</p>
+<p>The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the
+canary. Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its
+food, assiduously administered in <a name="Page_279" id=
+"Page_279"></a>quantities exceeding its capacity, littered the
+expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent
+up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss
+Heap, who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing
+the Twist and Twinkler party.</p>
+<p>She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one
+of the questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he
+could answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew
+about Mr. Twist, and it wasn't likely he would choose an hotel of
+so high a class to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers
+were anything but regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was
+joining the party shortly; and besides, there was the house being
+got ready, a permanent place of residence he gathered, in which the
+party would settle down, and experience had taught him that genuine
+illicitness was never permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn't
+really cared about the Twinklers since the canary came. He could
+fill the hotel very easily, and there was no need to accommodate
+people who spoilt carpets. Also, the moment the least doubt or
+question arose among his guests, all of whom he knew and most of
+whom came back regularly every year, as to the social or moral
+status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go. Miss Heap
+evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost
+impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs.
+Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in
+an hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like
+measles. The time had come for him to act.</p>
+<p>Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist's room
+as he was pulling on his boots, and cheer<a name="Page_280" id=
+"Page_280"></a>fully hoped he was bearing in mind what he had been
+told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged for the date
+of the month now arrived at.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. "I'm not bearing it in
+mind," he said, "because you didn't tell me."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist," said the manager briskly. "It isn't
+likely I'd make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every
+year for this date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this
+one, and Mr. and Mrs.&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in
+silence. What he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and
+the twins had got under a cloud.</p>
+<p>The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they
+had made some friends. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned
+them. But it appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle
+Arthur. Well, damnable as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe
+enough as a topic of conversation. He was English. He was known to
+people in America like the Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now
+clear they must have said things besides that. Probably they had
+expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some point of view undesirable to
+American ears. The American ear was very susceptible. He hadn't
+been born in New England without becoming aware of that.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got
+them into knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a
+big hotel. Yet lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn't that
+white-haired gasbag, Mrs. Bilton&mdash;Mr. Twist's thoughts were
+sometimes unjust&mdash;joined them sooner? Why had that <a name=
+"Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>shirker Dellogg died? He got his
+bootlaces hopelessly into knots.</p>
+<p>"I'd like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr.
+Twist," said the manager pleasantly. "Mrs. Hart of Boston is
+very&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning
+the full light of his big spectacles on to him, "I don't care a
+curse for Mrs. Hart of Boston."</p>
+<p>The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a
+curse with a lady. It wasn't American to do that. Mrs.
+Hart&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Damn Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of
+speech while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.</p>
+<p>The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist
+and the twins.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what you've been saying," he said in an extremely
+exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their
+grips, considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was
+singing, piled up round him.</p>
+<p>"Saying?" echoed the twins, their eyes very round.</p>
+<p>"But whatever it was you'd have done better to say something
+else. Confound that bird. Doesn't it ever stop screeching?"</p>
+<p>It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much
+confounded by what they considered his unjust severity that they
+didn't attempt to defend themselves, but sat looking at him with
+proud hurt eyes.</p>
+<p>By this time they both had become very fond of Mr. Twist, and
+accordingly he was able to hurt them. Anna-Rose, indeed, was so
+fond of him that she actually thought him handsome. She had boldly
+said so to the <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>astonished
+Anna-Felicitas about a week before; and when Anna-Felicitas was
+silent, being unable to agree, Anna-Rose had heatedly explained
+that there was handsomeness, and there was the higher handsomeness,
+and that that was the one Mr. Twist had. It was infinitely better
+than mere handsomeness, said Anna-Rose&mdash;curly hair and a
+straight nose and the rest of the silly stuff&mdash;because it was
+real and lasting; and it was real and lasting because it lay in the
+play of the features and not in their exact position and shape.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas couldn't see that Mr. Twist's features played.
+She looked at him now in the taxi while he angrily stared out of
+the window, and even though he was evidently greatly stirred his
+features weren't playing. She didn't particularly want them to
+play. She was fond of and trusted Mr. Twist, and would never even
+have thought whether he had features or not ii Anna-Rose hadn't
+taken lately to talking so much about them. And she couldn't help
+remembering how this very Christopher, so voluble now on the higher
+handsomeness, had said on board the <i>St. Luke</i> when first
+commenting on Mr. Twist that God must have got tired of making him
+by the time his head was reached. Well, Christopher had always been
+an idealist. When she was eleven she had violently loved the
+coachman. Anna-Felicitas hadn't ever violently loved anybody yet,
+and seeing Anna-Rose like this now about Mr. Twist made her wonder
+when she too was going to begin. Surely it was time. She hoped her
+inability to begin wasn't perhaps because she had no heart. Still,
+she couldn't begin if she didn't see anybody to begin on.</p>
+<p>She sat silent in the taxi, with Christopher equally silent
+beside her, both of them observing Mr. Twist <a name="Page_283" id=
+"Page_283"></a>through lowered eyelashes. Anna-Rose watched him
+with hurt and anxious eyes like a devoted dog who has been kicked
+without cause. Anna-Felicitas watched him in a more detached
+spirit. She had a real affection for him, but it was not, she was
+sure and rather regretted, an affection that would ever be likely
+to get the better of her reason. It wasn't because he was so old,
+of course, she thought, for one could love the oldest people,
+beginning with that standard example of age, the <i>liebe Gott</i>;
+it was because she liked him so much.</p>
+<p>How could one get sentimental over and love somebody one so
+thoroughly liked? The two things on reflection didn't seem to
+combine well. She was sure, for instance, that Aunt Alice had loved
+Uncle Arthur, amazing as it seemed, but she was equally sure she
+hadn't liked him. And look at the <i>liebe Gott</i>. One loves the
+<i>liebe Gott</i>, but it would be going too far, she thought, to
+say that one likes him.</p>
+<p>These were the reflections of Anna-Felicitas in the taxi, as she
+observed through her eyelashes the object of Anna-Rose's
+idealization. She envied Anna-Rose; for here she had been steadily
+expanding every day more and more like a flower under the influence
+of her own power of idealization. She used to sparkle and grow rosy
+like that for the coachman. Perhaps after all it didn't much matter
+what you loved, so long as you loved immensely. It was, perhaps,
+thought Anna-Felicitas approaching this subject with some caution
+and diffidence, the quantity of one's love that mattered rather
+than the quality of its object. Not that Mr. Twist wasn't of the
+very first quality, except to look at; but what after all were
+faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing else but face, so
+handsome was he and so without any other recommendation. <a name=
+"Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>He couldn't even drive; and her father
+had very soon kicked him out with the vigour and absence of
+hesitation peculiar to Junkers when it comes to kicking and
+Anna-Rose had wept all over her bread and butter at tea that day,
+and was understood to say that she knew at last what it must be
+like to be a widow.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window
+with an angry and worried face, his attention irritably
+concentrated, so it seemed, on the objects passing in the road,
+very well knew he was being observed. He wouldn't, however, allow
+his eye to be caught. He wasn't going to become entangled at this
+juncture in argument with the Annas. He was hastily making up his
+mind, and there wasn't much time to do it in. He had had no
+explanation with the twins since the manager's visit to his room,
+and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders to them,
+told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got them
+safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
+were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train
+from Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind.
+The station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage
+in till she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the
+parcel-room as easily as he could their grips&mdash;neatly
+labelled, put away safely on a shelf till called for.</p>
+<p>Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at
+decisions. He would leave the twins in the waiting room at the
+station till Mrs. Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find
+lodgings for them and her. He himself would get a room in another
+and less critical hotel, and stay in it till the cottage was
+habitable. So <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>would
+unassailable respectability once more descend like a white garment
+upon the party and cover it up.</p>
+<p>But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the <i>contretemps</i>
+that had occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so
+nearly there; nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the
+twins to be happy, to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and
+sweetness he felt was their due, that he was furious with them for
+doing anything to make it difficult. And, jerkily, his angry
+thoughts pounced, as they so often did, on Uncle Arthur. Fancy
+kicking two little things like that out into the world, two little
+breakable things like that, made to be cherished and watched over.
+Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard the female as
+an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a charming
+setting and kept brightly free from dust. If Uncle Arthur had had a
+shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would
+have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling
+was against aliens. Never would a decent man have chucked them
+out.</p>
+<p>He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins.
+Their eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face. With
+the quick change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose
+hearts are warm, a flood of love for them gushed up within him and
+put out his anger. After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he,
+Edward A. Twist, never would have met these blessed children. He
+would now have been at Clark; leading lightless days; hopelessly
+involved with his mother.</p>
+<p>His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile. Instantly the
+two faces opposite cleared into something shining.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>Oh dear," said
+Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, "it <i>is</i> refreshing when
+you leave off being cross."</p>
+<p>"We're fearfully sorry if we've said anything we oughtn't to
+have," said Anna-Rose, "and if you tell us what it is we won't say
+it again."</p>
+<p>"I can't tell you, because I don't know what it was," said Mr.
+Twist, in his usual kind voice. "I only see the results. And the
+results are that the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we've got to
+find lodgings."</p>
+<p>"Lodgings?"</p>
+<p>"Till we can move into the cottage. I'm going to put you and
+Mrs. Bilton in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some
+hotel."</p>
+<p>The twins stared at him a moment in silence. Then Anna-Rose said
+with sudden passion, "You're not."</p>
+<p>"How's that?" asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering
+by the arrival of the taxi at the station.</p>
+<p>There followed ten minutes' tangle and confusion, at the end of
+which the twins found themselves free of their grips and being
+piloted into the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"There," he said. "You sit here quiet and good. I'll come back
+about one o'clock with sandwiches and candy for your dinner, and
+maybe a story-book or two. You mustn't leave this, do you hear? I'm
+going to hunt for those lodgings."</p>
+<p>And he was in the act of taking off his hat valedictorily when
+Anna-Rose again said with the same passion, "You're not."</p>
+<p>"Not what?" inquired Mr. Twist, pausing with his hat in
+mid-air.</p>
+<p>"Going to hunt for lodgings. We won't go to them."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>Of course we won't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, with no passion but with an infinitely rock-like
+determination.</p>
+<p>"And pray&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Go into lodgings alone with Mrs. Bilton?" interrupted Anna-Rose
+her face scarlet, her whole small body giving the impression of
+indignant feathers standing up on end. "While you're somewhere
+else? Away from us? We won't."</p>
+<p>"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost
+placid quality in her determination, it was so final and so
+unshakable. "Would you?"</p>
+<p>"See here&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"We won't see anywhere," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Would you," inquired Anna-Felicitas, again reasoning with him,
+"like being alone in lodgings with Mrs. Bilton?"</p>
+<p>"This is no time for conversation," said Mr. Twist, making for
+the door. "You've got to do what I think best on this occasion. And
+that's all about it."</p>
+<p>"We won't," repeated Anna-Rose, on the verge of those tears
+which always with her so quickly followed any sort of emotion.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused on his way to the door. "Well now what the
+devil's the matter with lodgings?" he asked angrily.</p>
+<p>"It isn't the devil, it's Mrs. Bilton," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"Would you yourself like&mdash;"</p>
+<p>'But you've got to have Mrs. Bilton with you anyhow from to-day
+on."</p>
+<p>"But not unadulterated Mrs. Bilton. You were to have been with
+us too. We can't be drowned all by ourselves in Mrs. Bilton.
+<i>You</i> wouldn't like it."</p>
+<p>"Of course I wouldn't. But it's only for a few days anyhow,"
+said Mr. Twist, who had been quite unprepared <a name="Page_288"
+id="Page_288"></a>for opposition to his very sensible
+arrangement.</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if it's only a few days now before we can
+all squeeze into some part of the cottage. If you don't mind dust
+and noise and workmen about all day long."</p>
+<p>A light pierced the gloom that had gathered round
+Anna-Felicitas's soul.</p>
+<p>"We'll go into it to-day," she said firmly, "Why not? We can
+camp out. We can live in those little rooms at the back over the
+kitchen,&mdash;the ones you got ready for Li Koo. We'd be on the
+spot. We wouldn't mind anything. It would just be a picnic."</p>
+<p>"And we&mdash;we wouldn't be&mdash;sep&mdash;separated," said
+Anna-Rose, getting it out with a gasp.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stood looking at them.</p>
+<p>"Well, of all the&mdash;" he began, pushing his hat back. "Are
+you aware," he went on more calmly, "that there are only two rooms
+over that kitchen, and that you and Mrs. Bilton will have to be all
+together in one of them?"</p>
+<p>"We don't mind that as long as you're in the other one," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Of course," suggested Anna-Felicitas, "if you were to happen to
+marry Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's spectacles stared enormously at her.</p>
+<p>"No, no," said Anna-Rose quickly. "Marriage is a sacred thing,
+and you can't just marry so as to be more comfortable."</p>
+<p>"I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I'd be more uncomfortable,"
+remarked Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.</p>
+<p>He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he
+fixed his hat properly on his head and <a name="Page_289" id=
+"Page_289"></a>said, sobriety in his voice and manner, "Come along,
+then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at the
+rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've
+done with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>don't</i> say that," said the twins together, with all
+and more of their usual urbanity.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><a name="Page_290"
+id="Page_290"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<p>By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the
+rooms Li Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by
+the time Mrs. Bilton arrived. They were in an outbuilding at the
+back of the house, and consisted of a living-room with a
+cooking-stove in it, a bedroom behind it, and up a narrow and curly
+staircase a larger room running the whole length and width of the
+shanty. This sounds spacious, but it wasn't. The amount of length
+and width was small, and it was only just possible to get three
+camp-beds into it and a washstand. The beds nearly touched each
+other. Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going to be
+regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr.
+Twist's consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the
+room by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that
+there was lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the
+camp life so extensively practised in America, would thoroughly
+enjoy herself.</p>
+<p>They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making
+the little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains
+intended for the other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in
+great bunches of the pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled
+about everywhere in the garden and hiding the worst places in the
+rooms with them. Mr. Twist was in Acapulco most of the time,
+getting together the necessary temporary <a name="Page_291" id=
+"Page_291"></a>furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't
+miss him, for they were helped with zeal by the architect, the
+electrical expert, the garden expert and the chief plumber.</p>
+<p>These young men&mdash;they were all young, and very
+go-ahead&mdash;abandoned the main building that day to the
+undirected labours of the workmen they were supposed to control,
+and turned to on the shanty as soon as they realized what it was to
+be used for with a joyous energy that delighted the twins. They
+swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the windows and
+the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with the
+curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
+packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted
+various other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,&mdash;a rug
+or two, an easy chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They
+screwed in hooks behind the doors for clothes to be hung on, and
+they tied the canary to a neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it
+could be seen and hardly heard. The chief plumber found buckets and
+filled them with water, and the electrical expert rigged up a
+series of lanterns inside the shanty, even illuminating its
+tortuous staircase. There was much <i>badinage</i>, but as it was
+all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able to
+apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant
+smiles. But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so
+engaging that the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed
+when Mr. Twist came back.</p>
+<p>He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins,
+whom he had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with
+nothing at all to eat; and he found them looking particularly
+comfortable and well-<a name="Page_292" id=
+"Page_292"></a>nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they
+refused his sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.</p>
+<p>They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived,
+resting from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted
+with the four experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and
+the experts who were smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they
+were saying. It wouldn't have added to his comfort if he had heard,
+for they were giving the experts an account of their attempt to go
+and live with the Sacks, and interweaving with it some general
+reflections of a philosophical nature suggested by the Sack
+<i>m&eacute;nage</i>. The experts were keenly interested, and
+everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly
+if the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't
+directing the workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist
+perceived a drawback to the twins living on the spot while the
+place was being finished; another drawback. He had perceived
+several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs. Bilton would soon be
+there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He positively
+longed for her.</p>
+<p>When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the
+boss," they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up
+quickly and departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the
+Twinkler family, but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of
+the country to wink, and they wondered whether they ought to have
+winked back. The young men were certainly deserving of every
+friendliness in return for all they had done. They decided they
+would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could wink at them if
+necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>Mr. Twist took them with
+him when he went down to the station to meet the Los Angeles train.
+It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home by then, but the
+experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished at the
+amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
+they explained to him how very active the experts had been,
+whereupon he said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them
+they would go with him to the station.</p>
+<p>"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
+finishing touches if we stayed here."</p>
+<p>"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She
+supposed she was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she
+originally was, and all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was
+trying to tell her she wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say
+about her journey, and her last days among her friends, and all the
+pleasant new acquaintances she had made on the train, and her
+speech was so very close-knit, that he felt he was like a rabbit on
+the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running desperately up and down
+searching for a gap to get through. It was nothing short of amazing
+how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there wasn't at any moment the
+smallest pause in the flow.</p>
+<p>"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she
+wanted to say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.</p>
+<p>"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas,
+also a little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.</p>
+<p>"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought
+Mr. Twist, consoling himself.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>This hotel we're going to
+seems to be located at some distance from the station," said Mrs.
+Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages of rapid
+unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely&mdash;" and off she went
+again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
+explain at last.</p>
+<p>She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change
+in her fate.</p>
+<p>Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who
+has been deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a
+husband. She had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the
+Cosmopolitan, its bath, its soft bed and good food, with frank
+satisfaction. She thought it admirable that before embarking on
+active duties she should for a space rest luxuriously in an
+excellent hotel, with no care in regard to expense, and exchange
+ideas while she rested with the interesting people she would be
+sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles, Mr. Twist
+had explained to her by letter and under the seal of confidence the
+philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss Twinklers were
+engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the very
+considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
+unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days
+in Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular
+pleasure to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots
+for which she had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of
+grit; and she possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a
+redoubtable psyche, a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so
+that when, talking ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each
+other as they streamed through her brain to get first to the exit
+of her tongue, she caught her foot in some builder's d&eacute;bris
+<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>carelessly left on the path up
+to the cottage and received in this way positively her first
+intimation that this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as
+a more timid female soul well might have, become alarmed and
+suppose that Mr. Twist, whom after all she didn't know, had brought
+her to this solitary place for purposes of assassination, but
+stopped firmly just where she was, and turning her head in the
+darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll stand right here
+till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to what's at my
+feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm not going
+any further with this promenade till I can say. And when you've
+thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
+information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming
+to."</p>
+<p>"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give
+it you ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your
+getting out of the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been
+trying to offer you my arm along the path&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.</p>
+<p>"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking
+up and down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the
+electrical expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be
+about.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him
+first examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave
+it back to him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to
+whatever it is has been substituted without my knowledge for that
+hotel," she said; and while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal
+with her grips, she walked carefully toward <a name="Page_296" id=
+"Page_296"></a>the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
+immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's
+not having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from
+her itinerary.</p>
+<p>The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without
+further struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without
+answering to the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept
+her in the dark, raised her voice at last and called out, "But he
+wanted to&mdash;he wanted to all the time&mdash;you wouldn't
+listen&mdash;you wouldn't stop&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her
+tongue and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert
+had lit all the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its
+lighted windows gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no
+amount of light and bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its
+discomforts, its dreadful smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which
+the twins were accustomed to regard as precious, as things brought
+up lovingly in pots, were nothing but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's
+experienced Californian eye.</p>
+<p>She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet fell on the
+twins with a great sense of refreshment. Standing in the
+doorway&mdash;for Mrs. Bilton and the electrical expert between
+them filled up most of the kitchen&mdash;they heaved a deep sigh.
+"And see how beautiful the stars are," whispered Anna-Felicitas in
+Anna-Rose's ear; she hadn't been able to see them before somehow,
+Mrs. Bilton's voice had so much ruffled the night.</p>
+<p>"Do you think she talks in her sleep?" Anna-Rose anxiously
+whispered back.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist, arriving with his hands full, was staggered
+<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>to find Mrs. Bilton not
+talking. An icy fear seized his heart. She was going to refuse to
+stay with them. And she would be within her rights if she did, for
+certainly what she called her itinerary had promised her a
+first-rate hotel, in which she was to continue till a finished and
+comfortable house was stepped into.</p>
+<p>"I wish you'd say something," he said, plumping down the bags he
+was carrying on the kitchen floor.</p>
+<p>The twins from the doorway looked at him and then at each other
+in great surprise. Fancy <i>asking</i> Mrs. Bilton to say
+something.</p>
+<p>"They would come," said Mr. Twist, resentfully, jerking his head
+toward the Annas in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"It's worse upstairs," he went on desperately as Mrs. Bilton
+still was dumb.</p>
+<p>"Worse upstairs?" cried the twins, as one woman.</p>
+<p>"It's perfect upstairs," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"It's like camping out without <i>being</i> out," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The only drawback is that there are rather a lot of beds in our
+room," said Anna-Felicitas, "but that of course"&mdash;she turned
+to Mr. Twist&mdash;"might easily be arranged&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I wish you'd <i>say</i> something, Mrs. Bilton," he interrupted
+quickly and loud.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton drew a deep breath and looked round her. She looked
+round the room, and she looked up at the ceiling, which the upright
+feather in her hat was tickling, and she looked at the faces of the
+twins, lit flickeringly by the uncertain light of the lanterns.
+Then, woman of grit, wife who had never failed him of Bruce D.
+Bilton, widow who had remained poised and indomitable on a small
+income in a circle of well-off friends, she spoke; and she
+said:</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>Mr. Twist, I can't say
+what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt with information,
+but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to a plough and
+then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been good
+enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had
+to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good
+enough for me. You've conducted me to a shack instead of the hotel
+I was promised, and I await your explanation. Meanwhile, is there
+any supper?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><a name=
+"Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<p>It was only a fortnight after this that the inn was ready to be
+opened, and it was only during the first days of this fortnight
+that the party in the shanty had to endure any serious discomfort.
+The twins didn't mind the physical discomfort at all; what they
+minded, and began to mind almost immediately, was the spiritual
+discomfort of being at such close quarters with Mrs. Bilton. They
+hardly noticed the physical side of that close association in such
+a lovely climate, where the whole of out-of-doors can be used as
+one's living-room; and their morning dressing, a difficult business
+in the shanty for anybody less young and more needing to be
+careful, was rather like the getting up of a dog after its night's
+sleep&mdash;they seemed just to shake themselves, and there they
+were.</p>
+<p>They got up before Mrs. Bilton, who was, however, always awake
+and talking to them while they dressed, and they went to bed before
+she did, though she came up with them after the first night and
+read aloud to them while they undressed; so that as regarded the
+mysteries of Mrs. Bilton's toilette they were not, after all, much
+in her way. It was like caravaning or camping out: you managed your
+movements and moments skilfully, and if you were Mrs. Bilton you
+had a curtain slung across your part of the room, in case your
+younger charges shouldn't always be asleep when they looked as if
+they were.</p>
+<p>Gradually one alleviation was added to another, and <a name=
+"Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>Mrs. Bilton forgot the rigours of the
+beginning. Li Koo arrived, for instance, fetched by a telegram, and
+under a tent in the eucalyptus grove at the back of the house set
+up an old iron stove and produced, with no apparent exertion,
+extraordinarily interesting and amusing food. He went into Acapulco
+at daylight every morning and did the marketing. He began almost
+immediately to do everything else in the way of housekeeping. He
+was exquisitely clean, and saw to it that the shanty matched him in
+cleanliness. To the surprise and gratification of the twins, who
+had supposed it would be their lot to go on doing the housework of
+the shanty, he took it over as a matter of course, dusting,
+sweeping, and tidying like a practised and very excellent
+housemaid. The only thing he refused to do was to touch the three
+beds in the upper chamber. "Me no make lady-beds," he said
+briefly.</p>
+<p>Li Koo's salary was enormous, but Mr. Twist, with a sound
+instinct, cared nothing what he paid so long as he got the right
+man. He was, indeed, much satisfied with his two employees, and
+congratulated himself on his luck. It is true in regard to Mrs.
+Bilton his satisfaction was rather of the sorrowful sort that a
+fresh ache in a different part of one's body from the first ache
+gives: it relieved him from one by substituting another. Mrs.
+Bilton overwhelmed him; but so had the Annas begun to. Her
+overwhelming, however, was different, and freed him from that other
+worse one. He felt safe now about the Annas, and after all there
+were parts of the building in which Mrs. Bilton wasn't. There was
+his bedroom, for instance. Thank God for bedrooms, thought Mr.
+Twist. He grew to love his. What a haven that poky and silent place
+was; what a blessing the conventions were, and the proprieties.
+Supposing <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>civilization were so
+far advanced that people could no longer see the harm there is in a
+bedroom, what would have become of him? Mr. Twist could perfectly
+account for Bruce D. Bilton's death. It wasn't diabetes, as Mrs.
+Bilton said; it was just bedroom.</p>
+<p>Still, Mrs. Bilton was an undoubted find, and did immediately in
+those rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them
+with her in the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did
+to Mrs. Bilton they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the
+peculiar ease of the Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans
+approach with care. Never would they be able to tell her things
+about Uncle Arthur, the kind of things that had caused the
+Cosmopolitan to grow so suddenly cool. There was, most happily for
+this particular case, no arguing with Mrs. Bilton. The twins
+couldn't draw her out because she was already, as it were, so
+completely out. This was a great thing, Mr. Twist felt, and made up
+for any personal suffocation he had to bear; and when on the
+afternoon of Mrs. Bilton's first day the twins appeared without her
+in the main building in search of him, having obviously given her
+the slip, and said they were sorry to disturb him but they wanted
+his advice, for though they had been trying hard all day,
+remembering they were ladies and practically hostesses, they hadn't
+yet succeeded in saying anything at all to Mrs. Bilton and doubted
+whether they ever would, he merely smiled happily at them and said
+to Anna-Rose, "See how good comes out of evil"&mdash;a remark that
+they didn't like when they had had time to think over it.</p>
+<p>But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all
+alone all day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never
+left their side, regarding it as <a name="Page_302" id=
+"Page_302"></a>proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
+bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for
+ladies to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at
+apparently producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly
+acquainted with her young charges. This she did by imparting to
+them intimate and meticulous information about her own life, with
+the whole of the various uplifts, as she put it, her psyche had
+during its unfolding experienced. There was so much to tell about
+herself that she never got to inquiring about the twins. She knew
+they were orphans, and that this was a good work, and for the
+moment had no time for more.</p>
+<p>The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because
+they didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking
+for she didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her
+concrete experiences, and especially to the experiences connected
+with Mr. Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about
+Mr. Bilton, and find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton
+was lavish in her details of what she had thought herself, but Mr.
+Bilton's thoughts remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins
+that he must have thought a lot, and have come to the conclusion
+that there was much to be said for death.</p>
+<p>The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the
+Clouston-Sacks, and had never been separated for a single day
+during the whole of their married life. This seemed to the twins
+very strange, and needing a great deal of explanation. In order to
+get light thrown on it the first thing they wanted to find out was
+how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs. Bilton was deaf to their
+inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's last moments <a name=
+"Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>and obsequies&mdash;obsequies
+scheduled by her, she said, with so tender a regard for his memory
+that she insisted on a horse-drawn hearse instead of the more
+fashionable automobile conveyance, on the ground that a motor
+hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first speed&mdash;she
+washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the dreadfulness
+of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps on
+catching in everything&mdash;chairs, overhanging branches, and
+passers-by, including it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She
+inquired of the twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow
+in a wind. Chicago, she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton
+passed in its windiest month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down
+the streets on the daily constitutional she considered it her duty
+toward the living to take, for one owes it to one's friends to keep
+oneself fit and not give way, was blown hither and thither in the
+buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy climate, and her walk in
+the busier streets was a series of entanglements. Embarrassing
+entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately the persons she got
+caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often, indeed, seeming
+quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the situation, covered
+with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the wind would
+cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above her head
+in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
+moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of
+any one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once
+about the body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose
+side she had paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before
+it could be unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the
+track of a sensation, had caused <a name="Page_304" id=
+"Page_304"></a>her friends much painful if only short-lived
+amazement by coming out with huge equivocal headlines:</p>
+<p>WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER</p>
+<p>and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing
+her name in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends
+were a prey to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on
+discovering there was nothing in it after all.</p>
+<p>The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped
+round their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet,
+occasionally felt as they followed her narrative that they were
+somehow out of their depth and didn't quite understand. It was
+extraordinarily exasperating to them to be so completely muzzled.
+They were accustomed to elucidate points they didn't understand by
+immediate inquiry; they had a habit of asking for information, and
+then delivering comments on it.</p>
+<p>This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The
+ilex tree in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton
+shepherded them each morning and afternoon for the first three
+days, became to them, in spite of its beauty with the view from
+under its dark shade across the sunny fields to the sea and the
+delicate distant islands, a painful spot. The beauty all round them
+was under these conditions exasperating. Only once did Mrs. Bilton
+leave them, and that was the first afternoon, when they instantly
+fled to seek out Mr. Twist; and she only left them then&mdash;for
+it wasn't just her sense of duty that was strong, but also her
+dislike of being alone&mdash;because something unexpectedly gave
+<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>way in the upper part of her
+dress, she being of a tight well-held-in figure, depending much on
+its buttons; and she had very hastily to go in search of a
+needle.</p>
+<p>After that they didn't see Mr. Twist alone for several days.
+They hardly indeed saw him at all. The only meal he shared with
+them was supper, and on finding the first evening that Mrs. Bilton
+read aloud to people after supper, he made the excuse of accounts
+to go through and went into his bedroom, repeating this each
+night.</p>
+<p>The twins watched him go with agonized eyes. They considered
+themselves deserted; shamefully abandoned to a miserable fate.</p>
+<p>"And it isn't as if he didn't <i>like</i> reading aloud,"
+whispered Anna-Rose, bewildered and indignant as she remembered the
+"Ode to Dooty."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps he's one of those people who only like it if they do it
+themselves," Anna-Felicitas whispered back, trying to explain his
+base behaviour.</p>
+<p>And while they whispered, Mrs. Bilton with great enjoyment
+declaimed&mdash;she had had a course of elocution lessons during
+Mr. Bilton's life so as to be able to place the best literature
+advantageously before him&mdash;the diary of a young girl written
+in prison. The young girl had been wrongfully incarcerated, Mrs.
+Bilton explained, and her pure soul only found release by the
+demise of her body. The twins hated the young girl from the first
+paragraph. She wrote her diary every day till her demise stopped
+her. As nothing happens in prisons that hasn't happened the day
+before, she could only write her reflections; and the twins hated
+her reflections, because they were so very like what in their
+secret moments of slush they were apt to reflect themselves. Their
+mother had had a horror of slush. There had <a name="Page_306" id=
+"Page_306"></a>been none anywhere about her; but it is in the air
+in Germany, in people's blood, everywhere; and though the twins,
+owing to the English part of them, had a horror of it too, there it
+was in them, and they knew it,&mdash;genuine German slush.</p>
+<p>They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they
+would write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings
+they had to listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why
+didn't he come out and save them? What happy, what glorious
+evenings they used to have at the Cosmopolitan, spent in
+intelligent conversation, in a decent give and take&mdash;not this
+button-holing business, this being got into a corner and held down;
+and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to get
+sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
+now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled
+with impatience in their seats beneath the
+<i>&eacute;panchements</i> of the young girl, the strangely and
+distressingly familiar <i>&eacute;panchements</i>. The diary was
+published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs.
+Bilton on laying it down announced she would go on with it while
+they were dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs.
+Bilton was awake and crept out and hid it.</p>
+<p>But Li Koo found it and restored it.</p>
+<p>Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes
+the third morning, although the twins had hidden them most
+carefully. Their idea was that while she, rendered immobile, waited
+indoors, they would zealously look for them in all the places where
+they well knew that they weren't, and perhaps get some conversation
+with Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the
+fourth morning, when, unable any <a name="Page_307" id=
+"Page_307"></a>longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran into
+the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
+at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled
+ditch.</p>
+<p>In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out
+that they were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though
+the ditch had nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no
+comment. He never did make comments; and his silence and his
+ubiquitous efficiency made the twins as fidgety with him as they
+were with Mrs. Bilton for the opposite reason. They had an
+uncomfortable feeling that he was rather like the <i>liebe
+Gott</i>,&mdash;he saw everything, knew everything, and said
+nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times,
+to pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo&mdash;again,
+they silently reflected, like the <i>liebe Gott</i>&mdash;had a
+different sense of geniality from theirs; he couldn't apparently
+smile; they doubted if he even ever wanted to. Their genialities
+faltered and froze on their lips.</p>
+<p>Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found
+hiding, and were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in
+this manner to conciliate Li Koo. Their dignity on the walk back to
+the shanty seemed painfully shrunk. They ought never to have
+condescended to do the childish things they had been doing during
+the last three days. If they hadn't been found out it would, of
+course, have remained a private matter between them and their
+Maker, and then one doesn't mind so much; but they had been found
+out, and by Li Koo, their own servant. It was intolerable. All the
+blood of all the Twinklers, Junkers from time immemorial and
+properly sensitive to humiliation, surged within them. They hadn't
+felt so naughty and so young for <a name="Page_308" id=
+"Page_308"></a>years. They were sure Li Koo didn't believe them
+about the ditch. They had a dreadful sensation of being led back to
+Mrs. Bilton by the ear.</p>
+<p>If only they could sack Mrs. Bilton!</p>
+<p>This thought, immense and startling, came to Anna-Rose, who far
+more than Anna-Felicitas resented being cut off from Mr. Twist,
+besides being more naturally impetuous; and as they walked in
+silence side by side, with Li Koo a little ahead of them, she
+turned her head and looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Let's give her
+notice," she murmured, under her breath.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was so much taken aback that she stopped in her
+walk and stared at Anna-Rose's flushed face.</p>
+<p>She too hardly breathed it. The suggestion seemed fantastic in
+its monstrousness. How could they give anybody so old, so sure of
+herself, so determined as Mrs. Bilton, notice?</p>
+<p>"Give her notice?" she repeated.</p>
+<p>A chill ran down Anna-Felicitas's spine. Give Mrs. Bilton
+notice! It was a great, a breath-taking idea, magnificent in its
+assertion of independence, of rights; but it needed, she felt, to
+be approached with caution. They had never given anybody notice in
+their lives, and they had always thought it must be a most painful
+thing to do&mdash;far, far worse than tipping. Uncle Arthur usedn't
+to mind it a bit; did it, indeed, with gusto. But Aunt Alice hadn't
+liked it at all, and came out in a cold perspiration and bewailed
+her lot to them and wished that people would behave and not place
+her in such a painful position.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton couldn't be said not to have behaved. Quite the
+contrary. She had behaved too persistently; and they had to endure
+it the whole twenty-four hours. <a name="Page_309" id=
+"Page_309"></a>For Mrs. Bilton had no turn, it appeared, in spite
+of what she had said at Los Angeles, for solitary contemplation,
+and after the confusion of the first night, when once she had had
+time to envisage the situation thoroughly, as she said, she had
+found that to sit alone downstairs in the uncertain light of the
+lanterns while the twins went to bed and Mr. Twist wouldn't come
+out of his room, was not good for her psyche; so she had followed
+the twins upstairs, and continued to read the young girl's diary to
+them during their undressing and till the noises coming from their
+beds convinced her that it was useless to go on any longer. And
+that morning, the morning they hid in the ditch, she had even done
+this while they were getting up.</p>
+<p>"It isn't to be borne," said Anna-Rose under her breath, one eye
+on Li Koo's ear which, a little in front of her, seemed slightly
+slanted backward and sideways in the direction of her voice. "And
+why should it be? We're not in her power."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, also under her breath and also
+watching Li Koo's ear, "but it feels extraordinarily as if we
+were."</p>
+<p>"Yes. And that's intolerable. And it forces us to do silly baby
+things, wholly unsuited either to our age or our position. Who
+would have thought we'd ever hide from somebody in a ditch again!"
+Anna-Rose's voice was almost a sob at the humiliation.</p>
+<p>"It all comes from sleeping in the same room," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "Nobody can stand a thing that doesn't end at night
+either."</p>
+<p>"Of course they can't," said Anna-Rose. "It isn't fair. If you
+have to have a person all day you oughtn't to have to have the same
+person all night. Some one <a name="Page_310" id=
+"Page_310"></a>else should step in and relieve you then. Just as
+they do in hospitals."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Mr. Twist ought to. He ought to
+remove her forcibly from our room by marriage.</p>
+<p>"No he oughtn't," said Anna-Rose hastily, "because we can remove
+her ourselves by the simple process of giving her notice."</p>
+<p>"I don't believe it's simple," said Anna-Felicia again feeling a
+chill trickling down her spine.</p>
+<p>"Of course it is. We just go to her very politely and inform her
+that the engagement is terminated on a basis of mutual esteem but
+inflexible determination."</p>
+<p>"And suppose she doesn't stop talking enough to hear?"</p>
+<p>"Then we'll hand it to her in writing."</p>
+<p>The rest of the way they walked in silence, Anna-Rose with her
+chin thrust out in defiance, Anna-Felicitas dragging her feet along
+with a certain reluctance and doubt.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton had finished her breakfast when they got back,
+having seen no sense in letting good food get cold, and was ready
+to sit and chat to them while they had theirs. She was so busy
+telling them what she had supposed they were probably doing, that
+she was unable to listen to their attempted account of what they
+had done. Thus they were saved from telling humiliating and
+youthful fibs; but they were also prevented, as by a wall of rock,
+from getting the speech through to her ear that Anna-Rose,
+trembling in spite of her defiance, had ready to launch at her. It
+was impossible to shout at Mrs. Bilton in the way Mr. Twist, when
+in extremity of necessity, had done. Ladies didn't shout;
+especially not when they were giving other ladies notice.
+Anna-<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>Rose, who was quite cold
+and clammy at the prospect of her speech, couldn't help feeling
+relieved when breakfast was over and no opportunity for it had been
+given.</p>
+<p>"We'll write it," she whispered to Anna-Felicitas beneath the
+cover of a lively account Mrs. Bilton was giving them, <i>&agrave;
+propos</i> of their being late for breakfast, of the time it took
+her, after Mr. Bilton's passing, to get used to his unpunctuality
+at meals.</p>
+<p>That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily
+for years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly
+astonished her every day, she said. The clock struck, yet Mr.
+Bilton continued late. It was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way
+of being reminded of her loss. Each day she would instinctively
+expect; each day would come the stab of recollection. The vacancy
+these non-appearances had made in her life was beyond any words of
+hers. In fact she didn't possess such words, and doubted if the
+completest dictionary did either. Everything went just vacant, she
+said. No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as to be
+behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr.
+Bilton simultaneously appeared. No need any more to think of him
+when ordering meals. No need any more to eat the dish he had been
+so fond of and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked
+beans and bacon; yet she found herself ordering it continually
+after his departure, and choking memorially over the
+mouthfuls&mdash;"And people in Europe," cried Mrs Bilton, herself
+struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, "say that American
+women are incapable of passion!"</p>
+<p>"We'll write it," whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Write what?" asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, <a name=
+"Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>who as usual when Mrs. Bilton narrated
+her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and trying to
+get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.</p>
+<p>But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to
+the recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth
+pulled out. The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being
+free from it charmed and thrilled her, but how painful, how
+alarming was the prospect of pulling it out!</p>
+<p>There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton's talk, and
+that was that under its voluminous cover they could themselves
+whisper occasionally to each other. Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs.
+Bilton didn't notice that they whispered neither probably would she
+notice if she wrote. She therefore under Mrs. Bilton's very nose
+got a pencil and a piece of paper, and with many pauses and an
+unsteady hand wrote the following:</p>
+<p>DEAR MRS. BILTON&mdash;For some time past my sister and I have
+felt that we aren't suited to you, and if you don't mind would you
+mind regarding the engagement as terminated? We hope you won't
+think this abrupt, because it isn't really, for we seem to have
+lived ages since you came, and we've been thinking this over ripely
+ever since. And we hope you won't take it as anything personal
+either, because it isn't really. It's only that we feel we're
+unsuitable, and we're sure we'll go on getting more and more
+unsuitable. Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we're fearfully
+sorry. But on the other hand we're inflexible.&mdash;Yours
+affectionately,</p>
+<p>ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER</p>
+<p>With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the
+table under cover of the breakfast <i>d&eacute;bris</i> to
+Anna-Felicitas, who read it with a beating heart and cautiously
+pushed it back.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas felt sure Christopher was being terribly
+impetuous, and she felt sure she ought to stop her. <a name=
+"Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>But what a joy to be without Mrs.
+Bilton! The thought of going to bed in the placid sluggishness dear
+to her heart, without having to listen, to be attentive, to
+remember to be tidy because if she weren't there would be no room
+for Mrs. Bilton's things, was too much for her. Authority pursuing
+her into her bedroom was what she had found most difficult to bear.
+There must be respite. There must be intervals in every activity or
+endurance. Even the <i>liebe Gott</i>, otherwise so indefatigable,
+had felt this and arranged for the relaxation of Sundays.</p>
+<p>She pushed the letter back with a beating heart, and told
+herself that she couldn't and never had been able to stop
+Christopher when she was in this mood of her chin sticking out.
+What could she do in face of such a chin? And besides, Mrs.
+Bilton's friends must be missing her very much and ought to have
+her back. One should always live only with one's own sort of
+people. Every other way of living, Anna-Felicitas was sure even at
+this early stage of her existence, was bound to come to a bad end.
+One could be fond of almost anybody, she held, if they were
+somewhere else. Even of Uncle Arthur. Even he somehow seemed
+softened by distance. But for living-together purposes there was
+only one kind of people possible, and that was one's own kind.
+Unexpected and various were the exteriors of one's own kind and the
+places one found them in, but one always knew them. One felt
+comfortable with them at once; comfortable and placid. Whatever
+else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't feeling placid. That
+was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with her own kind.
+With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was talking on
+happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above manner
+as she pushed <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>back the letter,
+instead of, as at the back of her mind she felt she ought to have
+done, tearing it up.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose folded it and addressed it to Mrs. Bilton. Then she
+got up and held it out to her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas got up too, her inside feeling strangely unsteady
+and stirred round and round.</p>
+<p>"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs.
+Bilton, who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand
+without apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she
+was saying.</p>
+<p>"We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then
+said, making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who
+still stood hesitating.</p>
+<p>She slipped out; and Anna-Felicitas, suddenly panic-stricken
+lest she should be buttonholed all by herself fled after her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<p>Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was
+to be the tea-room. It was full of scattered fittings and the noise
+of hammering, but even so anybody could see what a delightful place
+it would presently turn into.</p>
+<p>The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days. Those were
+the days, those consecutive days of downpour that came in the
+winter and lasted without interruption for a fortnight at a time,
+when visitors in the hotels were bored beyond expression and ready
+to welcome anything that could distract them for an hour from the
+dripping of the rain on the windows. Bridge was their one solace,
+and they played it from after breakfast till bedtime; but on the
+fourth or fifth day of doing this, just the mere steady sitting
+became grievous to them. They ached with weariness. They wilted
+with boredom. All their natural kindness got damped out of them,
+and they were cross. Even when they won they were cross, and when
+they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of course, have
+been in California at all at such a time if it were possible to
+know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never did know,
+and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond Christmas.
+And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and warmth to
+be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
+blizzards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon
+for these victims of the rain. He would come <a name="Page_316" id=
+"Page_316"></a>to their rescue. He made up his mind, clear and firm
+on such matters, that it should become the habit of these unhappy
+people during the bad weather to motor out to The Open Arms for
+tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way made, by
+which one could get out of a car and into the house without being
+touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
+made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze
+a welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes,
+at all times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful.
+Li Koo had a secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for
+cakes of a quite peculiar and original charm, and these were to be
+reserved for the rainy season only, and be made its specialty. They
+were to become known and endeared to the public under the brief
+designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr. Twist felt there was something
+thoroughly American about this name&mdash;plain and business-like,
+and attractively in contrast to the subtle, the almost immoral
+exquisiteness of the article itself. This cake had been one of
+those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his garments the day in
+Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the one of his party
+who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he decided to
+call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.</p>
+<p>The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace
+so as to be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in
+their shirt sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs.
+There was such a hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the
+latticed windows, and such a crackling being made by the logs Mr.
+Twist and the architect kept on throwing on the fire, that only
+from the sudden broad smile on the <a name="Page_317" id=
+"Page_317"></a>architect's face as he turned to pick up another log
+did Mr. Twist realize that something that hadn't to do with work
+was happening behind his back.</p>
+<p>He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him.
+They seemed in a hurry.</p>
+<p>"Hello," he called out.</p>
+<p>They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick
+their way among the obstacles in their path. They appeared to be
+much perturbed. What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton?
+He soon knew.</p>
+<p>"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," panted Anna-Rose as soon as
+she got near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the
+prevailing noise.</p>
+<p>Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet,
+her eyes looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.</p>
+<p>"We simply can't stand it any longer," she went on as Mr. Twist
+only stared at her.</p>
+<p>"And you wouldn't either if you were us," she continued, the
+more passionately as he still didn't say anything.</p>
+<p>"Of course," said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her
+heart was full of doubt, "it's your fault really. We could have
+borne it if we hadn't had to have her at night."</p>
+<p>"Come outside," said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led
+on to the verandah.</p>
+<p>They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement,
+Anna-Felicitas trying to persuade herself that they had acted in
+the only way consistent with real wisdom.</p>
+<p>The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them
+and smiling all by himself. There was <a name="Page_318" id=
+"Page_318"></a>something about the Twinklers that lightened his
+heart whenever he caught sight of them. He and his fellow experts
+had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came of
+developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them
+on their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and
+respectful familiarity as The Cutes.</p>
+<p>"Now," said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and
+led the twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced
+them, "perhaps you'll tell me exactly what you've done."</p>
+<p>"You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done," said
+Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she
+would go. She couldn't but perceive that the excess of
+Christopher's emotion was putting her at a disadvantage in the
+matter of dignity.</p>
+<p>"I can guess pretty much what she has done," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"You can't&mdash;you can't," burst out Anna-Rose. "Nobody
+could&mdash;nobody ever could&mdash;who hadn't been with her day
+and night."</p>
+<p>"She's just been Mrs. Bilton," said Mr. Twist, lighting a
+cigarette to give himself an appearance of calm.</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said Anna-Felicitas. "So you won't be surprised at
+our having just been Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord," groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, "oh,
+Lord."</p>
+<p>"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," continued Anna-Felicitas,
+making a gesture of great dignity with her hand, "because we find
+with regret that she and we are incompatible."</p>
+<p>"Was she aware that you were giving it her?" asked Mr. Twist,
+endeavouring to keep calm.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>We wrote it."</p>
+<p>"Has she read it?"</p>
+<p>"We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should
+have an opportunity of quietly considering it."</p>
+<p>"You shouldn't have left us alone with her like this," burst out
+Anna-Rose again, "you shouldn't really. It was cruel, it was wrong,
+leaving us high and dry&mdash;never seeing you&mdash;leaving us to
+be talked to day and night&mdash;to be read to&mdash;would
+<i>you</i> like to be read to while you're undressing by somebody
+still in all their clothes? We've never been able to open our
+mouths. We've been taken into the field for our airing and brought
+in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams, or flocks and
+herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape. We haven't had
+a minute to ourselves day or night. There hasn't been a single
+exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we're grown up.
+We've been followed, watched, talked to&mdash;oh, oh, how awful it
+has been! Oh, oh, how awful! Forced to be dumb for
+days&mdash;losing our power of speech&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose Twinkler," interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, "you
+haven't lost it. And you not only haven't, but that power of yours
+has increased tenfold during its days of rest."</p>
+<p>He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had
+already heard several times since they landed in America. Each time
+it took them aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds
+as the kindest and gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings
+of his each time astonished them.</p>
+<p>On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished.
+Anna-Felicitas all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the
+depth of her heart that Mr. <a name="Page_320" id=
+"Page_320"></a>Twist wouldn't like what they had done. He would be
+upset, she felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search
+of him. He would be, she was afraid very much upset. And so he was.
+He was appalled by what had happened. Lose Mrs. Bilton? Lose the
+very foundation of the party's respectability? And how could he
+find somebody else at the eleventh hour and where and how could the
+twins and he live, unchaperoned as they would be, till he had? What
+a peculiar talent these Annas had for getting themselves and him
+into impossible situations! Of course at their age they ought to be
+safe under the wing of a wise and unusually determined mother.
+Well, poor little wretches, they couldn't help not being under it;
+but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to them&mdash;faced up
+to her husband, and stuck to them.</p>
+<p>"I suppose," he said angrily, "being you and not being able to
+see farther than the ends of your noses, you haven't got any sort
+of an idea of what you've done."</p>
+<p>"We&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And I don't suppose it's much use my trying to explain, either.
+Hasn't it ever occurred to you, though I'd be real grateful if
+you'd give me information on this point&mdash;that maybe you don't
+know everything?"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And that till you do know everything, which I take it won't be
+for some time yet, judging from the samples I've had of your
+perspicacity, you'd do well not to act without first asking some
+one's advice? Mine, for instance?"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;" began Anna-Rose again; but her voice <a name=
+"Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>was trembling, for she couldn't bear
+Mr. Twist's anger. She was too fond of him. When he looked at her
+like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and
+she could only look back at him piteously.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in
+adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher's
+feelings put her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist's attention from
+her by saying with gentleness, "But why add to the general
+discomfort by being bitter?"</p>
+<p>"Bitter!" cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Do you dispute that God made us?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+placing herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist's
+wrathful concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young
+person's emotion.</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist turning on her, "I'm not going to
+argue with you&mdash;not about <i>anything</i>. Least of all about
+God."</p>
+<p>"I only wanted to point out to you," said Anna-Felicitas mildly,
+"that that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little
+use in being bitter with us because we're not different. In regard
+to anything fundamental about us that you deplore I'm afraid we
+must refer you to Providence."</p>
+<p>"Say," said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this
+reasoning but, as Anna-Felicitas couldn't but notice, quite the
+contrary, "used you to talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of
+yours? Because if you did, upon my word I don't wonder&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But what Mr. Twist didn't wonder was fortunately concealed from
+the twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who,
+emerging from the shades of the verandah and looking about her,
+caught sight of them and came rapidly down the garden.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>There was no escape.</p>
+<p>They watched her bearing down on them without a word. It was a
+most unpleasant moment. Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give
+himself a countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton
+would probably say was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn't help
+shaking a little. Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink
+behind him. Anna-Felicitas stood motionless, awaiting the deluge.
+All Mr. Twist's sympathies were with Mrs. Bilton, and he was
+ashamed that she should have been treated so. He felt that nothing
+she could say would be severe enough, and he was extraordinarily
+angry with the Annas. Yet when he saw the injured lady bearing down
+on them, if he only could he would have picked up an Anna under
+each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did he
+prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this
+moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn't.</p>
+<p>There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching
+figure, and the letter in Mrs. Bilton's hand bobbed up and down as
+she walked, white and conspicuous in the sun against her black
+dress. What was their amazement to see as she drew nearer that she
+was looking just as pleasant as ever. They stared at her with
+mouths falling open. Was it possible, thought the twins, that she
+was longing to leave but hadn't liked to say so, and the letter had
+come as a release? Was it possible, thought Mr. Twist with a leap
+of hope in his heart, that she was taking the letter from a
+non-serious point of view?</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right. For Mrs.
+Bilton, woman of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of
+allowing herself to be dislodged or even discouraged. This was the
+opening sentence of her re<a name="Page_323" id=
+"Page_323"></a>marks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst.
+Had she not explained the first night that she was one who, having
+put her hand to the plough, held on to it however lively the
+movements of the plough might be? She would not conceal from them,
+she said, that even Mr Bilton had not, especially, at first, been
+entirely without such movements. He had settled down, however on
+finding he could trust her to know better than he did what he
+wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And the result had
+been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he was alive,
+or a more devoted widow after he wasn't. She had told him one day,
+when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was
+conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills,
+and he said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could
+see she would be left a widow and that was about all she would be
+left&mdash;she had told him that if it was any comfort to him to
+know it, he might rely on it that he would have the most devoted
+widow any man had ever had, and he said&mdash;Mr. Bilton had odd
+fancies, especially toward the end&mdash;that a widow was the one
+thing a man never could have because he wasn't there by the time he
+had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies. And if she had
+managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he
+being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that
+encountering odd fancies in two very young and unformed
+girls&mdash;oh, it wasn't their fault that they were unformed, it
+was merely because they hadn't had time enough yet&mdash;she would
+be unable, experienced as she was, to steer among them too?
+Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb animals
+always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist," Mrs.
+Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on <a name=
+"Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>Anna-Rose's shoulder as a more
+convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young charges aren't
+going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I don't
+undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting
+affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days
+in intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh
+young chatter."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><a name="Page_325"
+id="Page_325"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<p>This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening
+day.</p>
+<p>Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear
+Mrs. Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how
+near his shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his
+meals with the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He
+was immensely grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He
+esteemed and respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then
+and there at the end of her speech, and told her he did, and the
+least he could do after that was to come to dinner. But this very
+genuine appreciation didn't prevent his finding her at close
+quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now only called
+temperately "a little much," and the result was a really frantic
+hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four days
+of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to
+finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense
+of having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had
+considerably slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs.
+Bilton they hurried up again, and after forty-eight of her the
+speed was headlong. At the end of forty-eight hours it seemed to
+Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he had ever known that he
+should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere with space in it,
+and sound-proof walls&mdash;lots of walls&mdash;and long passages
+between people's doors; and before the rooms in <a name="Page_326"
+id="Page_326"></a>the inn were anything like finished he insisted
+on moving in.</p>
+<p>"You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he
+said to the twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you
+must just take off your coats to it and not mind."</p>
+<p>Mind? Turn to? It was what they were languishing for. It was
+what, in the arid hours under the ilex tree, collected so
+ignominiously round Mrs. Bilton's knee they had been panting for,
+like thirsty dogs with their tongues out. And such is the peculiar
+blessedness of work that instantly, the moment there was any to be
+done, everything that was tangled and irritating fell quite
+naturally into its proper place. Magically life straightened itself
+out smooth, and left off being difficult. <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>,
+as their mother used to say, dropping into German whenever a
+sentence seemed to her to sound better that way&mdash;<i>Arbeit und
+Liebe</i>: these were the two great things of life; the two great
+angels, as she assured them, under whose spread-out wings lay
+happiness.</p>
+<p>With a hungry zeal, with the violent energy of reaction, the
+Annas fell upon work. They started unpacking. All the things they
+had bought in Acapulco, the linen, the china, the teaspoons, the
+feminine touches that had been piled up waiting in the barn, were
+pulled out and undone and carried indoors. They sorted, and they
+counted, and they arranged on shelves. Anna-Rose flew in and out
+with her arms full. Anna-Felicitas slouched zealously after her,
+her arms full too when she started, but not nearly so full when she
+got there owing to the way things had of slipping through them and
+dropping on to the floor. They were in a blissful, busy confusion.
+Their faces shone with heat and happiness. <a name="Page_327" id=
+"Page_327"></a>Here was liberty; here was freedom; here was true
+dignity&mdash;<i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>....</p>
+<p>When Mr. Twist, as he did whenever he could, came and looked on
+for a moment in his shirt sleeves, with his hat on the back of his
+head and his big, benevolent spectacles so kind, Anna-Rose's cup
+seemed full. Her dimple never disappeared for a moment. It was
+there all day long now; and even when she was asleep it still
+lurked in the corner of her mouth. <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>.</p>
+<p>Immense was the reaction of self-respect that took hold of the
+twins. They couldn't believe they were the people who had been so
+crude and ill-conditioned as to hide Mrs. Bilton's belongings, and
+actually finally to hide themselves. How absurd. How like children.
+How unpardonably undignified. Anna-Rose held forth volubly to this
+effect while she arranged the china, and Anna-Felicitas listened
+assentingly, with a kind of grave, ashamed sheepishness.</p>
+<p>The result of this reaction was that Mrs. Bilton, whose pressure
+on them was relieved by the necessity of her too being in several
+places at once, and who was displaying her customary grit, now
+became the definite object of their courtesy. They were the
+mistresses of a house, they began to realize, and as such owed her
+every consideration. This bland attitude was greatly helped by
+their not having to sleep with her any more, and they found that
+the mere coming fresh to her each morning made them feel polite and
+well-disposed. Besides, they were thoroughly and finally grown-up
+now, Anna-Rose declared&mdash;never, never to lapse again. They had
+had their lesson, she said, gone through a crisis, and done that
+which Aunt Alice used to say people did after severe trials, aged
+considerably.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas wasn't quite so sure. Her own recent <a name=
+"Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>behaviour had shaken and shocked her
+too much. Who would have thought she would have gone like that?
+Gone all to pieces, back to sheer naughtiness, on the first
+provocation? It was quite easy, she reflected while she worked, and
+cups kept on detaching themselves mysteriously from her fingers,
+and tables tumbling over at her approach, to be polite and
+considerate to somebody you saw very little of, and even, as she
+found herself doing, to get fond of the person; but suppose
+circumstances threw one again into the person's continual society,
+made one again have to sleep in the same room? Anna-Felicitas
+doubted whether it would be possible for her to stand such a test,
+in spite of her earnest desire to behave; she doubted, indeed,
+whether anybody ever did stand that test successfully. Look at
+husbands.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile there seemed no likelihood of its being applied again.
+Each of them had now a separate bedroom, and Mrs. Bilton had, in
+the lavish American fashion, her own bathroom, so that even at that
+point there was no collision. The twins' rooms were connected by a
+bathroom all to themselves, with no other door into it except the
+doors from their bedrooms, and Mr. Twist, who dwelt discreetly at
+the other end of the house, also had a bathroom of his own. It
+seemed as natural for American architects to drop bathrooms about,
+thought Anna-Rose, as for the little clouds in the psalms to drop
+fatness. They shed them just as easily, and the results were just
+as refreshing. To persons hailing from Pomerania, a place arid of
+bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to have one's
+own. Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from childhood to
+these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out to him,
+he hadn't lived in <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>Pomerania,
+where nothing stood between you and being dirty except the
+pump.</p>
+<p>But it wasn't only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by
+Mr. Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the
+most wonderful magic little house in the world: the intelligent
+American spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever,
+simple devices for saving labour&mdash;so full that it almost
+seemed to the Annas as if it would get up quite unaided at six
+every morning and do itself; and they were sure that if the
+smallest encouragement were given to the kitchen-stove it would
+cook and dish up a dinner all alone. Everything in the house was on
+these lines. The arrangements for serving innumerable teas with
+ease were admirable. They were marvels of economy and clever
+thinking-out. The architect was surprised at the attention and
+thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the
+future housekeeping. "You seem sheer crazy on teas," he remarked;
+to which Mr. Twist merely replied that he was.</p>
+<p>The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy
+and promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a
+happy betrothal. They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in
+April, those enchanting days she had always loved the best, when
+the bees get busy for the first time, and suddenly there are
+wallflowers and a flowering currant bush and the sound of the lawn
+being mown and the smell of cut grass. How one's heart leaps up to
+greet them, she thought. What a thrill of delight rushes through
+one's body, of new hope, of delicious expectation.</p>
+<p>Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech
+seemed to feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be
+heard in the evenings singing <a name="Page_330" id=
+"Page_330"></a>strange songs among his pots. And what he was
+singing, only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of
+the two white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose
+eyes were deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the
+shores of his father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive
+and inarticulate, in secret seethed with passion. Which was why his
+cakes were so wonderful. He had to express himself somehow.</p>
+<p>But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr.
+Twist and his party&mdash;he always thought of them as his
+party&mdash;were innocently and happily busy full of hopefulness
+and mutual goodwill, down in the town and in the houses scattered
+over the lovely country round the town, people were talking.
+Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was doing up, for the
+daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had bought the
+long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt's, and was
+converting it into a little <i>ventre-&agrave;-terre</i> for his
+widowed mother&mdash;launching once more into French, as though
+there were something about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language.
+Everybody knew this, and it was perfectly natural for a well-off
+Easterner to have a little place out West, even if the choice of
+the little place was whimsical. But what about the Miss Twinklers?
+Who and what were they? And also, Why?</p>
+<p>There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party
+from the Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time
+much had been done in the way of conjecture. The first waves of it
+flowed out from the Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by
+waves flowing in from the town. Good-natured curiosity gave place
+to excited curiosity when the rumour <a name="Page_331" id=
+"Page_331"></a>got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to
+ask Mr. Twist to take his <i>entourage</i> somewhere else. Was it
+possible the cute little girls, so well known by sight on Main
+Street going from shop to shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed
+almost unbelievable, but luckily nothing was really
+unbelievable.</p>
+<p>The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest
+after the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen
+from the local press, was not to be drawn. His reserve was most
+interesting. Miss Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently
+enigmatic. Her silence was most exciting. On the other hand, Mrs.
+Ridding's attitude was merely one of contempt, dismissing the
+Twinklers with a heavy gesture. Why think or trouble about a pair
+of chits like that? They had gone; Albert was quiet again; and
+wasn't that the gong for dinner?</p>
+<p>But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist
+<i>entourage</i> presently were superseded by much graver and more
+perturbing doubts. Nobody knew when exactly this development took
+place. Acapulco had been enjoying the first set of doubts. There
+was no denying that doubts about somebody else's morals were not
+unpleasant. They did give one, if one examined one's sensations
+carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add the kick to
+lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time like
+the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the
+life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat. But from the doubts that
+presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got
+nothing but genuine discomfort and uneasiness. Nobody knew how or
+when they started. Quite suddenly they were there.</p>
+<p>This was in the November before America's coming <a name=
+"Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>into the war. The feeling in Acapulco
+was violently anti-German. The great majority of the inhabitants,
+permanent and temporary, were deeply concerned at the conduct of
+their country in not having, immediately after the torpedoing of
+the <i>Lusitania</i>, joined the Allies. They found it difficult to
+understand, and were puzzled and suspicious, as well as humiliated
+in their national pride. Germans who lived in the neighbourhood, or
+who came across from the East for the winter, were politely
+tolerated, but the attitude toward them was one of growing
+watchfulness and distrust; and week by week the whispered stories
+of spies and gun-emplacements and secret stores of arms in these
+people's cellars or back gardens, grew more insistent and detailed.
+There certainly had been at least one spy, a real authentic one,
+afterward shot in England, who had stayed near-by, and the nerves
+of the inhabitants had that jumpiness on this subject with which
+the inhabitants of other countries have long been familiar. All the
+customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary
+mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered
+speeds along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the
+customary signalling out to sea was observed and passionately sworn
+to by otherwise calm people. It was possible, the inhabitants
+found, to believe with ease things about Germans&mdash;those who
+were having difficulty with religion wished it were equally easy to
+believe things about God. There was nothing Germans wouldn't think
+of in the way of plotting, and nothing they wouldn't, having
+thought of it, carry out with deadly thoroughness and patience.</p>
+<p>And into this uneasy hotbed of readiness to believe the worst,
+arrived the Twinkler twins, rolling their r's about.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>It needed but a few
+inquiries to discover that none of the young ladies' schools in the
+neighbourhood had been approached on their behalf; hardly
+inquiries,&mdash;mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary chatting
+with the principals of these establishments when one met them at
+the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of
+the community organized and supported. Not many of the winter
+visitors went to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap had a
+restless soul. It was restless because it was worried by perpetual
+thirst,&mdash;she couldn't herself tell after what; it wasn't
+righteousness, for she knew she was still worldly, so perhaps it
+was culture. Anyhow she would give culture a chance, and
+accordingly she went to the instructive evenings. Here she met that
+other side of Acapulco which doesn't play bridge and is proud to
+know nothing of polo, which believes in education, and goes in for
+mind training and welfare work; which isn't, that is, well off.</p>
+<p>Nobody here had been asked to educate the Twinklers. No classes
+had been joined by them.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap was so enigmatic, she who was naturally of an unquiet
+and exercise-loving tongue, that this graver, more occupied section
+of the inhabitants was instantly as much pervaded by suspicions as
+the idlest of the visitors in the hotels and country houses. It
+waved aside the innocent appearance and obvious extreme youth of
+the suspects. Useless to look like cherubs if it were German
+cherubs you looked like. Useless being very nearly children if it
+were German children you very nearly were. Why, precisely these
+qualities would be selected by those terribly clever Germans for
+the furtherance of their nefarious schemes. It would be quite in
+keeping with the German national character, <a name="Page_334" id=
+"Page_334"></a>that character of bottomless artfulness, to pick out
+two such young girls with just that type of empty, baby face, and
+send them over to help weave the gigantic invisible web with which
+America was presently to be choked dead.</p>
+<p>The serious section of Acapulco, the section that thought, hit
+on this explanation of the Twinklers with no difficulty whatever
+once its suspicions were roused because it was used to being able
+to explain everything instantly. It was proud of its explanation,
+and presented it to the town with much the same air of deprecating
+but conscious achievement with which one presents
+drinking-fountains.</p>
+<p>Then there was the lawyer to whom Mr. Twist had gone about the
+guardianship. He said nothing, but he was clear in his mind that
+the girls were German and that Mr. Twist wanted to hide it. He had
+thought more highly of Mr. Twist's intelligence than this. Why hide
+it? America was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and
+Germans could come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set
+tongues wagging? He did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness
+himself, a continuous wide-awakeness and minute consideration of
+consequences, realize, and if he had he wouldn't have believed, the
+affectionate simplicity and unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had
+been pointed out to him he would have dismissed it as a pose; for a
+man who makes money in any quantity worth handling isn't
+affectionately simple and unworldly&mdash;he is calculating and
+steely.</p>
+<p>The lawyer was puzzled. How did Mr. Twist manage to have a
+forehead and a fortune like that, and yet be a fool? True, he had a
+funny sort of face on him once you got down to the nose part and
+what came after,&mdash;<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>a
+family sort of face, thought the lawyer; a sort of rice pudding,
+wet-nurse face. The lawyer listened intently to all the talk and
+rumours, while himself saying nothing. In spite of being a married
+man, his scruples about honour hadn't been blunted by the urge to
+personal freedom and the necessity for daily self-defence that
+sometimes afflicts those who have wives. He remained honourably
+silent, as he had said he would, but he listened; and he came to
+the conclusion that either there was a quite incredible amount of
+stupidity about the Twist party, or that there was something
+queer.</p>
+<p>What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house
+being got ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest
+of the world, took the newspapers <i>ventre-&agrave;-terre</i>
+theory of the house for granted, and it was only the expectation of
+the arrival of that respectable lady, the widowed Mrs. Twist, which
+kept the suspicions a little damped down. They smouldered,
+hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot Twist's family
+life had been voluminously described in the entire American press
+when first his invention caught on, and it was known to be pure.
+There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
+born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would
+die&mdash;Mr. Twist read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish
+was to die in the old home&mdash;of the corner in the Clark
+churchyard where he would probably be entombed, with an inset
+showing his father's gravestone on which would clearly be read the
+announcement that he was the Resurrection and the Life. And there
+was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols of
+ungluttable grief,&mdash;a most creditable mother. And there were
+accounts of the activities of another near relative, that <a name=
+"Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>Uncle Charles who presided over the
+Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a snapshot of his
+macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,&mdash;a most
+creditable uncle.</p>
+<p>These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the
+impression survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents
+were unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his
+mother and she was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd
+and unintelligible, it was probable that his being there now with
+the two Germans was after all capable of explanation. Not much of
+an explanation, though. Even the moderates who took this view felt
+this. One wasn't with Germans these days if one could help it.
+There was no getting away from that simple fact. The inevitable
+deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why couldn't he help
+it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a passion
+cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which was
+known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
+with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
+exactly informed of their movements? He had met the Twinklers, so
+it was reported, on a steamer coming over from England. Of course.
+All arranged by the German Government. That was the peculiar evil
+greatness of this dangerous people, announced the serious section
+of Acapulco, again with the drinking-fountain-presentation air,
+that nothing was too private or too petty to escape their
+attention, to be turned to their own wicked uses. They were as
+economical of the smallest scraps of possible usefulness as a
+French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food. Everything
+was turned to account. Nothing was wasted. Even the mosquitoes in
+Germany were <a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>not wasted. They
+contained juices, Germans had discovered, especially after having
+been in contact with human beings, and with these juices the
+talented but unscrupulous Germans made explosives. Could one
+sufficiently distrust a nation that did things like that? asked the
+serious section of Acapulco.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><a name="Page_338"
+id="Page_338"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+<p>People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that
+they were less interested than they otherwise would have been in
+the sea-blue advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing
+that The Open Arms would open wide on the 29th of the month and
+exhorting the public to watch the signposts, they merely remarked
+that it wasn't, then, the title of a book after all. Mr. Twist
+would have been surprised and nettled if he had known how little
+curiosity his advertisements were exciting; he would have been
+horrified if he had known the reason. As it was, he didn't know
+anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to be vulnerable to
+rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe from it inside
+their magic circle of <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>.</p>
+<p>Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco
+through which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning,
+looking as though he had a great deal to do and very little time to
+do it in; and once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also
+apparently very busy, but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton,
+the lady from Los Angeles&mdash;Acapulco knew all about her and
+admitted she was a lady of strictest integrity and unimpeachable
+character, but this only made the Twinkler problem more
+obscure&mdash;came too, and seemed, judging from the animation of
+her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.</p>
+<p>But once an idea has got into people's heads, re<a name=
+"Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>marked the lawyer, who was nudged by
+the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were seen
+approaching,&mdash;Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy
+hair setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in
+their clean white frocks and shining youth,&mdash;once an idea has
+got into people's heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and
+impossible to get out. Yet on the face of it, was it likely that
+Mrs. Bilton&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up
+with the water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"</p>
+<p>And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him
+from using the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance
+in the East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was
+staying with some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon
+after the departure&mdash;she didn't see why she shouldn't call it
+by its proper name and say right out expulsion&mdash;of the Twist
+party from the Cosmopolitan, but letters take a long time to get
+East and answers take the same long time to come back in, and
+messages are sometimes slow in being delivered if the other person
+doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous interests that
+are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest, and one
+more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
+morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
+machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
+uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
+sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that
+his mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt
+unable to believe <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>it. "Do tell
+your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how <i>delighted</i> we all are
+to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us in our sunny
+refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her. Her son is
+working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
+indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."</p>
+<p>She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time
+she got it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts
+as to the exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in
+the German secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the
+invasion of America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter
+Miss Heap found she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath
+her.</p>
+<p>It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till
+Miss Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two
+girls mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very
+morning after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe.
+That was all his mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the
+top of all her other sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a
+fearful, perhaps a finishing blow, but she was such a good woman
+that she still prayed for him. Clark was horrified. His mother had
+decided at first she would try to shield him and say nothing, but
+when she found that nobody had the least idea of what he had done
+she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and have no secrets
+from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and humiliation she
+would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up false
+appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
+a splendid woman. The girls&mdash;poor Mrs. Twist&mdash;were
+Germans.</p>
+<p>On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her <a name=
+"Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>worst suspicions hadn't been half bad
+enough. Here was everything just about as black as it could be; and
+Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected American citizen,
+had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon weaknesses
+she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe, from
+books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
+part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the
+German Government.</p>
+<p>What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go?
+Which was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to
+her that the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a
+real menace to its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of
+them? And if they were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some
+other part of America, less watchful, less perhaps able to take
+care of itself, to the ripening and furtherance of their schemes,
+whatever their schemes might be? Even at that moment. Miss Heap
+unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go would be to lose
+thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with excitement
+and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years. She
+wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
+thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone
+in her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her
+chair, her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft
+carpet, hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding
+her knowledge meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether
+to herself, her very own, shared as yet by no one,&mdash;it was
+while she sat there, that people out of doors in Acapulco itself,
+along the main roads, out in the country towards Zamora on the
+north and San <a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>Blas on the
+south, became suddenly aware of new signposts.</p>
+<p>They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards
+the spot at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They
+all pointed, with a long white finger, in that direction. And on
+them all was written in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the
+distance in miles or fractions of a mile was clearly marked, <i>To
+The Open Arms</i>.</p>
+<p>Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main
+Street stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what
+they were, and decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in
+their cars and track them down. They made up parties to go and
+track together. It would be a relief to have something a little
+different to do. What on earth could The Open Arms be? Hopes were
+expressed that they weren't something religious. Awful to follow
+signposts out into the country only to find they landed you in a
+meeting-house.</p>
+<p>At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were
+together, the signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being
+discussed from her solitary table, but was so much taken up with
+her own exciting thoughts that she hardly noticed. After lunch,
+however, as she was passing out of the restaurant, still full of
+her unshared news and still uncertain as to whom she should tell it
+first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table and said he supposed
+she was going too.</p>
+<p>They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon
+of the conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called
+out to any one at that moment He was sitting waiting while Mrs.
+Ridding finished her lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and
+was in the <a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>condition of
+muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of
+Mrs. Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this
+happened, that Mr. Ridding got through his meal first by at least
+twenty minutes and then sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She
+wasn't aware of these efforts. They would greatly have shocked her;
+for to try not to mind one's wife surely isn't what decent, loving
+husbands ever have to do.</p>
+<p>"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon
+Mr. Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.</p>
+<p>"Following these new signposts that are all over the place,"
+said Mr. Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."</p>
+<p>"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs.
+Ridding?"</p>
+<p>"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take
+you. Car at four o'clock, Albert."</p>
+<p>She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well
+knew that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals
+and as she had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her
+thanks and pleasure, and temporarily left them.</p>
+<p>This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big
+limousine&mdash;symbol of Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding
+couldn't for the life of him see why he should have to provide a
+strange old lady with cars, and yet did so on an increasing scale
+of splendour&mdash;arrived at the turn on the main road to San Blas
+which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the final
+signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
+Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's <a name="Page_344" id=
+"Page_344"></a>mind in company. So too did they enter Mr. Ridding's
+mind; and they only remained outside Mrs. Ridding's because of her
+profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged in aspic. That was
+the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at the
+Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
+and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it
+afterwards.</p>
+<p>The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was
+in Pepper Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should
+happen to be there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very
+straight and alert, her eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said
+nothing either. Not for worlds would he have mentioned the word
+Twist, which so instantly and inevitably suggested that other and
+highly controversial word Twinkler. But he too sat all eyes; for
+anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of the place containing
+those cunning little bits of youngness, the Twinkler sisters, and
+even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.</p>
+<p>Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in
+front of it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was
+lovely, there was no polo, and nobody happened to be giving a
+party. All the way out from Acapulco they had only had to follow
+other cars. Cars were going, and cars were coming back. The cars
+going were full of solemn people, pathetically anxious to be
+interested. The cars coming back were full of animated people who
+evidently had achieved interest.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend
+in the lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been
+there before, making <a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>a point
+of getting a friend to motor her past it in order to see what she
+could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of his desire to go
+and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to, found Mrs.
+Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where it
+was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
+putting his head out&mdash;he was sitting backwards&mdash;- he saw
+a great, old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in
+pictures of ancient English village greens, with</p>
+<p><b>The Open Arms</b></p>
+<p>in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've
+run it to earth."</p>
+<p>Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding,
+her mind blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed
+with heavy eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many
+cars. All stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of
+fathomless fatigue she dimly wondered at them.</p>
+<p>"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who
+remembered his Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at
+the signboard, on which through a gap in the branches of the pepper
+trees a shaft of brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't
+see one, though."</p>
+<p>He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he
+said.</p>
+<p>Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.</p>
+<p>A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said
+quickly. "Don't, Mr. Ridding."</p>
+<p>There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that <a name=
+"Page_346" id="Page_346"></a>grew behind the pepper trees, and some
+people he knew, who had been in the car in front, were walking up
+to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it, and were
+standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in their
+hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on to
+one of the gate-posts, with the words <i>Won't you take one</i>?
+painted on it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was
+Miss Heap laying hold of him and saying "Don't."</p>
+<p>"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the
+door.</p>
+<p>"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good
+getting out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in
+to-day. Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."</p>
+<p>And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and
+came over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.</p>
+<p>"Say&mdash;" he said,&mdash;"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs.
+Ridding, your humble servant&mdash;say, look at this. Teapot Twist
+wasn't born yesterday when it comes to keeping things dark. No
+mention of his name on this book of words, but it's the house he
+was doing up all right, and it is to be used as an inn.
+Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American Red Cross. Price
+per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea. Wonder
+where those Twinkler girls come in. Here&mdash;you have this,
+Ridding, and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a
+second time to the ladies he went back to his friends.</p>
+<p>In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
+galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly
+heaving itself free of <a name="Page_347" id="Page_347"></a>aspic.
+"Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs Ridding," said Miss
+Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish particularly to
+tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly I knew,
+but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at the
+signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.</p>
+<p>"Albert&mdash;hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.</p>
+<p>And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
+suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
+speaking-tube to the chauffeur.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a><a name="Page_348"
+id="Page_348"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+<p>"It's <i>perfect</i>," said the twins, looking round the
+tea-room.</p>
+<p>This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking
+round saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each
+time they finished getting another of the little tables ready, each
+time they brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they
+stood back and gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one
+voice, "It's <i>perfect</i>."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as
+sober, quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was
+obliged to admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the
+Annas. Especially the Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue
+frocks and little Dutch caps and big muslin aprons that he took off
+his spectacles and cleaned them carefully so as to have a
+thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as they stood at a quarter to
+four gazing round the room, he stood gazing at them, and when they
+said "It's <i>perfect</i>," he said, indicating them with his
+thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all
+very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had
+pictured her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair
+beautifully brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave
+each of them a hearty kiss&mdash;for luck, she said&mdash;which Mr.
+Twist watched with an odd feeling of jealousy.</p>
+<p>"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden <a name=
+"Page_349" id="Page_349"></a>desire to hug. Then he said it out
+loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And added, "As it's
+the opening day."</p>
+<p>"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction,"
+said Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained,
+we think, by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs.
+Bilton, "we like it very much as an expression of esteem."</p>
+<p>"Then why not in that spirit&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning
+very red. Intolerable to be kissed <i>en famille</i>. If it had to
+be done at all, kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But
+she and Anna-Felicitas didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To
+her amazement she found tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid
+idiots.... It must be that she was so happy. She had never been so
+happy. Where on earth had her handkerchief got to....</p>
+<p>"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.</p>
+<p>"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her
+beautiful new muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We
+are, you know," she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist,
+so that the corner of her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at
+Christopher's perfectly tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily
+happy, and all through you. Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued,
+addressing her with firmness while she finished her eyes and began
+her nose, "You may like to be reminded that there's only ten
+minutes left now before all those cars that were here yesterday
+come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your career as a
+waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350"></a>But half an hour later no
+cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty. The long shadows lay
+across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in the grass
+chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something was
+coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts&mdash;Li Koo to the
+boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the
+room, and the twins to the door&mdash;but the sounds passed on
+along the road and died away round the next corner.</p>
+<p>At half-past four the <i>personnel</i> of The Open Arms was
+sitting about silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when
+Mr. Ridding walked in.</p>
+<p>There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked
+in mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to
+the nearest point and had done the last mile on his own
+out-of-condition feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters
+in the smoking-room. She herself was in a big chair on the
+verandah, and with Miss Heap and most of the other guests was
+discussing The Open Arms in all its probable significance. He
+hadn't been able to get away sooner because of the nap. He had gone
+through with the nap from start to finish so as not to rouse
+suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of dare-devil
+running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew that he
+would cool down again presently and that then the consequences of
+his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile
+his blood was up.</p>
+<p>He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,&mdash;most
+gratifying sensation. The <i>personnel</i>, after a moment's
+open-mouthed surprise, rushed to greet him. Never was a man more
+welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding been so warmly welcomed anywhere in
+his life.</p>
+<p>"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at <a name=
+"Page_351" id="Page_351"></a>Anna-Rose who took his stick. "Wish
+I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had something
+to look forward to."</p>
+<p>"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to
+look very solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering
+with eagerness. "Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate?
+Each of these beverages can be provided either hot or
+iced&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in
+spite of also trying to look like a family butler. "<i>I'd</i> have
+ice-cream if I were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious
+body. And you look so hot. Hot things should always as soon as
+possible be united to cold things, so as to restore the proper
+balance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And there's some heavenly stuff called
+cinnamon-toast&mdash;hot, you know, but if you have ice-cream at
+the same time it won't matter," said Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his
+hat for him. "I don't know whether you've studied the leaflets,"
+she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I oughtn't to
+conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you
+have."</p>
+<p>"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to
+save, for you can't."</p>
+<p>"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said
+Mr. Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him
+and beaming up at her.</p>
+<p>She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the
+corner of her apron to convey to him that she knew her business,
+and hurried away to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away
+to give the order.</p>
+<p>"Say&mdash;" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna
+would have been enough for this and he was pining to talk to them;
+but the twins weren't to <a name="Page_352" id="Page_352"></a>be
+stopped from both giving the very first order, and they disappeared
+together into the pantry.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently
+absorbed in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep
+accounts and to enter the number of teas, and from this high seat
+she was to preside over the activities of the <i>personnel</i>. She
+had retired hastily to it on the unexpected entrance of Mr.
+Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring to look as if she were
+totting up figures. As the pages were blank this was a little
+difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She wanted to
+get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had quite a
+good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and
+talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till
+the room was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests
+entirely to the Annas.</p>
+<p>He himself was going to keep much in the background at all
+times, but through the half-open door of his office he could see
+and hear; and he couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching
+and observed the effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just
+arrived turned on the twins, that the first guest appeared to be
+extraordinarily and undesirably affectionate. He thought he had
+seen him at the Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that
+the Annas, after their conversation with him there, felt towards
+him as old friends, and he considered their manner was a little
+unduly familiar. Perhaps, after all, he thought uneasily, Mrs.
+Bilton had better do the waiting and the Annas sit with him in the
+office. The ledger could be written up at the end of the day. Or he
+could hire somebody....</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there
+only one guest? It was twenty minutes <a name="Page_353" id=
+"Page_353"></a>to five; and this time yesterday the road had been
+choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every minute this
+absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he had
+better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary
+one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of
+the inn for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had
+heard to those others who so unaccountably hadn't come.</p>
+<p>He got up and went into the other room; and just as
+Anna-Felicitas was reappearing with the teapot followed by
+Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes, Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up
+expectantly and giving his tie a little pat of adjustment,
+perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot Twist.</p>
+<p>This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon
+heat to sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and
+amiable old man, and at any other time would have talked to him
+with pleasure; but he had made up his mind for the Twinklers as one
+makes up one's mind for a certain dish and is ravaged by strange
+fury if it isn't produced. Besides, hang it all, he was going to
+pay five dollars for his tea, and for that sum he ought to least to
+have it under the conditions he preferred.</p>
+<p>"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist
+introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering
+Annas,&mdash;a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.</p>
+<p>It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't
+mind, Mr.&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ridding is my name."</p>
+<p>"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects
+to you."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354"></a>But he couldn't help
+wondering what he would do if there were several tables with
+roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there wouldn't be
+enough of him in such a case to go round.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil
+Teapot Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now.
+For that a man had a right to a table to himself.</p>
+<p>But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that
+moment a car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were
+heard coming up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his
+ears, for from the things he had heard being said all the evening
+before and all that morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night
+from the lips of that strange old lady with whom by some dreadful
+mistake he was obliged to sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be
+exactly a rush.</p>
+<p>Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class,
+he thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of
+sulky vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm
+the Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding
+crossly, as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.</p>
+<p>"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the
+long things he was saying.</p>
+<p>"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place,"
+said Mr. Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears
+in expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was
+disappointed.</p>
+<p>He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young
+people, called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
+abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The
+young men were <a name="Page_355" id="Page_355"></a>evidently in
+the highest spirits, and were walking round the Annas admiring
+their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter and
+exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all
+their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as
+pleased, Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost
+he could hear them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where
+Mrs. Bilton sat, as he had told her, bent pen in hand over the
+ledger. She didn't move. It was true he had told her to sit like
+that, but hadn't the woman any imagination? What she ought to do
+now was to bustle forward and take that laughing group in
+charge.</p>
+<p>"As I was telling you&mdash;" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with
+an effort to Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young
+people and catch an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.</p>
+<p>In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,&mdash;it was
+solely to see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at
+the Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that.
+"Unprincipled old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his
+ears flaming. Aloud he said, "As I was telling you&mdash;" and went
+on distractedly with his rigmarole.</p>
+<p>Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise
+the experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr.
+Ridding and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in
+the middle of the room, were made aware of their presence by
+Anna-Felicitas suddenly dropping the pencil and tablets she had
+been provided with for writing down orders and taking an uncertain
+and obviously timid step forward.</p>
+<p>They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant
+<a name="Page_356" id="Page_356"></a>step, and saw a man and two
+women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course, didn't know
+them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding did.
+That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided
+knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a
+man who liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his
+daily paper was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who
+disliked Germans and yet at the same time had a thirstily
+affectionate disposition, he declined to believe the prevailing
+theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't believe it anyhow.
+At that age people were truthful, and he had heard them explain
+they had come from England and had acquired their rolling r's
+during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from
+declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular
+nationality, owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he
+couldn't call his but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as
+ours. Except, however, for the Twinklers, for all other persons of
+whom it was said that they were Germans, naturalized or not,
+immediate or remote, he had, instructed by his newspaper, what his
+called a healthy instinctive abhorrence.</p>
+<p>"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond
+between them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant
+advance to meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are
+wrong."</p>
+<p>But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were
+the first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any
+shop or hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the
+experts friends. <a name="Page_357" id="Page_357"></a>This was
+trade coming in,&mdash;real business being done. Anna-Felicitas
+hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and
+prepared-for moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the
+guests seemed so disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the
+threshold the whole three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't
+been prepared for that, and it unnerved her.</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her
+and embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense
+inclusive smile of appreciation.</p>
+<p>"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's
+explanations.</p>
+<p>"No," said he.</p>
+<p>"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced
+harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But this is delicious&mdash;this is a conception of genius,"
+said Mr. Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up
+Anna-Felicitas's tablets and restored them to her with a low
+bow.</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.</p>
+<p>"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And
+she laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual
+understanding.</p>
+<p>"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously.
+"Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these
+beverages can be&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping
+Anna-Felicitas in her smile.</p>
+<p>"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas
+with a kind of grave nervousness.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_358" id="Page_358"></a>Ah&mdash;charming,
+charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately appreciative.</p>
+<p>"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes
+on her tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile.
+"And&mdash;and a great many kinds of cakes&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker
+genially, "or are all the tables engaged?"</p>
+<p>"Oh I <i>beg</i> your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and
+moving hastily towards a table laid for three.</p>
+<p>"Ah&mdash;that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following
+closely on her heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of
+ordering what we shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow
+me to present myself. My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German
+name. And this is my wife. She too had an honest German name before
+she honoured mine by accepting it&mdash;she was a Niedermayer. And
+this is my daughter, with whom I trust you will soon be
+friends."</p>
+<p>And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and
+Anna-Felicitas shook them.</p>
+<p>"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.</p>
+<p>"As I was telling you&mdash;" said Mr. Twist irritably, for
+really why should Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers?
+Her business was to wait, not to get shaking hands. He must point
+out to her very plainly.</p>
+<p>"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker;
+and at this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped
+her tablets a second time.</p>
+<p>"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that
+air of mutual comprehension.</p>
+<p>"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her
+tablets from the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting
+to thank him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></a>What?" said Mrs.
+Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for once the
+phrase must be sincere?"</p>
+<p>"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her
+title," said Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps&mdash;perhaps. Wiser
+perhaps from the point of view of convenience. Is that where you
+will sit, G&uuml;stchen? Still, we Germans when we are together can
+allow ourselves the refreshment of being ourselves, and I hope to
+be frequently the means of giving you the relief, you and your
+charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed correctly. It is a
+great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In these sad days
+we Germans must hang together&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from
+one Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or
+coffee?" she ended by asking again.</p>
+<p>"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down
+comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it,
+G&uuml;stchen. To see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at
+Anna-Felicitas, again with comprehension,&mdash;with, almost, a
+wink. "You must let me come and help. I'd look nice in that
+costume, wouldn't I mother."</p>
+<p>"There is also frothed choc&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist&mdash;he must be completely
+sympathy&mdash;" interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially,
+leaning forward and lowering his voice a little.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more <a name=
+"Page_360" id="Page_360"></a>people were coming in at the door, and
+behind them she could see on the path yet more, and Anna-Rose was
+in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.</p>
+<p>"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked.
+"Because I'm afraid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was
+looking.</p>
+<p>"Ah&mdash;" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent
+G&uuml;stchen, here are Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister&mdash;why,
+and there come the Diederichs&mdash;but splendid,
+splendid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested
+face, "ever been to Berlin?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton
+irrelevance flung into the middle of his sentence.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's just like this."</p>
+<p>"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot
+there&mdash;see 'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other
+of their confounded towns."</p>
+<p>"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.</p>
+<p>"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans," said Ridding.</p>
+<p>"All Germans?"</p>
+<p>"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you
+know?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"So are the ones who've just come in."</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361"></a>There was a pause, during
+which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was presenting quite a
+populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm damned."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr.
+Twist. He considered that at last he was talking sense.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're
+damned. It was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would
+be. Shake hands, sir."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a><a name=
+"Page_362" id="Page_362"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+<p>That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that
+was obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed
+abruptly, after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had
+never seen so many Germans at once before, that her psyche was
+disharmonious to Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just
+as cats in a room made Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when
+he had flesh to go it with, that she hadn't been aware the inn was
+to be a popular resort and rendezvous for Germans, and that she
+wished to speak alone with Mr. Twist in the morning; while the
+twins, feeling the ominousness of this last sentence,&mdash;as did
+Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,&mdash;and overcome by the
+lassitude that had succeeded the shocks of the afternoon, a
+lassitude much increased by their having tried to finish up the
+pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly
+soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the
+moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars.
+There they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense
+distance and indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how
+infinitely insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and
+how they would both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And
+this last reflection afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and
+draughty comfort.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363"></a>Thus the first evening,
+that was to have been so happy, was spent by everybody in silence
+and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression even in his
+kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing with
+it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
+wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the
+opening day&mdash;"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing
+together strange essences and fruits&mdash;and he moved softly
+about so as not to disturb the meditations of the master. Li Koo
+was perfectly aware of what had gone wrong: it was the unexpected
+arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member of the least
+blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with peculiar
+disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
+down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these
+people of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and
+was not that sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous
+and rapid steps?</p>
+<p>Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he
+must think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had
+all those Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts,
+had none of the Americans come? It was very strange. And what
+Germans! So cordial, so exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering
+them to their bosoms, as though they belonged there. And so cordial
+too to him, approaching him in spite of his withdrawals, conveying
+to him somehow, his disagreeable impression had been, that he and
+they perfectly understood each other. Then Mrs. Bilton; was she
+going to give trouble? It looked like it. It looked amazingly like
+it. Was she after all just another edition of his mother, and
+unable to discriminate between Germans and Ger<a name="Page_364"
+id="Page_364"></a>mans, between the real thing and mere
+technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he hadn't told her
+the twins were German, but then neither had he told her they
+weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
+came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
+exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering
+their nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she
+hadn't done so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin
+to love the Annas, and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what
+their father had happened to be. He had supposed she did love them.
+How affectionately she had kissed them that very afternoon and
+wished them luck. Was all that nothing? Was lovableness nothing,
+and complete innocence, after all in the matter of being born, when
+weighed against the one fact of the von? What he would do if Mrs.
+Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would happen to The Open
+Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain simply
+couldn't conceive.</p>
+<p>Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door
+on to the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless
+on its edge, their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars,
+white in the moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children.
+Pathetic, solitary, alien children. What were they thinking of? He
+wouldn't mind betting it was their mother.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental,
+maternal side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and
+put his arms round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it.
+He didn't want to go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely
+brought up soul told him, his soul still echoing with the voice of
+Clark, to put his arms round them&mdash;<a name="Page_365" id=
+"Page_365"></a>this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton
+had left them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the
+very second occasion was one of those questions that would
+instantly have suggested itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't
+occur to Mr. Twist. He merely went on to think of another reason
+against it, which was the chance of Mrs. Bilton's looking out of
+her window just as he did it. She might, he felt, easily misjudge
+the situation, and the situation, he felt, was difficult enough
+already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas continued to
+consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that feeling of
+dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
+mattered.</p>
+<p>Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him
+into his office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering
+her resignation. She said that all her life she had been an
+upholder of straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as
+in others towards herself&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't
+interrupt.</p>
+<p>She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr.
+Twist, she feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single
+eye&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a
+determination to resist the encroachments of foreigners&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be
+mixed up with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment
+meant Germans&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366"></a>She regretted, but
+psychically she would never be able to flourish in a soil so
+largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be, of
+that nationality&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And though it was none of her business, still she must say it
+did seem to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and
+respected American name should be mixed up&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say
+it did seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian
+of two girls who, it was clear from what she had overheard that
+afternoon, were German&mdash;</p>
+<p>Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he
+shouted, so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee
+to keep quiet for just five minutes&mdash;sit down right here at
+this table and not say one single thing, not one single thing for
+just five minutes," he said, banging the table, "I'll tell you all
+about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your resignation at the end of that
+time if you're still set on leaving, but just for this once it's me
+that's going to do the talking."</p>
+<p>And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital
+letters would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of
+how good her intentions had been when she took the post, and how
+deceitful&mdash;she was forced to think it&mdash;Mr. Twist's were
+when he offered it. She was prepared, however, to give him a
+hearing. It was only fair. But Mr. Twist had to burst into capitals
+several times before he had done, so difficult was it for <a name=
+"Page_367" id="Page_367"></a>Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed,
+even when she herself wished, not to say anything.</p>
+<p>It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of
+the office again. She went straight into the garden, where the
+Annas, aware of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been
+lingering anxiously, unable at so crucial a moment to settle to
+anything, and with solemnity kissed them. Her eyes were very
+bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless as parchment, was red.
+Positively she kissed them without saying a single word; and they
+kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a relief that made them
+hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that the brightness in
+her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her handkerchief and
+wipe it away.</p>
+<p>"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm
+through with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll
+weld."</p>
+<p>And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the
+situation.</p>
+<p>She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that
+happened nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through
+what she called thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton
+had occupied the position of the guns; now it would be these poor
+orphans. No Germans could frighten her away, once she knew their
+story; no harsh judgments and misconceptions of her patriotic
+friends. Mr. Twist had told her everything, from the beginning on
+the <i>St. Luke</i>, harking back to Uncle Arthur and the attitude
+of England, describing what he knew of their mother and her death,
+not even concealing the part his own mother had played or that he
+wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs. Bilton's
+silence; and as she listened her heart <a name="Page_368" id=
+"Page_368"></a>melted within her, and the immense store of grit
+which was her peculiar pride came to the top and once and for all
+overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think, and at last she
+burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he hadn't
+imparted all this to her long ago.</p>
+<p>"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind
+before the outburst of her released volubility.</p>
+<p>Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked
+forward to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just
+happened so the first day, that only Germans came. It was just
+accident. Mr. Twist, with the very large part of him that wasn't
+his head, found himself feeling like this too and declining to take
+any notice of his intelligence, which continued to try to worry
+him.</p>
+<p>Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second
+afternoon was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and
+clustered round the Annas, and made friendly though cautious
+advances to Mr. Twist. The ones who had been there the first day
+came again and brought others with them worse than themselves, and
+they seemed more at home than ever, and the air was full of rolling
+r's&mdash;among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny, being the r's
+of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he told
+himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
+While as for these other people&mdash;confound it all, the place
+might really have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a
+<i>Conditorei</i> Unter den Linden.</p>
+<p>All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed
+and no Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and
+straight, and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered,
+<a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"></a>thought they weren't. What an
+aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered, impatient with
+them when first he came back from France. What folly. Americans.
+The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a thirsty
+day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
+seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient&mdash;like
+some blessed unction dropped from above.</p>
+<p>But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.</p>
+<p>At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go
+on hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down,
+and close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly
+shaded lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching
+from the partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the
+guests to begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice
+of the signals of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside
+growing bright in the surrounding blackness.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by
+the disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr.
+Wangelbecker, and had sat there watching in growing exasperation
+ever since. When six struck and nobody showed the least sign of
+going away he could bear it no longer, and touched the little
+muffled electric bell that connected him to Mrs. Bilton in what
+Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union&mdash;Anna II. was really
+excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in his
+presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
+an embarrassing abundance of imagery&mdash;by buzzing gently
+against her knee from the leg of the desk.</p>
+<p>She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up
+a column, and went to him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_370" id="Page_370"></a>Now don't talk," said Mr.
+Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly she came in.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?"
+she repeated. "Why now, as though&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Don't <i>talk</i> I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I
+can't stand seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge
+rise. I want you to fetch them in here&mdash;now don't
+talk&mdash;you and me'll do the confounded waiting&mdash;no, no,
+don't talk&mdash;they're to stay quiet in here till the last of
+those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs.
+Bilton. No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they
+come." And he urged her out into the tea-room again.</p>
+<p>The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on,
+for they were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly
+enjoying themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more
+manifestly at home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices
+and fruit-salads. Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was
+after all a great deal to pay for afternoon tea, however good the
+cause might be and however important one's own ulterior motives;
+and since one had in any case to pay, one should eat what one
+could. So they kept the Annas very busy. There seemed to be no end,
+thought the Annas as they ran hither and thither, to what a German
+will hold.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was
+carrying a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying
+ices to innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap
+clung damply to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed.
+What with having to carry so many trays, and remember so many
+orders, and try at the same time to escape from the orderers and
+their questions <a name="Page_371" id="Page_371"></a>and
+admiration, she was in a condition not very far from tears.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr.
+Twist wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general
+bewilderment that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be
+going to scold her. She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr.
+Twist were to be severe, she was sure she wouldn't be able not to
+cry. She made her way very slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton
+looked round the room for the other one. There was no sign of her.
+Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she was fetching something in the
+kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and seeing a group over by
+the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was evidently
+destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep them
+quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new
+duties. Never would she have dreamed it possible that she should
+have to carry trays to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he
+would certainly turn in his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit,
+of adhesiveness to her guns; if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn
+in his grave, let him; he would, she dared say, be more comfortable
+on his other side after all these years.</p>
+<p>For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and
+waited single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No
+wonder that child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist
+didn't come and help, as he had promised, and nowhere was there any
+sign of Anna-Felicitas; and the guests not only wanted things to
+eat, they wanted to talk,&mdash;talk and ask questions. Well, she
+would wait on them, but she <a name="Page_372" id=
+"Page_372"></a>wouldn't talk. She turned a dry, parchment-like face
+to their conversational blandishments, and responded only by adding
+up their bills. Wonderful are the workings of patriotism. For the
+first time in her life, Mrs. Bilton was grumbled at for not
+talking.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_373" id="Page_373"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+<p>In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.</p>
+<p>"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about
+tired of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there.
+You're through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and
+the day after as well."</p>
+<p>He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for
+his business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he
+said severely, "and stay put."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather
+unsteadily to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if
+you're angry or being kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever
+it is I&mdash;I wish you wouldn't. I&mdash;I wish you'd manage to
+be something that isn't either." And, as she had feared, she began
+to cry.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern
+mixed with irritation&mdash;out there all those Germans, in here
+the weeping child; what a day he was having&mdash;"for heaven's
+sake don't do that."</p>
+<p>"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being
+so natu&mdash;natu&mdash;naturally liquid."</p>
+<p>"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his
+pockets. If he took them out he was afraid he might <a name=
+"Page_374" id="Page_374"></a>start stroking her, and she seemed to
+him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
+would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great
+girl now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist
+could imagine....</p>
+<p>"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."</p>
+<p>"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"And the Germans have been too much for you."</p>
+<p>"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion
+that anybody could ever be that.</p>
+<p>"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist,
+setting his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to
+his natural kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and
+me&mdash;" Then he remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she
+come?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."</p>
+<p>"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been
+much upset by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had
+suspected her, though she couldn't understand it after last night's
+finishings up, of secret unworthy conduct in a corner with
+ice-cream.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't
+see her either," he said. "Confound them&mdash;what have they done
+to her? Worn her out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd
+crawled off somewhere and were crying too."</p>
+<p>"Anna-F.&mdash;doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and
+she&mdash;doesn't cry but&mdash;I wish you'd find&mdash;her."</p>
+<p>"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he
+said, looking at her from the door uncertainly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375"></a>And she seemed so extra
+small over there in the enormous chair, and somehow so extra
+motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a promise not to
+move, that he found himself unable to resist going back to her for
+a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr. Twist,
+very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
+yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse;
+and also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.</p>
+<p>"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he
+knew what he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than
+ever,&mdash;grew, indeed, almost into small howls, so long was it
+since anybody had said things like that to her. It was her mother
+who used to say things like that; things almost exactly like
+that.</p>
+<p>"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious
+eye on the half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to
+outdo the noise of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush,
+hush&mdash;here's a clean handkerchief&mdash;you just wipe up your
+eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll worry, you know, if she sees you
+like this,&mdash;hush now, hush&mdash;there, there&mdash;and I
+expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in some
+corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would
+you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and
+feeling much flurried went away to search for the other one who was
+somewhere, he was sure, in a state of equal distress.</p>
+<p>He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he
+came out of the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her
+come into the tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed
+across it towards the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist.
+<a name="Page_376" id="Page_376"></a>He hurried to intercept her.
+Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over having done
+it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would seem, in
+any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
+particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,&mdash;why
+smug? wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete
+satisfaction on her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she
+passed between the tables, of the guests who tried in vain to
+attract her attention and detain her with orders. She wasn't at all
+hot, as Anna-Rose had been, nor rattled, nor in any way
+discomposed; she was just smug. And also she was unusually,
+extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at her like
+that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to her.
+And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand&mdash;no, his paw; in his
+annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of
+Mr. Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw&mdash;on her wrist to
+get her to listen to some confounded order or other. She took no
+notice of that either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly.
+Steadily. Obvious. Smug.</p>
+<p>"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached
+her.</p>
+<p>She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes.
+Then she appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said
+amiably.</p>
+<p>"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the
+office."</p>
+<p>"I can't. I'm busy."</p>
+<p>"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the
+pantry since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way,
+"that's trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw
+you come in. <a name="Page_377" id="Page_377"></a>Perhaps you'll
+tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged in."</p>
+<p>"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.</p>
+<p>"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's
+nobody to wait on?"</p>
+<p>They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to
+Li Koo through the serving window before answering; the order was
+tea and hot cinnamon toast for one.</p>
+<p>"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the
+most delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready,
+and carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all
+there. There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't
+come in."</p>
+<p>"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Because he doesn't like Germans."</p>
+<p>"And who pray is he?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+<p>"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course.
+His name is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now
+listen: I won't have&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared
+into two funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers.
+That one in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with
+what she would no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction
+became suddenly final that the office was the place for both the
+Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton would do the waiting.</p>
+<p>"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of <a name=
+"Page_378" id="Page_378"></a>cakes. "I'll send Mrs. Bilton for the
+tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister is there and
+wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed the
+tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
+laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
+something."</p>
+<p>"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with
+gentle firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it
+on the tray. "I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man
+out there is Mr. Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps
+of people he isn't, and one of the principal ones is Mr.
+Ridding."</p>
+<p>"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.</p>
+<p>"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it
+too.</p>
+<p>"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.</p>
+<p>"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas
+mildly; and her eyes began to screw up again.</p>
+<p>"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having
+got the tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs.
+Bilton and me will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."</p>
+<p>He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His
+appearance in this new r&ocirc;le was greeted by the Germans with
+subdued applause&mdash;subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't
+quite as cordial to them as they had supposed he would be, and they
+were accordingly being a little more cautious in their methods with
+him than they had been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took
+no notice of them, except that his ears turned red when he knocked
+against a chair and the tray nearly fell out of his hands and they
+all cried <a name="Page_379" id="Page_379"></a>out <i>Houp
+l&agrave;</i>. Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. <i>Houp l&agrave;</i>
+indeed.</p>
+<p>In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly
+verandah, sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He
+was a young man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin
+brown face and very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the
+window behind him shone on him as he turned his head when he heard
+the swing doors open, and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and
+at once. He also saw how the young man's face fell on his, Mr.
+Twist's, appearance with the tray, and he also saw with some
+surprise how before he had reached him it suddenly cleared again.
+And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist arrived at the
+table&mdash;got up with some little difficulty, for he had to lean
+hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with
+<i>empressement.</i></p>
+<p>"You've forgotten the sugar," said Anna-Felicitas's gentle voice
+behind Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she
+was, sure enough, looking smugger than ever.</p>
+<p>"This is Mr. Twist," said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable
+gesture. "That I was telling you about," she explained to the young
+man.</p>
+<p>"When?" asked Mr. Twist, surprised.</p>
+<p>"Before," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were talking for some time
+before I went in to order the tea, weren't we?" she said to the
+young man, angelically smiling at him.</p>
+<p>"Rather," he said; and since he didn't on this introduction
+remark to Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain
+he couldn't be an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless,
+suddenly suspected Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves
+that day and was ready to suspect anything, he was <a name=
+"Page_380" id="Page_380"></a>German cleverly got up for evil
+purposes to appear English. But the young man dispersed these
+suspicions by saying that he was over from England on six months'
+leave, and that his name was Elliott.</p>
+<p>"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater
+interest than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it
+wasn't.</p>
+<p>"What, are you an Elliott too?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas shook her head. "On the contrary," she said, "I'm
+a Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you're like us
+about coming from England. We've done that. Only our leave is for
+ever and ever. Or the duration of the war."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist waved her aside. "Anna-Felicitas," he said, "your
+sister is waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I'll
+see to Mr. Elliott."</p>
+<p>"Why not bring your sister here?" said the young man, who, being
+in the navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at
+Anna-Felicitas, who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile
+at each other.</p>
+<p>"I think that's a brilliant idea," she said; and turned to Mr.
+Twist. "You go," she said gently, thereby proving herself, the
+young man considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. "It's
+much more likely," she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without
+moving, "that she'll come for you than for me. My sister," she
+explained to the young man, "is older than I am."</p>
+<p>"Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more
+likely&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But only about twenty minutes older."</p>
+<p>"What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Felicitas," interrupted Mr. Twist, "you will <a name=
+"Page_381" id="Page_381"></a>go to your sister immediately. She
+needs you. She's upset. I don't wish to draw Mr. Elliott behind the
+scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get you into the
+office you force me to tell you that she is very, much upset
+indeed, and is crying."</p>
+<p>"Crying?" echoed Anna-Felicitas. "Christopher?" And she turned
+and departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was
+alert as well as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and
+grab at a chair in her way and pull it aside, and so avert a
+deplorable catastrophe.</p>
+<p>"I hope it's nothing serious?" he inquired of Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh no. Children will cry."</p>
+<p>"Children?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. "Tell me
+about England," he said. "You've been wounded, I see."</p>
+<p>"Leg," said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick
+and looking after Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But that didn't get you six months' leave."</p>
+<p>"Lungs," said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr.
+Twist.</p>
+<p>Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out
+his tea.</p>
+<p>He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after
+hours in the water. For months he was struggling to recover, but
+finally tuberculosis had developed and he was sent to California,
+to his sister who had married an American and lived in the
+neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr. Twist extracted out of him by
+diligent questioning. He had to question very diligently. What the
+young man wanted to talk about was Anna-Felicitas; but every time
+he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382"></a>And she didn't come back.
+He waited and waited, and drank and drank. When the teapot was
+empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all the cakes, more
+and more deliberately, eking them out at last with slowly smoked
+cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist's activities
+there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the ambulance
+from start to finish; and still she didn't come back. In vain he
+tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer
+home&mdash;to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr.
+Twist wouldn't budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained
+shut. And the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at
+last but to go.</p>
+<p>So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get
+up, still spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing
+doors. It was both late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li
+Koo had lit the usual evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It
+blazed most beautifully, and the young man looked at it through the
+window and hesitated.</p>
+<p>"How jolly," he said.</p>
+<p>"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up
+too.</p>
+<p>"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man
+with a little shiver.</p>
+<p>"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before
+leaving."</p>
+<p>"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your
+sister and have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot
+coffee first."</p>
+<p>"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, <a name=
+"Page_383" id="Page_383"></a>looking at his watch. "We close at
+half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."</p>
+<p>"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go,"
+said the young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what
+couldn't be helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."</p>
+<p>"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr.
+Twist, "for surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick
+leg. You can pay me right here."</p>
+<p>And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as
+far as the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting
+car, seeing his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after
+all, humane, but the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just
+watched from the gate till the car had actually started, and then
+went back to the house.</p>
+<p>He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the
+ground. This second day had been worse than the first. And besides
+the continued and remarkable absence of Americans and the continued
+and remarkable presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness
+suddenly developed in the Annas. He felt insecure; as though he
+didn't understand, and hadn't got hold. They seemed to him very
+like eels. And this Elliott&mdash;what did he think <i>he</i> was
+after, anyway?</p>
+<p>For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He
+defied Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing
+successful, this Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And
+he stuck out his jaw&mdash;or would have stuck it out if he hadn't
+been prevented by the amiable weakness of that feature. But
+spiritually and morally, when he got back into the house he was all
+jaw.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a><a name=
+"Page_384" id="Page_384"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+<p>That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning
+and drop in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and
+see if he could pick up anything that would explain why Americans
+wouldn't come and have tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he
+might look up old Ridding. He didn't sleep. He lay all night
+thinking.</p>
+<p>The evening had been spent <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>
+with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose was in bed, sleeping off her tears;
+Mrs. Bilton had another headache, and disappeared early; so he was
+left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched about abstractedly eating up
+the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk, except once to remark a
+little pensively that her inside was dreadfully full of cold stuff,
+and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a mausoleum;
+but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist could
+see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had
+nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a
+useful purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any
+counter-observations she might make. Watchfulness was what was
+required. Silent watchfulness. And wariness. And firmness. In fact
+all the things that were most foreign to his nature, thought Mr.
+Twist, resentful and fatigued.</p>
+<p>Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li
+Koo, and then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without
+seeing the others. It was an<a name="Page_385" id=
+"Page_385"></a>other of the perfect days which he was now beginning
+to take as a matter of course, so many had there been since his
+arrival. People talked of the wet days and of their desolate
+abundance once they started, but there had been as yet no sign of
+them. The mornings succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November
+was merging into December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr.
+Twist to himself sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked
+lane in the gracious light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm
+scents drifted across his face, and the flowers in the grass,
+standing so bright and unruffled that they seemed almost as
+profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded at him, and everything
+was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh yes&mdash;I
+daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked
+round him,&mdash;he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful.
+These things hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be
+calm and bright. So could he, if&mdash;</p>
+<p>He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two
+figures, a man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside.
+Lovers, of course. "Oh yes&mdash;I daresay," said Mr. Twist again,
+grimly. They hadn't to deal with Twinklers either. No wonder they
+could sit happily in the grass. So could he, if&mdash;</p>
+<p>At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last
+thing they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned
+their heads, and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard
+that the Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.</p>
+<p>"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_386" id="Page_386"></a>Hello," said
+Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach with
+complacent interest.</p>
+<p>She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton
+just as she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr.
+Twist felt; sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect
+of natural and comfortable arrival at the place where she was.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her
+when the car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had
+torrents of things he wanted to say, and this was all that came
+out.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to
+the conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.</p>
+<p>"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I'll give you a lift."</p>
+<p>"No thanks. I've just come from there."</p>
+<p>"I see. Then <i>you'd</i> better come with me," said Mr. Twist
+to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."</p>
+<p>"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm.
+But it had no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to
+contemplate him with perfect goodwill.</p>
+<p>He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could
+see, before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him
+ridiculous. He felt a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up.
+He ought to have just waved to them and gone on his way, and
+afterwards in the seclusion of his office issued very plain
+directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her future conduct. Sitting by
+the roadside like that! Openly; before everybody; with a young man
+she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.</p>
+<p>He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with <a name=
+"Page_387" id="Page_387"></a>such a jerk that the car leaped
+forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the
+briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of
+sight.</p>
+<p>"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.</p>
+<p>"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+"One has to sit somewhere."</p>
+<p>And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with
+delight at everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth
+time that she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and
+she settled down to listen again, after the interruption caused by
+Mr. Twist, with a ready ear and the utmost complacency to these
+agreeable statements, and began to wonder whether perhaps after all
+she mightn't at last be about to fall in love.</p>
+<p>In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to
+look at him, and he told her tumultuously&mdash;for being a
+sailor-man he went straight ahead on great waves when it came to
+love-making&mdash;that her eyes were as if pansies had married
+stars.</p>
+<p>She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded
+lovely it made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer;
+and then he said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most
+perfect thing ever stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind
+turning her face to him so that he might see if she had another
+just like it on the other side.</p>
+<p>She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she
+had washed it lately or not&mdash;one so easily forgot one's ears;
+there were so many different things to wash&mdash;and he told her
+that when she blushed it was like the first wild rose of the first
+summer morning of the world.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388"></a>At this Anna-Felicitas was
+quite overcome, and subsided into a condition of blissful,
+quiescent waiting for whatever might come next. Fancy her face
+reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it every day
+for years and years in the looking-glass, and not noticed anything
+particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face. Something
+you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else you
+didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and
+couldn't be hidden,&mdash;an object remote indeed from pansies, and
+stars, and beautiful things like that.</p>
+<p>She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point
+out that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that
+perhaps when his leg was well again he would see things more as
+they were, but to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him
+this she found she was obliged to look away at once again. She
+couldn't look at him. Fancy that now, thought Anna-Felicitas,
+attentively gazing at her toes. And he had such dear eyes; and such
+a dear, eager sort of face. All the more, then, she reasoned,
+should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him. But they
+couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as carefully
+as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.</p>
+<p>"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery
+stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had
+ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's
+all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,&mdash;sends
+one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why,
+I'd talk to you about God now without turning a hair. Nothing would
+have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even heard
+of him three <a name="Page_389" id="Page_389"></a>years ago. Why, I
+write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now
+being seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and
+my mother came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle
+of the street. Do you realize what a tremendous change that means,
+you little girl who's never had brothers? You extraordinary
+adorable little lovely thing?"</p>
+<p>And off he was again.</p>
+<p>"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still
+watching her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider,
+before I said anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would
+like to say in the hearing of my parents. Would you like to say
+what you're saying to me in the hearing of your parents?"</p>
+<p>"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.</p>
+<p>"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She
+rather wished now she hadn't mentioned it.</p>
+<p>"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.</p>
+<p>She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps
+be regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give
+herself up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might
+have to say.</p>
+<p>And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the
+most highly gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all
+round and taking one thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the
+conclusion that this was the most agreeable and profitable morning
+she had ever spent. She sat there for hours, and they all flew.
+People passed in cars and saw her, and it didn't disturb her in the
+least. She perfectly remembered she ought to be helping Anna-Rose
+pick and arrange the flowers for the tea-tables, and she didn't
+mind. She knew <a name="Page_390" id="Page_390"></a>Anna-Rose would
+be astonished and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By
+midday she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for
+the people who had motored through the lane told the people who
+hadn't what they had seen. Once a great car passed with a small
+widow in it, who looked astonished when she saw the pair but had
+gone almost before Elliott could call out and wave to her.</p>
+<p>"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each
+other."</p>
+<p>"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion
+of continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as
+if she hadn't got a husband.</p>
+<p>"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate
+people to die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when
+they're not in the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor
+old Dellogg was such a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet,
+or I'd bring her up to tea this afternoon. But it doesn't matter.
+I'll take you to her."</p>
+<p>"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg.
+The name swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy
+enjoying herself to remark it and its coincidences now.</p>
+<p>"Of course. It's the first thing one does."</p>
+<p>"What first thing?"</p>
+<p>"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has
+found her. Once one has had"&mdash;his voice fell to a
+whisper&mdash;"the God-given luck to find her." And he laid his
+hand very gently on hers, which were clasped together in her
+lap.</p>
+<p>This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed,
+and she didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand
+lying on hers, and considered <a name="Page_391" id=
+"Page_391"></a>it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now, and
+she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
+Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly
+judicious went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so
+pleasant. Still, it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt
+Alice do in a similar situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure.
+Yet what was lunch when one was rapidly arriving, as she was sure
+now that she was, at the condition of being in love? She must be,
+or she wouldn't like his hand on hers. And she did like it.</p>
+<p>She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it.
+But would Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly
+clear about that. Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it
+up, and shake it, and say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like
+a lady. Well, perhaps she ought to do that. Christopher would
+probably think so too. But what a pity.... Still, behaviour was
+behaviour; ladies were ladies.</p>
+<p>She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
+instead&mdash;Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened&mdash;she
+did nothing of the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly
+on the top of his.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a><a name="Page_392"
+id="Page_392"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of
+painful indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he
+knew of a couple of miles farther that led up an unused and
+practically undrivable track back by the west side to The Open
+Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to proceed at once down the lane and
+salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or shouldn't he? For the first
+mile he decided he would; then, as his anger cooled, he began to
+think that after all he needn't worry much. The Annas were lucidly
+too young for serious philandering, and even if that Elliott didn't
+realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he couldn't
+do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
+this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
+served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had
+made up his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.</p>
+<p>There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.</p>
+<p>At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used,
+since his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth
+when he went into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were
+cold; and when after difficulty&mdash;actual difficulty&mdash;he
+succeeded in seeing the manager, he couldn't but perceive his
+unusual reserve. He then remembered what he had put down to mere
+accident at the time, that as he drove up Main <a name="Page_393"
+id="Page_393"></a>Street half an hour before, all the people he
+knew had been looking the other way.</p>
+<p>From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of
+explanation of the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager
+going dumb at its mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had
+arranged the sale of the inn, and again in the street people he
+knew looked the other way. The solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be
+back till the afternoon, and the clerk, an elderly person hitherto
+subservient, was curiously short about it.</p>
+<p>By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined
+to ask the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he
+couldn't find anybody. Every one, his architect, his various
+experts&mdash;those genial and frolicsome young men&mdash;were
+either engaged or away on business somewhere else. He set his
+teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
+Ridding&mdash;it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his
+recent undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the
+bottom of this thing&mdash;and walking into the parlour was
+instantly aware of a hush falling upon it, a holding of the
+breath.</p>
+<p>In the distance he saw old Ridding,&mdash;distinctly; and
+distinctly he saw that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the
+far end of the great parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of
+something vast and black heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had
+the look on his pink and naturally pleasant face of one who has
+abandoned hope. On seeing Mr. Twist a ray of interest lit him up,
+and he half rose. The formless mass in the next chair which Mr.
+Twist had taken for inanimate matter, probably cushions and wraps,
+and now perceived was one of the higher mammals, put out a hand
+<a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></a>and said something,&mdash;at
+least, it opened that part of its face which is called a mouth but
+which to Mr. Twist in the heated and abnormal condition of his
+brain seemed like the snap-to of some great bag,&mdash;and at that
+moment a group of people crossed the hall in front of old Ridding,
+and when the path was again clear the chair that had contained him
+was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only the higher mammal
+was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two smouldering
+coals.</p>
+<p>He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while
+he tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the
+right, and went out quickly by the side door.</p>
+<p>There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him
+up as to the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone
+to about the guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the
+time, but that was chiefly because he had been angry with himself.
+At bottom he had carried away an impression of friendliness. To
+this man he would now go as a last resource before turning back
+home, and once more he raced up Main Street in his Ford, producing
+by these repeated appearances an effect of agitation and
+restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.</p>
+<p>The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his
+morning's experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much
+relieved by being admitted at once. He was received neither coldly
+nor warmly, but with unmistakable interest.</p>
+<p>"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult
+him, but he was used to patience <a name="Page_395" id=
+"Page_395"></a>with clients, and he well knew their preference in
+conversation for the self-evident.</p>
+<p>"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr.
+Twist, his great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who
+again nodded.</p>
+<p>"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.</p>
+<p>"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the
+hell&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said.
+"Sorry to interrupt&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition
+between his office and his clerks' room.</p>
+<p>"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.</p>
+<p>He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were
+inquiring what the hell&mdash;?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but
+you're so calm&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."</p>
+<p>"I don't see what that's got to do with it."</p>
+<p>"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one.
+Yours is another."</p>
+<p>"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I
+want to know is why&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you.
+It's because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of
+the German Government."</p>
+<p>A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist
+with a detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared
+at the lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left
+him. This blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank
+astonishment.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_396" id="Page_396"></a>You know about my teapot?"
+he said at last.</p>
+<p>"Try me again, Mr. Twist."</p>
+<p>"It's on every American breakfast table."</p>
+<p>"Including my own."</p>
+<p>"They wouldn't use it if they thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
+proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general
+sentiment to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on
+an unofficial black list. It is to be banished from the
+hotels."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The
+teapot his mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended
+on, and all his happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging
+over America in great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist
+Non-Trickler were used for Germany. He saw&mdash;but what didn't he
+see in that moment of submerged horror? Then he seemed to come to
+the surface again and resume reason with a gasp. "Why?" he
+asked.</p>
+<p>"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"</p>
+<p>"No. Why do they think the inn&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The Miss Twinklers are German."</p>
+<p>"Half."</p>
+<p>"The half that matters&mdash;begging my absent wife's pardon. I
+know all about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over
+by that ward notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty
+transparent. So transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of
+my fellow-townsfolk has considerably lowered. But we live in
+unbalanced times. I guess it's women at the bottom of this. Women
+got on to it first, and the others caught the idea as they'd catch
+scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet fever, this spy scare that's
+about. Mind you, I admit the germs are certainly present among us."
+<a name="Page_397" id="Page_397"></a>And the lawyer smiled. He
+thought he saw he had made a little joke in that last remark.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't
+smile. "Do you mean to say those children&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."</p>
+<p>"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by
+the wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I
+guess I'd best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would
+you if you'd seen them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their
+age too high on that boat."</p>
+<p>"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured
+pretty considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you
+what is being believed?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. It's what I've come for."</p>
+<p>"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."</p>
+<p>"Go ahead."</p>
+<p>"What Acapulco says&mdash;and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and
+probably by this time the whole coast&mdash;is that you threw over
+your widowed mother, of whom you're the only son, and came off here
+with two German girls who got hold of you on the boat&mdash;now,
+Mr. Twist, don't interrupt&mdash;on the boat crossing from England,
+that England had turned them out as undesirable aliens&mdash;quite
+so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish&mdash;that they're in the pay of
+the German Government&mdash;no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist&mdash;and
+that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each
+afternoon has been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already
+suspected, I can't say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and
+that these people are so familiar with <a name="Page_398" id=
+"Page_398"></a>the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
+complete secret understanding."</p>
+<p>For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare.
+Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The
+lawyer was startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew
+with that sort of lips. "You're not&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.</p>
+<p>"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but
+surprised.</p>
+<p>"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose
+his features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned
+funny. Cat's-paw. Yes&mdash;rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw.
+That does seem a bit of a bull's eye&mdash;" And for a second or
+two his features flatly refused to compose.</p>
+<p>The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of
+these beliefs may be awkward."</p>
+<p>"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.</p>
+<p>And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what
+it would mean,&mdash;the sheer disaster of it, the horrible
+situation those helpless Annas would be in. What a limitless fool
+he must have been in his conduct of the whole thing. His absorption
+in the material side of it had done the trick. He hadn't been
+clever enough, not imaginative enough, nor, failing that, worldly
+enough to work the other side properly. When he found there was no
+Dellogg he ought to have insisted on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion
+or no intrusion, and handing over the twins; and then gone away and
+left them. A woman was what was wanted. Fool that he was to suppose
+that he, a man, an unmarried man, <a name="Page_399" id=
+"Page_399"></a>could get them into anything but a scrape. But he
+was so fond of them. He just couldn't leave them. And now here they
+all were, in this ridiculous and terrible situation.</p>
+<p>"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For
+the life of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in
+slander actions&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are
+two courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but
+simultaneous. You shut down the inn&mdash;at once,
+to-morrow&mdash;that's Saturday. Close on Saturday, and give notice
+you don't re-open&mdash;now pray let me finish&mdash;close the inn
+as an inn, and use it simply as a private residence. Then, as quick
+as may be, marry those girls."</p>
+<p>"Marry what girls?"</p>
+<p>"The Miss von Twinklers."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly.
+"Marry them who to?"</p>
+<p>"You for one."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said
+that to me before."</p>
+<p>"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've
+done it."</p>
+<p>"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a
+way out&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered
+by events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.</p>
+<p>"You've&mdash;got
+to&mdash;marry&mdash;one&mdash;of&mdash;those&mdash;girls," said
+the lawyer, at each word smiting the table with his open palm.
+"Turn her into an American. Get her out of this being a German
+business. And be able at <a name="Page_400" id="Page_400"></a>the
+same time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why,
+even if you didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course
+any man would want to&mdash;I know what I'm talking about because
+I've seen them&mdash;it's your plain duty, having got them into
+this mess."</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased
+helplessness and yet a manifest profound anxiety for further
+advice.</p>
+<p>For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh&mdash;either
+or both," he said. "For God's sake don't be such a&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He pulled up short.</p>
+<p>"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of
+that sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and
+will substitute something milder. Have you any objection to
+ninny?"</p>
+<p>No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer
+might choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about.
+He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his
+forehead and round his mouth.</p>
+<p>"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.</p>
+<p>Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't
+heard them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist
+proposed to them&mdash;to one, he meant of course, but both would
+comment, the one he proposed to and the one he didn't&mdash;caused
+his imagination to reel. He hadn't much imagination; he knew that
+now, after his conduct of this whole affair, but all there was of
+it reeled.</p>
+<p>"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this
+by a movement of his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_401" id="Page_401"></a>Pooh," said the lawyer
+again, again indicating negligibleness. "My wife was&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all <i>that</i>"
+said Mr. Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell
+you they're <i>children</i>&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
+negligibleness.</p>
+<p>Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he
+said. "You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one
+thing more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll
+have the sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except
+one, and that's the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why,
+sweetest and prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most
+delectable, the most&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the
+table crooked. His ears flamed.</p>
+<p>"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly
+like that about my wife."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a><a name=
+"Page_402" id="Page_402"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+<p>Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him
+all up. His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the
+way home matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross
+streets before he got out of the town and for an entire mile
+afterwards he was on the wrong side of the road. During this
+period, deep as he was in confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely
+notice the anger on the faces of the other drivers and the variety
+and fury of their gesticulations, and it roused a dim wonder in
+him.</p>
+<p>Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard
+to the affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received
+in Clark. They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always
+disapproving. Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough,
+or was suspected of not going to do or be enough.</p>
+<p>His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss
+somebody,&mdash;somebody kind and soft, who would let herself be
+adored. She needn't even love him,&mdash;he knew he wasn't the sort
+of man to set passion alight; she need only be kind, and a little
+fond of him, and let him love her, and be his very own.</p>
+<p>His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes.
+But the Annas....</p>
+<p>When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
+propose&mdash;indeed, everything pointed <a name="Page_403" id=
+"Page_403"></a>to his simply having got to&mdash;but wouldn't they
+very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to think
+all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
+course,&mdash;one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny
+man, thought Mr. Twist; funny man,&mdash;yet otherwise so
+sagacious. It is true he need only propose to one of them, for
+which he thanked God, but he could imagine what that one, and what
+the other one too, who would be sure to be somewhere quite near
+would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred not to imagine.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his
+mud-guard. It was a big car which crackled with language as it
+whizzed on its way, and Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across
+the road, then perceived on which side he had been driving.</p>
+<p>The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and
+somnolence. Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool
+and shaded when he passed before, there was only the pressed-down
+grass and crushed flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long
+ago of course. She said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he
+wished she hadn't gone home, and that little Christopher too might
+for a bit be somewhere else, so that when he arrived he wouldn't
+immediately have to face everybody at once. He wanted to think; he
+wanted to have time to think; time before four o'clock came, and
+with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to any conclusion about
+shutting up the inn&mdash;and how could he if nobody gave him time
+to think?&mdash;those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they who
+had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and
+their blasted war....</p>
+<p>At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite <a name=
+"Page_404" id="Page_404"></a>pale in the green shade of the
+tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the lane
+watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
+very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's
+time given him to think.</p>
+<p>"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had
+waved to him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to
+the stable, "she isn't with you?"</p>
+<p>"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she
+said.</p>
+<p>"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.</p>
+<p>"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken
+eyes; for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of
+her mind, half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any
+moment of panic, an impression that the chief activities and
+recreations of all those Americans who weren't really good were
+two: they lynched, and they kidnapped. They lynched you if they
+didn't like you enough, and if they liked you too much they
+kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and unsuspecting, had been
+kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had alighted on her,
+observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other explanation was
+possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one so
+conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
+that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there
+was any shirking to be done they had always done it together. As
+the hours passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to
+persuade herself that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr.
+<a name="Page_405" id="Page_405"></a>Twist, strange and unnatural
+and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
+been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist
+she was convinced the worst had happened&mdash;her beautiful, her
+precious Columbus had been kidnapped.</p>
+<p>"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was
+announcing the kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think
+of Anna-Felicitas; he had seen her too recently. But that Mrs.
+Bilton should be kidnapped seemed to him to touch the lowest depths
+of American criminal enterprise and depravity. At the same time
+though he recoiled before this fresh blow a thought did fan through
+his mind with a wonderful effect of coolness and
+silence,&mdash;"Then they'll gag her," he said.</p>
+<p>"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag
+her?" And pulling open the gate and running out to him as one
+possessed she cried again, "Gag Columbus?"</p>
+<p>"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
+disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of
+the lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as
+leisurely as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a
+distracted household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a
+complete, an extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining
+quality. Still smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one
+could imagine a lily turned into a god, or a young god turned into
+a lily and walking down <a name="Page_406" id="Page_406"></a>the
+middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
+thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god
+would be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be
+worrying much about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd
+just be coming along like that with the corners of his mouth a
+little turned up, and his fair hair a little ruffled, and his
+charming young face full of a sober and abstracted radiance.</p>
+<p>"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk
+of his thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly,
+leaning over towards her, determined to get off to the garage
+before he found himself faced by both twins together, "that when
+next your imagination gets the jumps the best thing you can do is
+to hold on to it hard till it settles down again, instead of
+wasting your time and ruining your constitution going pale."</p>
+<p>And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the
+corner into the yard.</p>
+<p>Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only
+living thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the
+services of one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a
+really homey home. The first thing this cat had done had been to
+eat the canary, which gave the twins much unacknowledged relief. It
+was, they thought secretly, quite a good plan to have one's pets
+inside each other,&mdash;it kept them so quiet. She now sat unmoved
+in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning her whiskers while
+Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order to get into the
+stable without inconveniencing her.</p>
+<p>Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of
+envy.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407"></a>He might have got out and
+picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre about, reversing and
+making intricate figures in the dust, because it kept him longer
+away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of him, but
+continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel was
+within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
+The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that
+he wouldn't hurt a fly.</p>
+<p>Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the
+stable, all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and
+having got it in he still lingered fiddling about with it,
+examining its engine and wiping its bonnet; and then when he
+couldn't do that any longer he went out and lingered in the yard,
+looking down at the cat with his hands in his pockets. "I must
+think," he kept on saying to himself.</p>
+<p>"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen
+window.</p>
+<p>"All right," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who
+didn't like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got
+out of it by lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful
+white stomach. She was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful
+white stomach, and she had discovered that nobody could see it
+without wanting to stroke it. Whenever she found herself in a
+situation that threatened to become disagreeable she just lay down
+and showed her stomach. Human beings in similar predicaments can
+only show their tact.</p>
+<p>"Nice pussy&mdash;nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud,
+stroking this irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as
+she had intended he should.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_408" id="Page_408"></a>Lunchee get cold," said Li
+Koo, again putting his head out of the kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton
+say, Come in."</p>
+<p>"All right," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that
+should have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other
+gardening tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up
+and stood it up carefully again.</p>
+<p>Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.</p>
+<p>"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard
+door.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right
+away and have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I
+guess you'll be sorry."</p>
+<p>"All right&mdash;coming," he called back very loud and
+cheerfully, striding towards her as one strides who knows there is
+nothing for it now but courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton&mdash;sorry
+if I've kept you waiting. You shouldn't have bothered about
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself
+being loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house,
+through the house, and out on to the verandah.</p>
+<p>They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning
+was down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it
+blazed the garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as
+usual ready for four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding
+the Annas at the table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her
+back to the garden, her little fair head outlined against the
+glowing light as he had seen it every day since they had lived in
+the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably volubly and passionately
+addressing her.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409"></a>And there was no one.</p>
+<p>"Why&mdash;" he said, stopping short.</p>
+<p>"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before
+everything is spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed
+behind to give an order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the
+verandah and shaded her eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you
+can do all that talking better after lunch."</p>
+<p>He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most
+private place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some
+arum lilies that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood
+the twins facing each other.</p>
+<p>"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when
+they're ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's
+talking right away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more
+quickly for she plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to
+sally out into the sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often
+get a chance of a quiet chat together&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her
+chair ready for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning
+again.</p>
+<p>She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite
+that tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the
+eager gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.</p>
+<p>She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
+immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,&mdash;while
+Mrs. Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if
+one wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he
+gave himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once
+started flowing over him, on this occasion <a name="Page_410" id=
+"Page_410"></a>with something of the comfort of warm water, and he
+was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't gagged.</p>
+<p>While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at
+the two figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs.
+Bilton remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at
+the different stages, of the meal,&mdash;at the salad, at the
+pudding&mdash;he stopped her. She became more and more pleased by
+his evident determination to lunch alone with her, for after all
+one remains female to the end, and her conversation took on a
+gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second marriages. They
+had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had had no
+post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
+whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.</p>
+<p>The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs.
+Bilton talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she
+being the eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and,
+if she refused, proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But
+before proceeding to Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with
+peculiar misgiving, he would very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose
+the seriousness of the situation and the necessity, the urgency,
+the sanity of her marrying him. These proposals would be kept on
+the cool level of strict business. Every trace of the affection
+with which he was so overflowing would be sternly excluded. For
+instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel of
+Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
+comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth
+into his remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation <a name=
+"Page_411" id="Page_411"></a>demanded the most scrupulous fairness
+and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful avoidance of taking
+any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr. Twist, his hand
+shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water, how
+difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more
+female than ever.</p>
+<p>Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the
+war. Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
+steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated
+Mr. Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of
+it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.</p>
+<p>Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it.
+He saw that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he
+would explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which
+after the war they&mdash;he meant, of course, she&mdash;could
+easily in that land of facile and honourable divorce get rid of.
+Meanwhile, he would point out, they&mdash;she, of course; bother
+these twins&mdash;would be safely American, and he would undertake
+never to intrude love on them&mdash;her&mdash;unless by some
+wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr.
+Twist's spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more
+water.</p>
+<p>Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of
+self-mortification for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his
+wife&mdash;again at the dear word he had to gulp down
+water&mdash;and one his sister-in-law. They would just have to
+agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
+shilly-shallying. Yes. That was <a name="Page_412" id=
+"Page_412"></a>the line to take; and by the time he had got to the
+coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.</p>
+<p>But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for
+anything that would support him....</p>
+<p>"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the
+web of Mrs. Bilton's words.</p>
+<p>"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether
+female, for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,&mdash;"You're
+not sick?"</p>
+<p>"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his
+head drooping. "It's nice...."</p>
+<p>"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and
+going away rattling a bunch of keys.</p>
+<p>At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act
+of putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
+passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He
+knew there would be.</p>
+<p>He gulped down more water.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole
+morning and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about
+it. Besides, the expression on her face wanted explaining,&mdash;a
+lot of explaining. Mr. Twist didn't like to think so, but
+Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct seemed to him almost artful. It
+seemed to him older than her years. It seemed to justify the
+lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to him as children.
+That young man Elliott&mdash;</p>
+<p>But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for
+looking once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was
+coming towards the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had
+vanished. Why had he bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go?
+He had counted, somehow, on beginning with Anna-Rose....</p>
+<p><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413"></a>He seized a cigarette and
+lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand steady. Before the
+cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas, walking in
+beneath the awning.</p>
+<p>"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to
+you."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a><a name=
+"Page_414" id="Page_414"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+<p>"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew
+from the look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very
+remarkable look. It was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect
+bliss, had unaccountably got its feet wet. Not more troubled than
+that; a little troubled, but not more than that.</p>
+<p>"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished
+yours, do you mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs.
+Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this
+moment interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because
+otherwise Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding
+towards it without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would
+certainly get her there.</p>
+<p>He could only follow.</p>
+<p>In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"</p>
+<p>"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had
+come, and he wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose.
+He wanted to get things clear with her first before dealing with
+this one. There was less of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head
+yesterday when he patted it.... <a name="Page_415" id=
+"Page_415"></a>And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and
+let herself be comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to
+comfort....</p>
+<p>"Christopher&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut
+the door.</p>
+<p>"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
+interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a
+bookcase. Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean
+against.</p>
+<p>"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her
+voice softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.</p>
+<p>Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the
+look of one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before
+diving in&mdash;with, that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to
+proceed.</p>
+<p>"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big
+chair. "It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't
+think being in love would make one want to sit down."</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him
+with a kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your&mdash;what did you say?" he
+asked.</p>
+<p>She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive
+radiance, of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very
+beautiful to her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I
+can't tell you how pleased I am because I've always been afraid I
+was going to find it a difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite
+the contrary."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416"></a>Then, as he only staged at
+her, she said, "He's coming round this afternoon on the new
+footing, and I wanted to prepare your and Christopher's minds in
+good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."</p>
+<p>And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently,
+judging from her expression, a silent contemplation of her
+bliss.</p>
+<p>"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her
+contemplation for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think
+so."</p>
+<p>Well. This beat everything.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.</p>
+<p>Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment
+what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared
+Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that
+time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before.
+And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself
+been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed
+of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't
+as if he hadn't wanted to hug them often and often, but he had
+restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives
+of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides
+a great doubt as to whether they wouldn't very energetically mind.
+And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away
+tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within
+twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in
+love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old footing yet. And
+who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to
+find out if he were <a name="Page_417" id="Page_417"></a>a proper
+person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a
+Twinkler twin?</p>
+<p>Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and
+mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr.
+Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at
+Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into
+space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety,
+and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought
+was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out
+to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld
+his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.</p>
+<p>He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next
+to her and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to
+speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had
+so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins.</p>
+<p>"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at
+last."</p>
+<p>"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna
+II., that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was,
+it's Elliott."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I
+believe," she added, "I now have to allude to him as John."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he
+said, "think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be
+calling a man John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."</p>
+<p>"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.</p>
+<p>"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty.
+It doesn't strike you as foolish."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_418" id="Page_418"></a>On the contrary," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've been very clever. I
+shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm not
+<i>naturally</i> quick." And she beamed with what she evidently
+regarded as a pardonable pride.</p>
+<p>"It doesn't strike you as even a little&mdash;well, a little
+improper."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that
+the one man one could never be improper about, even if one tried,
+was one's husband."</p>
+<p>"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word
+wife, but then that was different.</p>
+<p>"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a
+flaming unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he
+who had been toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the
+Twinkler sun had had a most unfair march stolen on him by this
+eleventh-hour stranger.</p>
+<p>He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the
+solution of half his problem,&mdash;and of much the worst half, for
+it was after all Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable
+feeling of slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good,
+sitting in a chair crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But
+now that the solution was presented to him he was full of fears.
+For on what now could he base his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott
+would be the legitimate protector of both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist,
+who had been so much perturbed by the idea of having to propose to
+one or other twin, was miserably upset by the realization that now
+he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut the ground from under
+his feet. He had indeed&mdash;what was the expression he used the
+evening before?&mdash;yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
+for <a name="Page_419" id="Page_419"></a>Anna-Rose to marry him,
+and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn feeling that on no other basis
+except necessity would she. He was thirty-five. It was all very
+well for Elliott to get proposing to people of seventeen; he
+couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only age. Mr.
+Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he was
+very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.</p>
+<p>"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
+jealously said.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only
+time but war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be
+quick and sudden about all sorts of things."</p>
+<p>"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."</p>
+<p>"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many
+things&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist
+as he gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating,
+reminiscent smugness.</p>
+<p>"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to
+wait while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular
+crisis fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as
+much time as you seem to think."</p>
+<p>"No&mdash;and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving
+herself a shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into
+her face again as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory,
+somehow got her feet wet.</p>
+<p>"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the
+room. "There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be
+pretty well heart-broken over this."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_420" id="Page_420"></a>But that's so
+unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle deprecation.</p>
+<p>"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the
+impression&mdash;the remarkably vivid impression&mdash;that she's
+losing you."</p>
+<p>"But <i>that's</i> so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's
+sheer gain. Without the least effort or bother on her part she's
+acquiring a brother-in-law."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up
+and down the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it
+all myself."</p>
+<p>"But <i>that's</i> so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly. "Why should two of you be feeling things that
+aren't?"</p>
+<p>"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I
+shouldn't be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your
+conduct."</p>
+<p>"But there has to <i>be</i> conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still
+very gentle, but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I
+don't see how anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been
+some conduct first."</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't argue&mdash;don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose
+not to mind your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she
+hasn't even seen."</p>
+<p>"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
+somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't <i>argue</i>!" exclaimed Mr.
+Twist. "And as for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to
+this twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be
+terribly upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh
+worried crazy."</p>
+<p>"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with
+love?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421"></a>Then she said very
+earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes troubled,
+"Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more, down
+in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
+saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I
+found she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't
+be comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell
+you what I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring
+at the carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I
+don't suppose anything I would say&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas
+gently.</p>
+<p>"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling
+his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.</p>
+<p>"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles.
+"You dear children," he said, "you dear, dear children&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I don't know about children&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas; but
+was interrupted by a knock at the door.</p>
+<p>"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume
+the expression he had learned to associate with the approach of
+Mrs. Bilton. "Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out,
+"and put it on the&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the
+door an inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr.
+Twist," she said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says
+he just must. I found him on the verandah when I took your <a name=
+"Page_422" id="Page_422"></a>brandy out, and as I'm not the woman
+to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in with
+me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."</p>
+<p>"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."</p>
+<p>"I say&mdash;" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.</p>
+<p>"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair.
+"That's John."</p>
+<p>"I say&mdash;may I come in? I've got something
+important&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you
+rather&mdash;?" he began.</p>
+<p>"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a
+most beautiful light.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said.
+"Mrs. Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you&mdash;Commander
+Elliott of the British Navy."</p>
+<p>"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr.
+Twist, your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in
+here?"</p>
+<p>"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps
+you wouldn't mind waiting for me there&mdash;I don't suppose Mr.
+Elliott will want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."</p>
+<p>And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly
+willing and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the
+office.</p>
+<p>There stood Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Elliott stopped dead.</p>
+<p>"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.</p>
+<p>"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at
+him.</p>
+<p>"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look <a name=
+"Page_423" id="Page_423"></a>here, sir," he said, turning to Mr.
+Twist, "could <i>you</i> talk business with her there?"</p>
+<p>"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there.
+I've got to talk business," he said, turning to
+Anna-Felicitas,&mdash;"business about marrying you. And how can I
+with you standing there looking like&mdash;well, like that?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.</p>
+<p>"But you'll interrupt&mdash;just your being there will
+interrupt. I shall see you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll
+be impossible not to&mdash;I mean I know I'll want to&mdash;I mean,
+Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've got to explain all
+sorts of things to your guardian&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas
+gently. "He only very nearly once was."</p>
+<p>"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take
+some time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade&mdash;for I
+expect," he said, turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit
+sudden, sir?"</p>
+<p>"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but
+finding it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and
+so disarmingly in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might
+have been almost a reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never
+seen two people look so happy. He had never, of course, before been
+present at the first wonderful dawning of love. The whole room
+seemed to glow with the surprise of it.</p>
+<p>"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to
+Anna-Felicitas, who stood smiling beatifically at <a name=
+"Page_424" id="Page_424"></a>him without moving. "I've got to
+explain that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a
+fearfully decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've
+got a jolly little sister here who's respectable and well-known
+besides, and I'm going to produce references to back up these
+assertions, and proofs that I'm perfectly sound in health except
+for my silly foot, which isn't health but just foot and which you
+don't seem to mind anyhow, and how&mdash;I ask you <i>how</i>,
+Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you standing
+there looking like&mdash;well, like that?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"</p>
+<p>"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.</p>
+<p>His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step
+towards her, then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at
+Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<i>Somebody's</i> got to go," he said.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_425" id="Page_425"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+<p>He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't
+bear the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers,
+both going out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear,
+after what he had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being
+left outside love.</p>
+<p>All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door
+of love. He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so
+much about it and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and
+its inhibitions got so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He
+had never tried to marry,&mdash;again because of his home and his
+mother and the whole only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try
+now. He would risk it. It was awful to risk it, but it was more
+awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How nearly the afternoon before,
+when she sat crying in his chair, had he taken her in his arms!
+Why, he would have taken her into them then and there, while she
+was in that state, while she was in the need of comfort, and never
+let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that he had got the
+idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child. Fool that he
+was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't children
+who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
+Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that
+was because she was little and easily cried. He loved <a name=
+"Page_426" id="Page_426"></a>her for being little. He loved her
+because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to comfort, to
+pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
+mother.</p>
+<p>Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
+recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
+answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped
+in. Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because
+Li Koo, who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li
+Koo did. He jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist
+hurried to it and looked out. There in the middle of the yard was
+the cat, exactly where he had left her an hour before, and kneeling
+beside her stroking her stomach was Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun
+streamed down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair
+that frisked round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close
+to her, so much absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when
+she did she didn't look up, but bent her head lower than before and
+stroked more assiduously.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Come and talk to me."</p>
+<p>"I'm thinking."</p>
+<p>"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little&mdash;little dear
+one."</p>
+<p>She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said
+again.</p>
+<p>"Come and tell me what you're thinking."</p>
+<p>"I'm thinking about cats."</p>
+<p>"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_427" id="Page_427"></a>Yes," said Anna-Rose,
+stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully keeping her face
+hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they are."</p>
+<p>"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and
+come and talk to me now."</p>
+<p>"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably
+twins, and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes
+sixes, but still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and
+don't mind a bit what their&mdash;what their twins do&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."</p>
+<p>"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their
+whiskers and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them.
+Perhaps if I&mdash;if I had whiskers and a&mdash;and a
+purr&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
+Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a
+laugh as she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a
+sound so wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him,
+that Mr. Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said,
+catching at the cat and hugging her tight, "I can't let <i>you</i>
+go&mdash;" And she buried her face in her fur, so that Mr. Twist
+still couldn't see it.</p>
+<p>"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very
+firmly. "You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up,
+cat and all, and set her on her feet.</p>
+<p>Then he saw her face.</p>
+<p>"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking
+shelter behind her pride and looking at him as <a name="Page_428"
+id="Page_428"></a>defiantly as she could out of eyes almost closed
+up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen to&mdash;to seem
+as if I'd been crying that I&mdash;that I'm minding anything."</p>
+<p>"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had
+straightway forgotten about himself and his longings and his
+proposals, and only knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no,"
+he said, looking at her aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding
+anything, either of us."</p>
+<p>He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had
+got to do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of
+agony&mdash;yes, it was downright agony&mdash;on her face.</p>
+<p>He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he
+thought&mdash;he was pretty sure&mdash;she was thinking and feeling
+that her beloved Columbus had gone from her, and gone to a
+stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to a stranger she had never
+even seen, never even heard of; that her Columbus had had secrets
+from her, had been doing things behind her back; that she had had
+perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was tasting the
+dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that she must
+be sick with fears,&mdash;for he knew how responsible she felt, how
+seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin&mdash;sick with
+fear about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness,
+of looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for
+all any one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.</p>
+<p>Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt.
+Certainly he could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one
+with confidence, who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting
+mate for Anna-Felicitas. <a name="Page_429" id="Page_429"></a>But
+he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
+thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to
+suffer so violently on account of what was, after all, a natural
+happening. But however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.</p>
+<p>He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said;
+and led her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen
+window, towards the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come
+right along with me," he repeated, holding her firmly for she was
+very wobbly on her feet, "and we'll tell each other all about the
+things we're not minding. Do you remember when the <i>St. Luke</i>
+left Liverpool? You thought I thought you were minding things then,
+and were very angry with me. We've made friends since, haven't we,
+and we aren't going to mind anything ever again except each
+other."</p>
+<p>But he hardly knew what he was saying, so great was his concern
+and distress.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose went blindly. She stumbled along, helped by him,
+clutching the cat. She couldn't see out of her swollen eyes. Her
+foot caught in a root, and the cat, who had for some minutes past
+been thoroughly uneasy, became panic-stricken and struggled out of
+her arms, and fled into the wood. She tried to stop it, but it
+would go. For some reason this broke down her self-control. The
+warm cat clutched to her breast had at least been something living
+to hold on to. Now the very cat had gone. Her pride collapsed, and
+she tumbled against Mr. Twist's arm and just sobbed.</p>
+<p>If ever a man felt like a mother it was Mr. Twist at that
+moment. He promptly sat her down on the grass. "There
+now&mdash;there, there now," he said, whipping out his handkerchief
+and anxiously mopping up <a name="Page_430" id="Page_430"></a>her
+face. "This is what I did on the <i>St. Luke</i>&mdash;do you
+remember?&mdash;there now&mdash;that time you told me about your
+mother&mdash;it looks like being my permanent job&mdash;there,
+there now&mdash;don't now&mdash;you'll have no little eyes left
+soon if you go on like this&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;Co-Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes I know all about Columbus. Don't you worry about her.
+She's all right. She's all right in the office at this moment, and
+we're all right out here if only you knew it, if only you wouldn't
+cry such quantities. It beats me where it all comes from, and you
+so little&mdash;there, there now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know&mdash;you're worrying yourself sick because
+you think you're responsible for her to your aunt and uncle, but
+you won't be, you know, once she's married&mdash;there, there
+now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Now don't&mdash;now please&mdash;yes, yes, I know&mdash;he's a
+stranger, and you haven't seen him yet, but everybody was a
+stranger once," said Mr. Twist, quoting Anna-Felicitas's own
+argument, the one that had especially irritated him half-an-hour
+before, "and he's real good&mdash;I'm sure of it. And you'll be
+sure too the minute you see him. That's to say, if you're able to
+see anything or anybody for the next week out of your unfortunate
+stuck-together little eyes."</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;you don't&mdash;you
+haven't&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I have. Now turn your face so that I can wipe the
+other side properly. There now, I caught an enormous tear. I got
+him just in time before he trickled into your ear. Lord, how sore
+your poor little eyes are. Don't it even cheer you to think you're
+going to be a sister-in-law, Anna-Rose?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_431" id="Page_431"></a>Oh but you don't&mdash;you
+haven't&mdash;" she sobbed, her face not a whit less agonized for
+all his reassurances.</p>
+<p>"Well, I know I wish I were going to be a brother-in-law," said
+Mr. Twist, worried by his inability to reassure, as he tenderly and
+carefully dabbed about the corners of her eyes and her soaked
+eyelashes. "My, shouldn't I think well of myself."</p>
+<p>Then his hand shook.</p>
+<p>"I wish I were going to be Anna-Felicitas's brother-in-law," he
+said, suddenly impelled, perhaps by this failure to get rid of the
+misery in her face, to hurl himself on his fate. "Not
+<i>yours</i>&mdash;get your mind quite clear about that,&mdash;but
+Anna-Felicitas's." And his hand shook so much that he had to leave
+off drying. For this was a proposal. If only Anna-Rose would see
+it, this was a proposal.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, however, saw nothing. Even in normal times she wasn't
+good at relationships, and had never yet understood the
+that-man's-father-was-my-father's-son one; now she simply didn't
+hear. She was sitting with her hands limply in her lap, and sobbing
+in a curious sort of anguish.</p>
+<p>He couldn't help being struck by it. There was more in this than
+he had grasped. Again he forgot himself and his proposal. Again he
+was overwhelmed by the sole desire to help and comfort.</p>
+<p>He put his hand on the two hands lying with such an air of being
+forgotten on her lap. "What is it?" he asked gently. "Little dear
+one, tell me. It's clear I'm not dead on to it yet."</p>
+<p>"Oh&mdash;Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She seemed to writhe in her misery.</p>
+<p>"Well yes, yes Columbus. We know all about that."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432"></a>Anna-Rose turned her
+quivering face to him. "Oh, you haven't seen&mdash;you don't
+see&mdash;it's only me that's seen&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Seen what? What haven't I seen? Ah, don't cry&mdash;don't cry
+like that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I've lost her&mdash;lost her&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Lost her? Because she's marrying?"</p>
+<p>"Lost her&mdash;lost her&mdash;" sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Come now," remonstrated Mr. Twist. "Come now. That's just flat
+contrary to the facts. You've lost nothing, and you've gained a
+brother."</p>
+<p>"Oh,&mdash;lost her&mdash;lost her," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Come, come now," said Mr. Twist helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Oh," she sobbed, looking at him out of her piteous eyes, "has
+nobody thought of it but me? Columbus hasn't. I&mdash;I know she
+hasn't from what&mdash;from what&mdash;she said. She's
+too&mdash;too happy to think. But&mdash;haven't you
+thought&mdash;haven't you seen&mdash;that she'll be English
+now&mdash;really English&mdash;and go away from me to England with
+him&mdash;and I&mdash;I can't go to England&mdash;because I'm
+still&mdash;I'm still&mdash;an alien enemy&mdash;and so I've lost
+her&mdash;lost her&mdash;lost my own twin&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose dropped her head on to her knees and sobbed in an
+abandonment of agony.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat without saying or doing anything at all. He hadn't
+thought of this; nor, he was sure, had Anna-Felicitas. And it was
+true. Now he understood Anna-Rose's face and the despair of it. He
+sat looking at her, overwhelmed by the realization of her
+misfortune. For a moment he was blinded by it, and didn't see what
+it would mean for him. Then he did see. He almost leaped, so sudden
+was the vision, and so luminous.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," he said, his voice trembling, "I <a name="Page_433"
+id="Page_433"></a>want to put my arm round you. That's because I
+love you. And if you'll let me do that I could tell you of a way
+there is out of this for you. But I can't tell you so well
+unless&mdash;unless you let me put my arm round you first...."</p>
+<p>He waited trembling. She only sobbed. He couldn't even be sure
+she was listening. So he put his arm round her to try. At least she
+didn't resist. So he drew her closer. She didn't resist that
+either. He couldn't even be sure she knew about it. So he put his
+other arm round her too, and though he couldn't be sure, he
+thought&mdash;he hardly dared think, but it did seem as
+if&mdash;she nestled.</p>
+<p>Happiness, such as in his lonely, loveless life he had never
+imagined, flooded Mr. Twist. He looked down at her face, which was
+now so close to his, and saw that her eyes were shut. Great sobs
+went on shaking her little body, and her tears, now that he wasn't
+wiping them, were rolling down her cheeks unchecked.</p>
+<p>He held her closer to him, close to his heart where she
+belonged, and again he had that sensation, that wonderful
+sensation, of nestling.</p>
+<p>"Little Blessed, the way out is so simple," he whispered.
+"Little Blessed, don't you see?"</p>
+<p>But whether Anna-Rose saw seemed very doubtful. There was only
+that feeling, as to which he was no doubt mistaken, of nestling to
+go on. Her eyes, anyhow, remained shut, and her body continued to
+heave with sobs.</p>
+<p>He bent his head lower. His voice shook. "It's so, so simple,"
+he whispered. "All you've got to do is to marry me."</p>
+<p>And as she made an odd little movement in his arms he held her
+tighter and began to talk very fast.</p>
+<p>"No, no," he said, "don't answer anything yet. <a name=
+"Page_434" id="Page_434"></a>Just listen. Just let me tell you
+first. I want to tell you to start with how terribly I love you.
+But that doesn't mean you've got to love me&mdash;you needn't if
+you don't want to&mdash;if you can't&mdash;if you'd rather not I'm
+eighteen years older than you, and I know what I'm like to look
+at&mdash;no, don't say anything yet&mdash;just listen quiet
+first&mdash;but if you married me you'd be an American right away,
+don't you see? Just as Anna-Felicitas is going to be English. And I
+always intended going back to England as soon as may be, and if you
+married me what is to prevent your coming too? Coming to England?
+With Anna-Felicitas and her husband. Anna-Rose&mdash;little
+Blessed&mdash;think of it&mdash;all of us together. There won't be
+any aliens in that quartette, I guess, and the day you marry me
+you'll be done with being German for good and all. And don't you
+get supposing it matters about your not loving me, because, you
+see, I love you so much, I adore you so terribly, that anyhow
+there'll be more than enough love to go round, and you needn't ever
+worry about contributing any if you don't feel like it&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist broke off abruptly. "What say?" he said, for Anna-Rose
+was making definite efforts to speak. She was also making definite
+and unmistakable movements, and this time there could be no doubt
+about it; she was coming closer.</p>
+<p>"What say?" said Mr. Twist breathlessly, bending his head.</p>
+<p>"But I do," whispered Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Do what?" said Mr. Twist, again breathlessly.</p>
+<p>She turned her face up to his. On it was the same look he had
+lately seen on Anna-Felicitas's, shining through in spite of the
+disfiguration of her tears.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_435" id="Page_435"></a>But&mdash;<i>of course</i>
+I do," whispered Anna-Rose, an extraordinary smile, an awe-struck
+sort of smile, coming into her face at the greatness of her
+happiness, at the wonder of it.</p>
+<p>"What? Do what?" said Mr. Twist, still more breathlessly.</p>
+<p>"I&mdash;always did," whispered Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<i>What</i> did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able
+to believe it, and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;there on her little
+face, on her little transfigured face, shone the same look.</p>
+<p>"Oh&mdash;<i>love</i> you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close
+as she could get.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes
+past four that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper
+obliquely across the sign of The Open Arms with the word.</p>
+<h3>SHUT</h3>
+<p>on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr.
+Twist had only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the
+German inrush a few minutes before the hour, because of his being
+so happy; and when he did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the
+strip on only just in time. A car drove up as he came down the
+ladder.</p>
+<p>"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car,
+pointing, thwarted and astonished, to the sign.</p>
+<p>"Shut," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Shut?"</p>
+<p>"Shut."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14646 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14646 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14646)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher and Columbus, by Countess
+Elizabeth Von Arnim, Illustrated by Arthur Litle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Christopher and Columbus
+
+Author: Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
+
+Release Date: January 10, 2005  [eBook #14646]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS
+
+By the Author of _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_
+
+Frontispiece by Arthur Litle
+
+Garden City New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist,
+pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you." said Anna-Felicitas simply.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they decided,
+as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class deck of the
+American liner _St. Luke_, and watched the dirty water of the Mersey
+slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist,
+and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a
+father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized
+that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet
+sea, endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of
+it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they
+could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the very
+remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to the
+other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways, derelicts, two
+wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor really
+English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were both,--they
+decided, looking very calm and determined and sitting very close
+together beneath the rug their English aunt had given them to put round
+their miserable alien legs, that what they really were, were Christopher
+and Columbus, because they were setting out to discover a New World.
+
+"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go and
+discover America. All for ourselves."
+
+It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and Columbus. She
+was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their seventeenth
+birthday--and what a birthday: no cake, no candles, no kisses and
+wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to
+comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it hard, you can't get blood out of an
+aunt--only a month before. Both were very German outside and very
+English inside. Both had fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have,
+and eyes the colour of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic.
+Their noses were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if
+you are a Junker's daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose.
+Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round.
+Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the most
+of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was tall and
+thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker made her eyes
+more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both held their heads up
+with a great air of calm whenever anybody on the ship looked at them, as
+who should say serenely, "We're _thoroughly_ happy, and having the time
+of our lives."
+
+For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they were even
+aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry. Like other
+persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful nor pretended to
+be so much amused as when they were right down on the very bottom of
+their luck. Like other persons of German blood, they had the squashiest
+corners deep in their hearts, where they secretly clung to cakes and
+Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible
+anniversary, both dead and alive.
+
+The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the rubbish that
+floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty
+boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay
+about on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their
+mother's country, the country of their dreams ever since they could
+remember--and the _St. Luke_ with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.
+
+Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting an inch
+closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a submarine already?
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, changing as it
+were the unspoken conversation.
+
+As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward her
+twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and encourage
+her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them, and hadn't
+seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that happened to
+her,--such as, for instance, when the war began and they three, their
+father having died some years before, left their home up by the Baltic,
+just as there was the most heavenly weather going on, and the garden was
+a dream, and the blue Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens
+that very day,--all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose
+thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the
+tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery,--and came by slow
+and difficult stages to England; or such as when their mother began
+catching cold and didn't seem at last ever able to leave off catching
+cold, and though she tried to pretend she didn't mind colds and that
+they didn't matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter
+very much, for between them they killed her.
+
+Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that she was
+dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose's duty, as the next eldest in the family,
+to carry on the tradition and discountenance too much drooping in
+Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much too thoughtfully at the
+deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky and the rubbish brooding on
+the face of the waters, and she had jumped rather excessively when the
+_St. Luke_ stopped so suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake
+hard, and emitted that agonized whistle.
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, "and we're
+going to discover America."
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'll be Christopher."
+
+"No. I'll be Christopher," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable, acquiescent
+person in the world. "Then I suppose I'll have to be Columbus. But I
+think Christopher sounds prettier."
+
+Both rolled their r's incurably. It was evidently in their blood, for
+nothing, no amount of teaching and admonishment, could get them out of
+it. Before they were able to talk at all, in those happy days when
+parents make astounding assertions to other parents about the
+intelligence and certain future brilliancy of their offspring, and the
+other parents, however much they may pity such self-deception, can't
+contradict, because after all it just possibly may be so, the most
+foolish people occasionally producing geniuses,--in those happy days of
+undisturbed bright castle-building, the mother, who was English, of the
+two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the _St. Luke_, said to
+the father, who was German, "At any rate these two blessed little
+bundles of deliciousness"--she had one on each arm and was tickling
+their noses alternately with her eyelashes, and they were screaming for
+joy--"won't have to learn either German or English. They'll just _know_
+them."
+
+"Perhaps," said the father, who was a cautious man.
+
+"They're born bi-lingual," said the mother; and the twins wheezed and
+choked with laughter, for she was tickling them beneath their chins,
+softly fluttering her eyelashes along the creases of fat she thought so
+adorable.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+"It gives them a tremendous start," said the mother; and the twins
+squirmed in a dreadful ecstasy, for she had now got to their ears.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+But what happened was that they didn't speak either language. Not, that
+is, as a native should. Their German bristled with mistakes. They spoke
+it with a foreign accent. It was copious, but incorrect. Almost the last
+thing their father, an accurate man, said to them as he lay dying, had
+to do with a misplaced dative. And when they talked English it rolled
+about uncontrollably on its r's, and had a great many long words in it
+got from Milton, and Dr. Johnson, and people like that, whom their
+mother had particularly loved, but as they talked far more to their
+mother than to their father, who was a man of much briefness in words
+though not in temper, they were better on the whole at English than
+German.
+
+Their mother, who loved England more the longer she lived away from
+it,--"As one does; and the same principle," Anna-Rose explained to
+Anna-Felicitas when they had lived some time with their aunt and uncle,
+"applies to relations, aunts' husbands, and the clergy,"--never tired of
+telling her children about it, and its poetry, and its spirit, and the
+greatness and glory of its points of view. They drank it all in and
+believed every word of it, for so did their mother; and as they grew up
+they flung themselves on all the English books they could lay hands
+upon, and they read with their mother and learned by heart most of the
+obviously beautiful things; and because she glowed with enthusiasm they
+glowed too--Anna-Rose in a flare and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow and
+steadily. They adored their mother. Whatever she loved they loved
+blindly. It was a pity she died. She died soon after the war began. They
+had been so happy, so _dreadfully_ happy....
+
+"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a shake, for
+here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to think of one's
+mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to a new life and
+everything is all promise because it isn't anything else, and not if
+one's mother happened to have been so--well, so fearfully sweet. "You
+can't be Christopher, because, you see, I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with it, but
+she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and expressed a hope that
+Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her Col for short. "I'm afraid
+you will, though," she added, "and then I shall feel so like Onkel
+Nicolas."
+
+This was their German uncle, known during his life-time, which had
+abruptly left off when the twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient
+person, older by far even than their father, who had seemed so very old.
+But Onkel Col had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of
+the _liebe Gott_ in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He came to
+a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them anything
+except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a black band round
+the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was more good-tempered
+than ever, and their mother, when they questioned her, just said that
+poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven, and that in future they would speak
+of him as Onkel Nicolas, because it was more respectful.
+
+"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
+Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the garden.
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so often
+explained to her sister, naturally knew more about everything, "because
+the angels won't like him. Nobody _could_ like Onkel Col. Even if
+they're angels. And though they're obliged to have him there because he
+was such a very good man, they won't talk to him much or notice him much
+when God isn't looking. And second of all, because you _are_ poor when
+you get to heaven. Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their
+things with them, and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He
+couldn't even take his clothes with him."
+
+"Then is he quite--did Onkel Col go there quite--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection with
+Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at them from the
+folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever they were led in,
+trembling, to see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it
+seemed particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
+which was surely of all places the most _endimanché_.
+
+"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a little.
+She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her mouth close to
+Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."
+
+They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in their
+eyes.
+
+"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away from the
+awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven because they
+don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you can't have
+the moth without having anything for it to go into."
+
+"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn when they take their
+furs out."
+
+"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven," continued
+Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there _isn't_ anything to steal."
+
+"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for she didn't
+like to think there was nothing really valuable in heaven.
+
+"Oh, nobody ever steals _them_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new uncomfortable
+view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right, and she always was
+right for she said so herself, that heaven couldn't be such a safe place
+after all, nor such a kind place. Thieves could break in and steal if
+they wanted to. She had a proper horror of thieves. She was sure the
+night would certainly come when they would break into her father's
+_Schloss_, or, as her English nurse called it, her dear Papa's slosh;
+and she was worried that poor Onkel Col should be being snubbed up
+there, and without anything to put on, which would make being snubbed so
+much worse, for clothes did somehow comfort one.
+
+She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment when she
+knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour for
+inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the orchard, an
+exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because she had learned
+through affliction that her inside, fond and proud of it as she was, was
+yet not of that superior and blessed kind that suffers green apples
+gladly--she sought out the nursemaid, whose name, too, confusingly, was
+Anna, and led the conversation up to heaven and the possible conditions
+prevailing in it by asking her to tell her, in strict confidence and as
+woman to woman, what she thought Onkel Col exactly looked like at that
+moment.
+
+"Unrecognizable," said the nursemaid promptly.
+
+"Unrecognizable?" echoed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+And the nursemaid, after glancing over her shoulder to see if the
+governess were nowhere in sight, told Anna-Felicitas the true story of
+Onkel Col's end: which is so bad that it isn't fit to be put in any book
+except one with an appendix.
+
+A stewardess passed just as Anna-Felicitas was asking Anna-Rose not to
+remind her of these grim portions of the past by calling her Col, a
+stewardess in such a very clean white cap that she looked both reliable
+and benevolent, while secretly she was neither.
+
+"Can you please tell us why we're stopping?" Anna-Rose inquired of her
+politely, leaning forward to catch her attention as she hurried by.
+
+The stewardess allowed her roving eye to alight for a moment on the two
+objects beneath the rug. Their chairs were close together, and the rug
+covered them both up to their chins. Over the top of it their heads
+appeared, exactly alike as far as she could see in the dusk; round
+heads, each with a blue knitted cap pulled well over its ears, and round
+eyes staring at her with what anybody except the stewardess would have
+recognized as a passionate desire for some sort of reassurance. They
+might have been seven instead of seventeen for all the stewardess could
+tell. They looked younger than anything she had yet seen sitting alone
+on a deck and asking questions. But she was an exasperated widow, who
+had never had children and wasn't to be touched by anything except a
+tip, besides despising, because she was herself a second-class
+stewardess, all second-class passengers,--"As one does," Anna-Rose
+explained later on to Anna-Felicitas, "and the same principle applies to
+Jews." So she said with an acidity completely at variance with the
+promise of her cap, "Ask the Captain," and disappeared.
+
+The twins looked at each other. They knew very well that captains on
+ships were mighty beings who were not asked questions.
+
+"She's trifling with us," murmured Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose was obliged to admit, though the thought was repugnant
+to her that they should look like people a stewardess would dare trifle
+with.
+
+"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
+silence.
+
+"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the rug."
+
+"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown up."
+
+"Yes. She ought to have seen us six months ago."
+
+Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised at the
+activities and complete appearance of the two pupć now rolled motionless
+in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both been probationers in a
+children's hospital in Worcestershire, arrayed, even as the stewardess,
+in spotless caps, hurrying hither and thither with trays of food,
+sweeping and washing up, learning to make beds in a given time, and be
+deft, and quick, and never tired, and always punctual.
+
+This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of their Aunt
+Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their departure and who
+had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was an amiable aunt, but
+she didn't understand about birthdays. It was the first one they had had
+since they were complete orphans, and so they were rather sensitive
+about it. But they hadn't cried, because since their mother's death they
+had done with crying. What could there ever again be in the world bad
+enough to cry about after that? And besides, just before she dropped
+away from them into the unconsciousness out of which she never came
+back, but instead just dropped a little further into death, she had
+opened her eyes unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row
+by her bed, two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen
+faces and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
+moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and distance
+and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered with a flicker of
+the old encouraging smile that had comforted every hurt and bruise they
+had ever had, "_Don't cry_ ... little darlings, _don't_ cry...."
+
+But on that first birthday after her death they had got more and more
+solemn as time passed, and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no
+sounds, prick up their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in
+the next room, no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the
+presents, and at last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open
+of the door and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with
+candles, each on a table covered with flowers and all the things one has
+most wanted.
+
+Their aunt didn't know. How should she? England was a great and beloved
+country, but it didn't have proper birthdays.
+
+"Every country has one drawback," Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas
+when the morning was finally over, in case she should by any chance be
+thinking badly of the dear country that had produced their mother as
+well as Shakespeare, "and not knowing about birthdays is England's."
+
+"There's Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, whose honest mind groped
+continually after accuracy.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose admitted after a pause. "Yes. There's Uncle Arthur."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like foreigners,
+and said so. He never had liked them and had always said so. It wasn't
+the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as the war went on, and these
+German nieces of his wife became more and more, as he told her, a
+blighted nuisance, so did he become more and more pointed, and said he
+didn't mind French foreigners, nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks
+later, that it wasn't Italian foreigners either that he minded; and
+still later, that nor was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of
+countries called neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a
+general way. To his wife when alone he said much more.
+
+Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to soften his
+heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings when he came home
+weary from his daily avocations, which were golf. Her own suggestion
+instantly projected a touching picture on her impressionable imagination
+of youth, grateful for a roof over its head, in return alleviating the
+tedium of crabbed age by introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was
+evidently unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great
+masters of English literature.
+
+But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when she
+proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug, where he
+was moving money about in trouser-pockets of the best material. And
+later on she discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen,"
+and "Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals during
+his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get mentioned
+were well-known racehorses.
+
+Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he said
+things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate alien nieces
+longer than one would have supposed possible if one had overheard what
+he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their bed. His ordered
+existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew, was shaken in its
+innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans.
+Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but
+who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he
+couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures,
+his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but
+he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs
+couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she
+belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when
+she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
+children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that
+he would like to know.
+
+Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was both
+silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said nothing. She
+herself was quietly going through very much on behalf of her nieces.
+Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The tradespeople twitted
+the cook with having to cook for them and were facetious about sausages
+and asked how one made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
+very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was doing
+and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard such strange
+things, one never could possibly tell even with children; and regularly
+the local policeman bicycled over to see if the aliens, who were
+registered at the county-town police-station, were still safe. And then
+they looked so very German, Aunt Alice felt. There was no mistaking
+them. And every time they opened their mouths there were all those r's
+rolling about. She hardly liked callers to find her nieces in her
+drawing-room at tea-time, they were so difficult to explain; yet they
+were too old to shut up in a nursery.
+
+After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them back to
+Germany; but their consternation had been so great and their entreaties
+to be kept where they were so desperate that he said no more about that.
+Besides, they told him that if they went back there they would be sure
+to be shot as spies, for over there nobody would believe they were
+German, just as over here nobody would believe they were English; and
+besides, this was in those days of the war when England was still
+regarding Germany as more mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever
+of the tradition of great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward
+a foe, and Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be
+behind his country in generosity.
+
+Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous necklace of
+war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead of horror strung
+upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle remaining good, in
+practice found himself vindictive. He was saddled; that's what he was.
+Saddled with this monstrous unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic of
+Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given notice by
+his old servants, having particular attention paid his house at night by
+the police, getting anonymous letters about lights seen in his upper
+windows the nights; the Zeppelins came, which were the windows of the
+floor those blighted twins slept on, and all because he had married Aunt
+Alice.
+
+At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was not a
+place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married Uncle
+Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed; but now she
+was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be told that she had
+brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life by having let him
+marry her. Inquiring backwards into her recollections it appeared to her
+that she had had no say at all about being married, but that Uncle
+Arthur had told her she was going to be, and then that she had been.
+Which was what had indeed happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little
+woman even in those days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with
+agreeable fat at the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist
+delicacy that comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she
+suggested, just as now, most of the things most men want to come home
+to,--slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and peace within
+one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out privately to
+Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the first time, she
+suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied fashions succulent, she
+was doomed to make some good man happy. But she did find it real hard
+work.
+
+It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that Uncle
+Arthur would not much longer endure his nieces, and that even if he did
+she would not be able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very
+dreadful to her that she was being forced to choose between two duties,
+and that she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she
+must either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
+and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing by, go
+away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or she must
+stand by Arthur.
+
+She chose Arthur.
+
+How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her husband?
+Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole of their
+married life that she was now unalterably attached to him. Sometimes a
+wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing dusk of her mind,
+the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving him for them, and helping
+and protecting the two poor aliens till happier days should return. If
+there were any good stuff in Arthur would he not recognize, however
+angry he might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
+this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
+too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
+lean and dangerous enterprises.
+
+And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
+determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would remove
+them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a children's
+hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed to very
+largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to hospitals. The
+matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron; and from January to
+April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from Germans.
+
+Then they came back again.
+
+It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with them.
+The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was who
+brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
+arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
+nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
+Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
+said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
+poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
+it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as
+though they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")
+
+Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
+r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little
+mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and
+equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a
+week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a
+fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on
+patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron,
+with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the
+biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
+being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably have
+continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses if it
+had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the younger
+Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.
+
+In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's shortcomings
+by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas
+was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
+never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
+bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her duty, but
+every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against it and it
+fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with apprehension.
+Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.
+
+"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly
+to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.
+
+"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.
+
+"She reads, you see, a lot--whenever she gets the chance she reads--"
+
+"Reads!" echoed the sister.
+
+"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"
+
+"Thinking! Reading doesn't make _me_ think."
+
+"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
+dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
+nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
+be pleased to keep her on."
+
+"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced
+these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like
+very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to
+look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."
+
+The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many notes--and
+stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to
+her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from
+everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
+ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining
+and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
+kitten.
+
+"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
+always do what one considers one's first duty."
+
+So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly
+relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said
+Damn.
+
+"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.
+
+"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can
+we--"
+
+"Arthur," said his wife.
+
+"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people
+wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any
+better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for when he
+marries!"
+
+"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt Alice,
+tears in her gentle eyes.
+
+There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of Aunt Alice.
+She answered advertisements and offered the twins as nursery
+governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps, even as orphans
+willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim on salaries, she
+offered them for nothing, and at last she offered them accompanied by a
+bonus. "Their mother was English. They are quite English," wrote Aunt
+Alice innumerable times in innumerable letters. "I feel bound, however,
+to tell you that they once had a German father, but of course it was
+through no fault of their own," etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with
+writing letters; and any solution of the problem that might possibly
+have been arrived at came to nothing because Anna-Rose would not be
+separated from Anna-Felicitas, and if it was difficult to find anybody
+who would take on one German nobody at all could be found to take on
+two.
+
+Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt Alice was
+at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The twins racked their
+brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to relieve Uncle Arthur of
+their presence as he was to be relieved. If only they could be
+independent, do something, work, go as housemaids,--anything.
+
+They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it to _The
+Times_, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay for it. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but unimpeachable
+    Sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with respectability.
+    No objection to being demeaned.
+
+Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was Anna-Rose's
+word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding things like
+being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose. "Upper and Under.
+I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she regarded
+it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word, liked it, and
+explained that it Put a whole sentence into a nut-shell, and wouldn't
+change it.
+
+No one answered this advertisement except a society in London for
+helping alien enemies in distress.
+
+"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.
+
+"And fancy thinking _us_ enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While
+mummy--" Her eyes filled with tears. She kept them back, however,
+behind convenient long eye-lashes.
+
+Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of _The Times_ that
+they instantly answered without saying a word to Aunt Alice. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Slightly wounded Officer would be glad to find intelligent and
+    interesting companion who can drive a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments by
+    arrangement.
+
+"We'll _tell_ him we're intelligent and interesting," said Anna-Rose,
+eagerly.
+
+"Yes--who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given a chance?"
+said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.
+
+"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the emoluments
+won't have to be doubled."
+
+"Yes--because he mightn't like paying twice over."
+
+"Yes--and while the preliminaries are being settled we could be learning
+to drive Uncle Arthur's car."
+
+"Yes--except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they different?"
+
+"Yes--but only about the same difference as there is between a man and a
+woman. A man and a woman are both human beings, you know. And Daimlers
+and Humbers are both cars."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.
+
+They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.
+
+The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward the end
+of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and were
+requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to express their
+sympathy with his wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity
+of driving a Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
+instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell them
+if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so it was very
+unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite the contrary.
+
+They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all hope
+and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have betrayed their
+want of intelligence and interestingness right away, when one day a
+letter came from General Headquarters in France, addressed _To Both the
+Miss Twinklers_, and it was a long letter, pages long, from the slightly
+wounded officer, telling them he had been patched up again and sent back
+to the front, and their answer to his advertisement had been forwarded
+to him there, and that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that
+the one he had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped
+when he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
+glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring them,--quick motoring
+in his racing car, sixty miles an hour motoring, flashing through the
+wonders of the New Forest, where he lived. And then there was a long bit
+about what the New Forest must be looking like just then, all quiet in
+the spring sunshine, with lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the
+big beeches, and the heather just coming alive, and all the winding
+solitary roads so full of peace, so empty of noise.
+
+"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end. "You've no
+idea what it's like getting letters from home out here. Write and tell
+me what you do and what the garden is like these fine afternoons. The
+lilacs must be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them
+still about, and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and
+tea is brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
+except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog barking
+somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."
+
+The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a scrawl in
+the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English kids like you that
+we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again soon."
+
+"English kids like us!"
+
+They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their belligerent
+ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and as if Captain
+Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under false pretences. They
+also wondered why he should conclude they were kids.
+
+They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly what
+could be described as English, but on the other hand neither were they
+exactly what could be described as German. "We would be very glad indeed
+if we were really _something_," they added.
+
+But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in the
+list of casualties in _The Times_ that Captain John Desmond had been
+killed.
+
+And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was revealed to
+Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday morning
+considering his troubles in detail.
+
+Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into being,--obvious,
+unquestionable, splendidly simple,--out of a trifle. For, chancing to
+raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to the bookshelves in front of him,
+they rested on one particular book, and on the back of this book stood
+out in big gilt letters the word
+
+    AMERICA
+
+There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it
+had all the effect of a revelation.
+
+There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the devil
+hadn't Alice thought of _that_? He knew some Americans; he didn't like
+them, but he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice would write
+to them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would give the twins
+Ł200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome, especially in
+war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no earthly sort of claim on
+him, whatever Alice might choose to think they had on her. Yet it was
+such a confounded mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he
+wouldn't come under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money,
+as aiding the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to
+be rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would fall
+on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed Germans
+without making a face.
+
+Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
+insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's what
+_they've_ done," he said to himself--for this was 1916, and America had
+not yet made her magnificent entry into the war--as he had already said
+to himself a hundred times. "Lost their chance of coming in on the side
+of civilization, and helping sweep the world up tidy of barbarism.
+Shoulder to shoulder with us, that's where _they_ ought to have been.
+English-speaking races--duty to the world--" He then damned the
+Americans; but was suddenly interrupted by perceiving that if they had
+been shoulder to shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been
+able to send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
+he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
+however, concede any others.
+
+At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
+Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
+uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
+to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.
+
+It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet Sunday, when
+he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had overdone the joint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+And so, on a late September afternoon, the _St. Luke_, sliding away from
+her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his burden.
+
+It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
+not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
+knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
+pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
+moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
+perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
+in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
+case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
+that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
+nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
+_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.
+
+For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
+enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
+And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
+seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
+her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
+them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
+they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
+_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
+afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
+waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.
+
+"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
+handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.
+
+"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
+gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
+eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
+sniffing.
+
+Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out
+her handkerchief and waved it violently.
+
+Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.
+"Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has any one
+come to see us off?"
+
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.
+
+The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had
+faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round
+and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight
+for a minute.
+
+"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But do you
+suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen
+off?"
+
+And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were
+safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, "That
+man--" and then stopped. "What man?"
+
+"Standing just behind us--"
+
+"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than
+she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.
+
+"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.
+
+"Yes. Did you ever?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her
+handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever; and after a
+pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and
+anxieties--she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn't remember
+some of them--turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried
+eye on her said, "You won't go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna
+F.?"
+
+"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.
+
+"Your German Bible. The bit about _wenn die bösen Buben locken, so folge
+sie nicht_."
+
+Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a troubled
+brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you, Anna F.?"
+
+For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she was very
+pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite creature God had
+yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed this conviction from
+her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds. She considered it wouldn't
+have been at all good for her; and she had, up to this, and ever since
+they could both remember, jeered in a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her
+defects, concentrating particularly on her nose, on her leanness, and
+on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.
+
+But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own
+face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
+Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was
+lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days
+before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that
+her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and
+forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--"For," had said her
+father at monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as
+straight as a fir-tree,"--she only seemed to fall into even more
+attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had
+the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger
+sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully
+avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her
+conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.
+
+But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to
+handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so
+carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at
+that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling
+her meaning, and after a space of staring at her with a mild inquiry in
+her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too
+polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
+_St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make
+conversation about Christopher and Columbus.
+
+She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.
+She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on
+like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't
+only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
+into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and
+discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure,
+said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully
+to heart."
+
+The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and
+would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of passengers
+walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and passing and
+repassing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads
+that might be either the heads of boys or of girls, and they were
+greatly relieved to think they wouldn't have to begin and be sea-sick
+for some hours yet. "So couldn't we walk about a little?" suggested
+Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane
+chair.
+
+But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a ship if
+they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid being sick but
+also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the moment the ship got
+under way, and not move out of them till it stopped again. "Or, at
+least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself
+been further on a ship than to Calais, but recognized that it might be
+difficult to avoid moving sooner or later if it was New York you were
+going to. "Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as
+seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you second-class
+for that very reason, because it is so much less conspicuous."
+
+It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle Arthur's generosities
+were of the kind that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in
+eating he was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be
+damned, so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and
+the extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that were
+necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary, before he
+finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so profoundly that
+when it came to taking their passage he could hardly be got not to send
+them in the steerage. This was too much, however, for Aunt Alice, whose
+maid was going with them as far as Euston and therefore would know what
+sort of tickets they had, and she insisted with such quiet obstinacy
+that they should be sent first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the
+difference and consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also
+explained that second-class was less conspicuous.
+
+Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the wisdom of
+walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already, but she too was
+stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has a wonderful effect,
+as she had already in her brief career had numerous occasions to
+observe, in doing away with prudent determinations. So, after cautiously
+looking round the corners to see if the man who was on the verge of
+being sorry for them were nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the
+damp, dark deck; and the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them
+a sensation of being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between
+two worlds.
+
+Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then against the
+side of the _St. Luke_ when some other steamer, invisible in the mist,
+felt her way slowly by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
+that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other side,
+hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it further and
+further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt, it yet, because
+on either side of it were still the shores of England, didn't seem as
+forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land they were bound for. For
+suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of Anna-Rose, who had been privately
+asking herself the same thing, America didn't like them? Suppose the
+same sort of difficulties were waiting for them over there that had
+dogged their footsteps in England?
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself on the
+readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will like us,
+because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to it in exactly
+the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,--and don't you go forgetting it and
+showing your disagreeable side--that the dove was in when it flew across
+the waters to the ark, and with olive branches in our beaks just the
+same as the dove's, only they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's
+friends."
+
+"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends--" began Anna-Felicitas, who
+had great doubts as to everything connected with Uncle Arthur.
+
+"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she wasn't
+going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question liked to give
+all the information in her power, "secondly, America is the greatest of
+the neutrals except the _liebe Gott_, and is bound particularly to
+prize us because we're so unusually and peculiarly neutral. What ever was
+more neutral than you and me? We're neither one thing nor the other, and
+yet at the same time we're both." Anna-Felicitas remarked that it sounded
+rather as if they were the Athanasian Creed.
+
+"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's Ł200
+waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm thing to think of.
+We never had Ł200 waiting for us anywhere in our lives before, did
+we,--so you remember that, and don't get grumbling."
+
+Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that she
+couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the goodwill of
+Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt Alice's friends they
+had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's friends were more likely to
+like her.
+
+Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which to start
+on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and that one
+didn't have doubts.
+
+Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she was very
+hungry, not having had anything that could be called a meal since
+breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in "Lycidas," the hungry
+ones who looked up and were not fed, and she quoted the lines in case
+Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew
+the lines by heart, and if there was any quoting to be done liked to do
+it herself), and said she felt just like that,--"Empty," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "and yet swollen. When do you suppose people have food
+on board ships? I don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about--oh well,
+about leaving England, if it was after dinner."
+
+"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At least,
+not more than's just proper."
+
+"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily. "Except
+what's proper."
+
+"And even if we were feeling it _dreadfully_," said Anna-Rose, with a
+little catch in her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't
+make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."
+
+"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got much to
+bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things, Anna-F."
+
+"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.
+
+They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there wouldn't
+soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all disappeared.
+They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there were no lights.
+The row of cabin windows along the wall were closely shuttered, and the
+door they had come through when first they came on deck was shut too,
+and they couldn't find it in the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling
+along a wall for a door they knew was there and not be able to find it,
+that they began to laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up
+more than anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
+Arthur.
+
+"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and vainly
+along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.
+
+"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas,
+following in her tracks.
+
+A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left off
+patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity against the
+wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It was a male
+figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they thought, and it stopped
+in front of them and said in an American voice, "Hello."
+
+Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of reply
+to Hello.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured "Hello"
+back again.
+
+Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to people
+they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think they had
+brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided that perhaps
+"Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said it.
+
+"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of this.
+
+"That's what _we_ think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.
+
+"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose, still
+distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to know.
+
+"But _don't_ tell us to ask the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas, even more
+earnestly.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."
+
+The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding on; and
+they followed him as obediently as though such persons as possible _böse
+Buben_ didn't exist.
+
+"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.
+
+"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs were
+long and they could hardly keep up with him.
+
+"English?" said the man.
+
+"Ye--es," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I said," Anna-Felicitas
+endeavoured to explain, hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep
+within reach of his ear, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the pantings for
+breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"
+
+They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful question to
+have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but, having got to the
+door they had been searching for, opened it and stepped into the bright
+light inside, and putting out his arm behind him pulled them in one
+after the other over the high wooden door-frame.
+
+Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the afternoon,
+engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like grievances to an
+official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She stopped suddenly when
+the man appeared, and the official took his hands out of his pockets and
+became alert and attentive, and the stewardess hastily picked up a tray
+she had set down and began to move away along a passage.
+
+The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and came
+back even more quickly than she had tried to go.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to Anna-Felicitas,
+"it's Hi she answers to."
+
+"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good circumlocutions to
+throw them away on her."
+
+"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.
+
+He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason into a
+laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to follow him, and
+went out again into the night.
+
+"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the stewardess
+down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber and machine-oil
+and cooking all mixed up together.
+
+"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't tell us to
+ask the Captain, because we really do know better than that."
+
+"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.
+
+"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."
+
+The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.
+
+"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of course."
+
+"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess shortly,
+eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.
+
+"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."
+
+"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing to stare
+round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down
+arm-in-arm.
+
+"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do you
+suppose we quarrel?"
+
+"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
+stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."
+
+She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or
+the long girl.
+
+"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas
+gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head. She was
+unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a
+reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
+years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take more than even
+the Captain to obsess _me_."
+
+They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the
+stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly
+leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If you're friends, what
+do you want to know his name for, then?"
+
+"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The Captain's," said the stewardess.
+
+"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
+patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."
+
+"Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself, however, and
+merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman _was_ the Captain," went
+upstairs and left them.
+
+Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your advice," she
+called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for it was evident that
+for some reason her heart was hardened, by flattery. "You _told_ us to
+ask the Captain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it occurred to
+them that perhaps what was the matter with the stewardess was that she
+needed a tip. At first, with their recent experiences fresh in their
+minds, they thought that she was probably passionately pro-Ally, and had
+already detected all those Junkers in their past and accordingly
+couldn't endure them. Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You
+will have to give your stewardess a little something."
+
+This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they had
+been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the tippers, and
+anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses. Neither, it
+appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she said vaguely
+that as it was an American boat they were going on she supposed it would
+have to be American money, which was dollars, and she didn't know much
+about dollars except that you divided them by four and multiplied them
+by five, or else it was the other way about; and when, feeling still
+uninformed, they had begged her to tell them why one did that, she said
+it was the quickest way of finding out what a dollar really was, and
+would they mind not talking any more for a little while because her head
+ached.
+
+The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had all
+been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but Americans,
+Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of their talking
+English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this point
+and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to crane out her
+head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her whether she didn't think
+that might be so, but was afraid of disturbing the people in the
+opposite berths.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin, and
+Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
+Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the opposite
+side were two similar berths, each containing as Anna-Felicitas
+whispered after peeping cautiously through their closed curtains,--for
+at first on coming in after dinner to go to bed the cabin seemed empty,
+except for inanimate things, like clothes hanging up and an immense
+smell,--its human freight. They were awed by this discovery, for the
+human freight was motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the
+noises suggesting sleep.
+
+They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible, but it
+was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for anything, not
+even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced a little uneasily
+at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed cautiously and
+delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly was. It appeared to
+be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum pudding at Christmas, and
+German bedrooms in the morning. It was a smell they didn't like the idea
+of sleeping with, but they saw no way of getting air. They thought of
+ringing for the stewardess and asking her to open a window, though they
+could see no window, but came to the conclusion it was better not to
+stir her up; not yet, at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed
+what was the matter with her. They said nothing out loud, for fear of
+disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains, but they knew what each
+was thinking, for one isn't, as they had long ago found out, a twin for
+nothing.
+
+There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely hoisted up
+into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for some time after the
+rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had already neatly inserted
+herself into her own berth, after watching these legs in silence and
+fighting a desire to give them a tug and see what would happen, had to
+get out at last on hearing Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there
+as though she were choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was
+then on a level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
+Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do anything
+with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the blankets, but
+lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes up very tight and
+stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and evidently struggling
+with what appeared to be an attack of immoderate and ill-timed mirth.
+
+Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was suddenly seized
+herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a hasty glance round
+at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her own berth and pulled the
+sheet over her mouth.
+
+She was sobering herself by going over her different responsibilities,
+checking them off on her fingers,--the two five-pound notes under her
+pillow for extra expenses till they were united in New York to their
+capital, the tickets, the passports, and Anna-Felicitas,--when two thick
+fair pigtails appeared dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by
+Anna-Felicitas's head.
+
+"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered Anna-Felicitas, her
+eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still
+further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood
+rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
+freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of
+its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really
+stowaways.
+
+"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head emphatically,
+which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose, considering that it
+was upside down. "_German_ stowaways," whispered Anna-Felicitas,
+sniffing expressively though cautiously.
+
+Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the bulging
+curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much curved. In spite
+of herself her flesh began to creep a little.
+
+"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously congested.
+"Stowaways are."
+
+There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board and
+took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till they came
+to bed.
+
+"_German_ men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a delicate
+expressive sniff.
+
+"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into ladies'
+cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."
+
+"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies' disguise."
+She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible suggestions.
+
+"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly, for
+Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic fit.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
+inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
+very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet creep
+across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness.
+She sat up to watch, her eyes round with interest.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with several
+pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the berths. Having
+got there she stood still a moment listening, and then putting a careful
+finger between the curtain of the lower berth and its frame, drew it the
+smallest crack aside and peeped in.
+
+Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your pardon,"
+she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I thought--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush down her
+back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any more than
+before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker than she had gone.
+She just stopped on the way to switch off the light, and then felt along
+the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till she got to her head, and pulling
+it near her by its left pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its
+left ear, "Wide awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."
+
+And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady in the
+berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that didn't make them
+less German. Nothing ever makes a German less German, Anna-Rose
+explained to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their blood
+by the right kind of mother."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."
+
+This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the next day,
+by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human freight being
+Germans, for one of their own submarines came after the _St. Luke_ and
+no one was quite so loud in expression of terror and dislike as the two
+Germans.
+
+They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were Germans.
+They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was nothing compared
+to how one had been born. The curtains of their berths, till then so
+carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and the berths gave up their
+contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it
+was the resurrection and the berths were riven sepulchres chucking up
+their dead.
+
+This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the _St. Luke_ was
+pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The twins, waking
+about seven, found with a pained surprise that they were not where they
+had been dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing
+tennis happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
+that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
+groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long
+it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head
+once with the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped
+it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as quiet
+as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even raise her head,
+she felt so very uncomfortable.
+
+At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same stewardess, they
+languidly noted, with whom already they had had two encounters, for it
+happened that this was one of the cabins she attended to--and said that
+if anybody wanted breakfast they had better be quick or it would be
+over.
+
+"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending tone; and
+instantly was sick.
+
+The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the twins,
+in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so as not to
+witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the cabin, feebly
+marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being quick to persons who
+were being constantly stood on their heads. And breakfast,--they
+shuddered and thought of other things; of fresh, sweet air, and of the
+scent of pinks and apricots warm with the sun.
+
+At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in, and
+with determination in every gesture.
+
+"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them talking
+at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side, "you mustn't
+give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed. You must get up
+and go on deck. And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all
+the time?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was more on
+the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could only see the
+stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured that she didn't
+care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat drill at
+mid-day, and you've got to be present."
+
+Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every soul on the
+ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat drill."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that moment
+how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths redoubled
+their groans.
+
+"Come, come--" said the stewardess.
+
+Then the _St. Luke_ whistled five times, and the stewardess turned pale.
+For a brief space, before they understood what had happened, the twins
+supposed she was going to be sick. But it wasn't that that was the
+matter with her, for after a moment's staring at nothing with horror on
+her face she pounced on them and pulled them bodily out of their berths,
+regardless by which end, and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she
+plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the
+passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled
+back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with
+hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and
+all the time she was calling out "Quick--quick--quick--" There was a
+great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.
+
+The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the
+Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled
+vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the
+fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran
+in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps,--a steward so much
+bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the
+German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their
+protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother
+Nature--Mother Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only
+stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and
+seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.
+
+Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt there
+was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing their
+valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward assuring
+them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be taken up and
+somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never dare do anything
+to a ship containing its own flesh and blood--and an American ship,
+too--there must be some awful mistake--but anyhow they must be
+saved--there would be terrible trouble, that they could assure the
+steward and the twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if
+America allowed two Germans to be destroyed--and anyhow they would
+insist on having their passage money refunded....
+
+The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and very
+unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of
+her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly
+wondered, while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at
+the cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
+buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally seemed
+busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag
+of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in
+spite of the steward's assuring her that it would drag her down in the
+water like a stone tied to a kitten.
+
+"You're a _very_ cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said, as he pushed
+them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding up Anna-Felicitas
+on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run alone.
+
+The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at the foot
+of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got her on deck
+propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to the set of cabins
+they were in, and darted away and in a minute was back again with a big
+coat which he wrapped round her.
+
+"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to drown," he said
+briskly, "but mind you don't forget to throw it off, Missie, the minute
+you feel the water."
+
+Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning against the
+wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference to whatever
+might be going to happen next. Her face was now as white as the frill of
+the night-gown that straggled out from beneath her coat, for the journey
+from the cabin to the deck had altogether finished her. Anna-Rose was
+thankful that she felt too ill to be afraid. Her own heart was black
+with despair,--despair that Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one,
+should presently, at any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving
+water, and certainly be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of
+life.
+
+She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep her warm.
+Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold hands and put them
+away beneath the coat the steward had brought. She slid an arm round her
+and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so that she should know somebody
+was there, somebody who loved her. "What's the _good_ of it all--_why_
+were we born--" she wondered, staring at the hideous gray waves as
+they swept up into sight over the side of the ship and away again as the
+ship rose up, and at the wet deck and the torn sky, and the
+miserable-looking passengers in their life-jackets collected together
+round the life-boat.
+
+Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed, kept up a
+constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly smoking
+cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about them, all of
+them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the torpedo to
+appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed. The ship was
+zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay on. An official
+stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water in it and provisions.
+That the submarine must be mad, as the official remarked, to fire on an
+American ship, didn't console anybody, and his further assurance that
+the matter would not be allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt
+too sure that in all probability they themselves were going to rest
+there, down underneath that repulsive icy water, after a struggle that
+was going to be unpleasant.
+
+The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship left the
+landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be sorry for
+her, came across from the first class, where his life-boat was, to watch
+for the track of the expected torpedo, and caught sight of the twins
+huddled in their corner.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes out at the
+desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home: the home that
+was, that used to be till such a little while ago, the home that now
+seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably beautiful and blest,
+with its daily life of love and laughter and of easy confidence that
+to-morrow was going to be just as good. Happiness had been the ordinary
+condition there, a simple matter of course. Its place was taken now by
+courage. Anna-Rose felt sick at all this courage there was about. There
+should be no occasion for it. There should be no horrors to face, no
+cruelties to endure. Why couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must
+people get killing each other? She, for her part, would be behind nobody
+in courage and in the defying of a Fate that could behave, as she felt,
+so very unlike her idea of anything even remotely decent; but it
+oughtn't to be necessary, this constant condition of screwed-upness; it
+was waste of effort, waste of time, waste of life,--oh the _stupidity_
+of it all, she thought, rebellious and bewildered.
+
+"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little into a small cup.
+
+Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her. She
+recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had much
+better be sorry for himself now, she thought, because he, just as much
+as they were, was bound for a watery bier.
+
+"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the smell of
+brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar strictness on no
+account to talk to strange men, "I don't drink."
+
+"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.
+
+"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping a
+drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."
+
+"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell me where
+your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on,
+considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."
+
+The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that they had
+a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine hand over fist.
+Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of supposing her to be
+in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did in spite of herself
+steal into her heart.
+
+He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some pillows.
+
+"If you _will_ sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the pillows behind
+their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open her eyes, and her
+head hung about so limply that it looked as if it might at any moment
+roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable as you can."
+
+Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange Anna-Felicitas's
+indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw little use in being
+comfortable just a minute or two before drowning. "Drowning be hanged,"
+said the man.
+
+"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling suddenly
+quite at home, "except that _he_ would have said 'Drowning be damned.'"
+
+The man laughed. "Is he dead?" he asked, busy with Anna-Felicitas's
+head, which defied their united efforts to make it hold itself up.
+
+"Dead?" echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur's ever being
+anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear words for such a
+long time as eternity seemed very odd.
+
+"You said he _used_ to talk like that."
+
+"Oh, no he's not dead at all. Quite the contrary."
+
+The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas's head arranged in
+a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had some sort of
+self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she could
+manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back. He was
+going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going to say "You
+poor things," or words to that effect. That's what the people round
+Uncle Arthur's had said to them. That's what everybody had said to them
+since the war began, and Aunt Alice's friends had said it to her too,
+because she had to have her nieces live with her, and no doubt Uncle
+Arthur's friends who played golf with him had said it to him as well,
+except that probably they put in a damn so as to make it clearer for him
+and said "You poor damned thing," or something like that, and she was
+sick of the very words poor things. Poor things, indeed! "We're with
+each other," she said briefly, lifting her chin.
+
+"Well, I don't think that's enough," said the man. "Not half enough.
+You ought to have a mother or something."
+
+"_Everybody_ can't have mothers," said Anna-Rose very defiantly indeed,
+tears rushing into her eyes.
+
+The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. "There now," he
+said. "That's better. What's the good of catching your deaths?"
+
+Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn't gone on about mothers, said that with
+so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to her
+particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a chair
+and sat down beside her.
+
+She didn't know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation to laugh
+at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily comforting. It
+made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like waking up to
+sunshine and one's morning bath and breakfast after a nightmare. He
+seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked him to sit near them.
+She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had said there were very few
+good men, hardly any in fact except one's husband, but this one did seem
+one of the few exceptions. And she thought that by now, he having
+brought them all those pillows, he could no longer come under the
+heading of strange men. When he wasn't looking she put out her hand
+secretly and touched his coat where he wouldn't feel it. It comforted
+her to touch his coat. She hoped Aunt Alice wouldn't have disapproved of
+seeing her sitting side by side with him and liking it.
+
+Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose, having
+given her the desired promise not to talk or let Anna-Felicitas talk to
+strange men, and desiring to collect any available information for her
+guidance in her new responsible position had asked, "But when are men
+_not_ strange?"
+
+"When you've married them," said Aunt Alice. "After that, of course, you
+love them."
+
+And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Nothing more was seen of the submarine.
+
+The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them know he
+had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having saved the
+ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a ship, and they
+the one just man whose presence would have saved those cities if he had
+been in them; and the American passengers were equally sure that the
+submarine, on thinking it over, had decided that President Wilson was
+not a man to be trifled with, and had gone in search of some prey which
+would not have the might and majesty of America at its back.
+
+As the day went on, and the _St. Luke_ left off zig-zagging, the relief
+of those on board was the relief of a reprieve from death. Almost
+everybody was cured of sea-sickness, and quite everybody was ready to
+overwhelm his neighbour with cordiality and benevolence. Rich people
+didn't mind poor people, and came along from the first class and talked
+to them just as if they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves.
+A billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
+times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly proud
+of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked somebody in a
+dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale, if he had been
+frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston talked quite a long
+while to an English lady without first having made sure that she was
+well-connected. What could have been more like heaven? The tone on the
+_St. Luke_ that day was very like what the tone in the kingdom of heaven
+must be in its simple politeness. "And so you see," said Anna-Rose, who
+was fond of philosophizing in season and out of season, and particularly
+out of season, "how good comes out of evil."
+
+She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
+Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr. Twist--such,
+the amiable stranger had told them, was his name--who had gone to see
+about tea being brought up to them; and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to
+sit up and take notice, the hours of fresh air having done their work,
+smiled the ready, watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It
+was so nice not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If
+she had been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about
+the number and size of one's negative blessings--all the things one
+hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to them once
+you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and yet people
+grumble.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent mood in
+which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled at anybody
+who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would have smiled just
+like that, with just that friendly, boneless familiarity at the devil if
+he had appeared, or even at Uncle Arthur himself.
+
+The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were having the
+pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the realization of this
+that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good coming out of evil. The
+background, she could not but perceive, was a very odd one for their
+pleasantest day for months--a rolling steamer and a cold wind flicking
+at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly, are
+negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that matters. Of
+what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid summer
+afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so beautifully framed
+in Uncle Arthur?
+
+No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.
+
+In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in the
+end.
+
+Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble agreement.
+
+She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable, Anna-Rose
+remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to him than they
+could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded Anna-Felicitas how
+they used to rub their eyes to try and see more clearly, for surely
+these means of happiness, these elaborate arrangements for it all round
+them, couldn't be for nothing? There must be some of it somewhere, if
+only they could discover where? And there was none. Not a trace of it.
+Not even the faintest little swish of its skirts.
+
+Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a long
+time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's death
+blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas said aloud
+that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was true. Their mother's
+death was something so tender, so beautiful, that terrible as it was to
+them to be left without her they yet felt raised up by it somehow,
+raised on to a higher level than where they had been before, closer in
+their hearts to real things, to real values. But Uncle Arthur came into
+possession of their lives as a consequence of that death, and he had
+towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun. Suddenly there was
+no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly everything one said and
+did was wrong. "And you needn't think," Anna-Felicitas had said wisely,
+"that he's like that because we're Germans--or _seem_ to be Germans,"
+she amended. "It's because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice.
+_She's_ not a German. And yet look at her."
+
+And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her mind's eye,
+for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a wood picnicking,
+and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a _tęte-ŕ-tęte_ luncheon with
+Uncle Arthur who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she
+didn't like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
+less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what she
+imagined was simply awful,--Anna-Rose had, I say, looked at Aunt Alice
+in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was true.
+
+Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray of tea
+and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful picnic.
+
+Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him quite
+soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to clear his
+mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas, though their
+clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which their flair was done,
+might be misleading, were no longer children, but quite the contrary;
+that they were, in fact, persons who were almost ripe for going to
+dances, and certainly in another year would be perfectly ripe for dances
+supposing there were any.
+
+Mr. Twist listened attentively, and begged her to tell him any other
+little thing she might think of as useful to him in his capacity of
+friend and attendant,--both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
+till he had seen them safely landed in New York.
+
+"I hope you don't think we _need_ anybody," said Anna-Rose. "We shall
+like being friends with you very much, but only on terms of perfect
+equality."
+
+"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+She hesitated a moment.
+
+"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.
+
+"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry for us."
+
+"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.
+
+"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to--to our friends."
+
+"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Which was great waste of your time."
+
+"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.
+
+Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an activity
+in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr. Twist's attentions
+in the spirit in which they were offered, which was, as he said, one of
+mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was never sea-sick, he could move
+about and do things for them that might be difficult to do for
+themselves; as he knew a great deal about stewardesses, he could tell
+them what sort of tip theirs expected; as he was American, he could
+illuminate them about that country. He had been doing Red Cross work
+with an American ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home
+for a short visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose gathered, was
+ancient and widowed, was getting on. His mother, he said, lived in
+seclusion in a New England village with his sister, who had not married.
+
+"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you," said Mr.
+Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up--I mean," he added
+hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's less--well, less completely
+young."
+
+"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity. "People are
+completely young the day they're born, and ever after that they spend
+their time becoming less so."
+
+"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than you have.
+I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than I am."
+
+"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's head where
+it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must have got to the
+stage when one is called a maiden lady."
+
+"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who hadn't
+till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely at him
+whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be either a lady or
+a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of Germans, I think," went on
+Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at the cake Mr. Twist was offering
+her, "never to let us be anything but Its till we've taken on some men."
+
+Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage, and
+inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.
+
+"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose,
+turning to her severely, "you start being indiscreet. Well, I suppose,"
+she added with a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or
+later. Our name is Twinkler."
+
+She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist, perceiving he
+was expected to say something, said that he didn't mind that anyhow, and
+that he could bear something worse in the way of revelations.
+
+"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished, for in
+Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in England it
+was well known.
+
+Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he said.
+
+Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said, speaking
+very distinctly. "It's _von_ Twinkler."
+
+"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.
+
+"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen that we
+weren't."
+
+"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we used to have a
+German father."
+
+"But only because our mother married him," explained Anna-Felicitas.
+"Else we wouldn't have."
+
+"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it has
+dogged our footsteps ever since."
+
+"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying anybody
+does. You go into a church, and before you know where you are, you're
+all tangled up with posterity."
+
+"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at her own
+past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you. It's really
+simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."
+
+"If there hadn't been a war we'd have been all right," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "But directly there's a war, whoever it is you've
+married, if it isn't one of your own countrymen, rises up against you,
+just as if he were too many meringues you'd had for dinner."
+
+"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against you."
+
+"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We never used to bother about what we were," said Anna-Felicitas. "We
+were just human beings, and so was everybody else just human beings."
+
+"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people not
+being Germans."
+
+"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because, you see, we're not."
+
+Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little prominent and
+pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he put his head on one
+side and looked at them, of an attentive fox-terrier. "I don't think I
+quite follow," he said again.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.
+
+"It's because you've got into your head that we're German because of our
+father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father, when all's said and
+done?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."
+
+"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a mother,"
+said Anna-Rose.
+
+"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's always busy.
+He's always thinking of something else."
+
+"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight," said
+Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, whose habit of drooping still
+persisted in spite of her father's admonishments.
+
+"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to remember
+that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up beautifully for a
+moment, "but that's about everything."
+
+"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
+perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander. Whereas
+one's mother--"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother--"
+
+They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't bear
+speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.
+
+Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began to cry.
+The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any sort were
+possible.
+
+Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here, Anna-F.,"
+she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't _have_ you be sentimental--I
+won't _have_ you be sentimental...."
+
+And then she too began to cry.
+
+Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves, there was
+nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost confidence. It
+was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man. A person they
+hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their feelings. Showing
+their innermost miserable places.
+
+They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they
+weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,--odd ones
+left over from last time, which was years and years ago,--"But _really_
+years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,--"the
+years one falls down on garden paths in, and cuts one's knees, and
+one's mother--one's mother--c-c-c-comforts one--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and pulling
+out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even been
+unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right away."
+
+And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid promptness his
+Red Cross experience had taught him, started competently wiping up their
+faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
+encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something not too
+determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those pictures of
+efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe is
+familiar,--eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm mouths and
+chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect, offering in
+capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist was the reverse of
+eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of good-looking; that is, he would
+have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later
+to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled
+thing,--which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping
+their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they
+discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being
+friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged
+to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
+after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping,
+said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship)--he would
+have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.
+
+"But you have to _have_ a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who didn't think
+it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could eat with it and
+see out of it.
+
+"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose; but
+secretly she thought that having been begun so successfully at his feet,
+and carried upwards with such grace of long limbs and happy proportions,
+he might as well have gone on equally felicitously for the last little
+bit.
+
+"I expect God got tired of him over that last bit," she mused, "and just
+put on any sort of head."
+
+"Yes--that happened to be lying about," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "In a
+hurry to get done with him."
+
+"Anyway he's very kind," said Anna-Rose, a slight touch of defiance in
+her voice.
+
+"Oh, _very_ kind," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And it doesn't matter about faces for being kind," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not in the least," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And if it hadn't been for the submarine we shouldn't have got to know
+him. So you see," said Anna-Rose,--and again produced her favourite
+remark about good coming out of evil.
+
+Those were the days in mid-Atlantic when England was lost in its own
+peculiar mists, and the sunshine of America was stretching out towards
+them. The sea was getting calmer and bluer every hour, and submarines
+more and more unlikely. If a ship could be pleasant, which
+Anna-Felicitas doubted, for she still found difficulty in dressing and
+undressing without being sea-sick and was unpopular in the cabin, this
+ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day long, staring at the
+blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if you were living in the
+middle of a jewel, and tried not to remember--oh, there were heaps of
+things it was best not to remember; and when the rail of the ship moved
+up across the horizon too far into the sky, or moved down across it and
+showed too much water, you just shut your eyes and then it didn't
+matter; and the sun shone warm and steady on your face, and the wind
+tickled the tassel on the top of your German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist
+came and read aloud to you, which sent you to sleep quicker than
+anything you had ever known.
+
+The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket was called
+"Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an American collection of
+English poetry, professing in its preface to be a Short Cut to Culture;
+and he would read with what at that time, it being new to them, seemed
+to the twins a strange exotic pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to
+Dooty," and the effect was as if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian
+psalm in its ribs, and make it leap and giggle.
+
+Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she didn't mind what
+the ship's rail did with the horizon, opened them very round when first
+Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was used to hearing them read
+by her mother in the adorable husky voice that sent such thrills through
+one, but she listened with the courtesy and final gratitude due to the
+efforts to entertain her of so amiable a friend, and only the roundness
+of her eyes showed her astonishment at this waltzing round, as it
+appeared to her, of Mr. Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of
+God. He also read "Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur
+took for a Derby winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to
+refrain from stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point
+of having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
+questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on deck,
+which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it was because
+her deck-chair was so very much harder than she was.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who considered that, if these things were short-cuts to
+anywhere, seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got
+there, snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
+off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which worried
+Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment less
+beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more than ever,
+unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being administered, to
+make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again by taking and shaking
+her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of waking up suddenly and
+forgetting to be polite, as one does when first one wakes up and hasn't
+had time to remember one is a lady. "To-morrow to fresh woods and
+pastures noo," Mr. Twist would finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp
+of satisfaction at having swallowed yet another solid slab of culture;
+and Anna-Felicitas, returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur,
+with her eyes still shut and her head lolling limply, things like,
+"After all, it _does_ rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still
+doesn't like it."
+
+Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild inquiry,
+and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately explain what
+Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from anything resembling what
+she had said that Mr. Twist looked more mildly inquiring than ever.
+
+Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too sleepy or
+too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got angry, and would
+get what the Germans call a red head and look at Anna-Felicitas very
+severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would close his book and watch
+with that alert, cocked-up-ear look of a sympathetic and highly
+interested terrier; but sooner or later the ship would always give a
+roll, and Anna-Felicitas would shut her eyes and fade to paleness and
+become the helpless bundle of sickness that nobody could possibly go on
+being severe with.
+
+The passengers in the second class were more generally friendly than
+those in the first class. The first class sorted itself out into little
+groups, and whispered about each other, as Anna-Rose observed, watching
+their movements across the rope that separated her from them. The second
+class remained to the end one big group, frayed out just a little at the
+edge in one or two places.
+
+The chief fraying out was where the Twinkler kids, as the second-class
+young men, who knew no better, dared to call them, interrupted the
+circle by talking apart with Mr. Twist. Mr. Twist had no business there.
+He was a plutocrat of the first class; but in spite of the regulations
+which cut off the classes from communicating, with a view apparently to
+the continued sanitariness of the first class, the implication being
+that the second class was easily infectious and probably overrun, there
+he was every day and several times in every day. He must have heavily
+squared the officials, the second-class young men thought until the day
+when Mr. Twist let it somehow be understood that he had known the
+Twinkler young ladies for years, dandled them in their not very remote
+infancy on his already full-grown knee, and had been specially appointed
+to look after them on this journey.
+
+Mr. Twist did not specify who had appointed him, except to the Twinkler
+young ladies themselves, and to them he announced that it was no less a
+thing, being, or creature, than Providence. The second-class young men,
+therefore, in spite of their rising spirits as danger lay further
+behind, and their increasing tendency, peculiar to those who go on
+ships, to become affectionate, found themselves no further on in
+acquaintance with the Misses Twinkler the last day of the voyage than
+they had been the first. Not that, under any other conditions, they
+would have so much as noticed the existence of the Twinkler kids. In
+their blue caps, pulled down tight to their eyebrows and hiding every
+trace of hair, they looked like bald babies. They never came to meals;
+their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was, feeding them on deck with
+the care of a mother-bird for its fledglings, so that nobody except the
+two German ladies in their cabin had seen them without the caps. The
+young men put them down as half-grown only, somewhere about fourteen
+they thought, and nothing but what, if they were boys instead of girls,
+would have been called louts.
+
+Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed in the
+way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and the Misses
+Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent baldness, and
+their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt have been the
+objects of advances before New York was reached if it hadn't been for
+Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty in the second class on that
+voyage, the young men resentfully pointed out to each other, except
+these two kids who were too much under it, and a young lady of thirty
+who sat manicuring her nails most of the day with her back supported by
+a life-boat, and polishing them with red stuff till they flashed rosily
+in the sun. This young lady was avoided for the first two days, while
+the young men still remembered their mothers, because of what she looked
+like; but was greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely for
+that reason.
+
+Still, every one couldn't get near her. She was only one; and there
+were at least a dozen active, cooped-up young men taking lithe,
+imprisoned exercise in long, swift steps up and down the deck, ready for
+any sort of enterprise, bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So
+that at last the left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy
+nails was less kind to, actually in their despair attempted ghastly
+flirtations with the two German ladies. They approached them with a kind
+of angry amorousness. They tucked them up roughly in rugs. They brought
+them cushions as though they were curses. And it was through this
+_rapprochement_, in the icy warmth of which the German ladies expanded
+like bulky flowers and grew at least ten years younger, the ten years
+they shed being their most respectable ones, that the ship became aware
+of the nationality of the Misses Twinkler.
+
+The German ladies were not really German, as they explained directly
+there were no more submarines about, for a good woman, they said,
+becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they, therefore, were
+merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal as you could find, but
+the Twinklers were the real thing, they said,--real, unadulterated,
+arrogant Junkers, which is why they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no
+Junker, said the German ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked
+to except another Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck
+not been born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had
+missed it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
+were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
+democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers most
+abound, and knew the sort of thing well.
+
+It seemed to Mr. Twist, who caught scraps of conversation as he came
+and went, that in the cabin the Twinklers must have alienated sympathy.
+They had. They had done more; they had got themselves actively disliked.
+
+From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into their
+shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this prejudice had
+later flared up into a great and justified dislike. The ladies, to begin
+with, hadn't known that they were von Twinklers, but had supposed them
+mere Twinklers, and the von, as every German knows, makes all the
+difference, especially in the case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a
+race, the ladies knew, of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in
+the Westphalian district, but with it were one of the oldest families in
+Prussia; known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
+wherever it went.
+
+In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated the two
+apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their conduct, age, and
+obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded by their questionings,
+the smaller and more active Twinkler had let out her von at them much as
+one lets loose a dog when one is alone and weak against the attacks of
+an enemy, instead of falling in harmoniously with the natural change of
+attitude of the ladies, which became immediately perfectly polite and
+conciliatory, as well as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two
+young Junkers went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most
+motherly questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
+themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be permitted
+to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently, after a day or
+two of such uncloaked repugnance to it, left with quantities of it
+useless on their hands and all going sour.
+
+From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain Twinklers they
+had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin, and as von Twinklers
+they were intolerable in their high-nosed indifference.
+
+It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the beginning of
+the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such manifest youth should
+rise politely and considerately each morning very early, and get
+themselves dressed and out of the way in at the most ten minutes,
+leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful putting together bit by
+bit of that which ultimately emerged a perfect specimen of a lady of
+riper years, but the weedy Twinkler insisted on lying in her berth so
+late that if the ladies wished to be in time for the best parts of
+breakfast, which they naturally and passionately did wish, they were
+forced to dress in her presence, which was most annoying and awkward.
+
+It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but you never
+know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to trust them.
+They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have seen; they
+apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their spectacled
+American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so much gustiness,
+if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the weedy one had a most
+tiresome trick of being sick instantly every time Odol was used, or a
+little brandy was drunk. Odol is most refreshing; it has a lovely smell,
+without which no German bedroom is complete. And the brandy was not
+common schnaps, but an old expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell,
+was a credit to anybody's cabin.
+
+The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed did persist in using
+Odol and drinking a little brandy, indifferent to the feeble prayer from
+the upper berth which floated down entreating them not to, but in their
+own interests they were forced to give it up. The objectionable child
+did not pray a second time; she passed immediately from prayer to
+performance. Of two disagreeables wise women choose the lesser, but they
+remain resentful.
+
+The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and take
+herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of toilet with
+those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her hair, preparatory to
+washing her face, with their hairpins.
+
+When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding any,
+having come to the end of her own, lost no time in irresolution but
+picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her pigtails with that.
+
+It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
+everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an outrage,
+but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When they told her
+sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she was instantly to
+take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in a silence that was
+itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails with their buttonhook
+instead.
+
+Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and asked
+her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they raised their
+voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they later on
+declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had nevertheless
+acquired by practice in imitation some of the more salient Junker
+characteristics.
+
+"You are _salop_," said the upper berth lady,--which is untranslatable,
+not on grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is not, however, a term of
+praise.
+
+"Yes, that is what you are--_salop_," echoed the lower berth lady. "And
+your sister is _salop_ too--lying in bed till all hours."
+
+"It is shameful for girls to be _salop_," said the upper berth.
+
+"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was ours," said
+Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with vehemence.
+
+"That is because you are _salop_," said the lower berth.
+
+"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors either."
+
+"_Salop, salop_," said the lower berth, beating her hand on the wooden
+edge of her bunk.
+
+"And--and I'm sorry."
+
+Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry, she looked angry.
+And so she was; but it was with herself, for having failed in
+discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have noticed that the
+scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had pounced on them with the
+ill-considered haste of twelve years old. She hadn't been a lady,--she
+whose business it was to be an example and mainstay to Anna-Felicitas,
+in all things going first, showing her the way.
+
+She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was just
+going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when the upper
+berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of herself to have
+brought you up so badly."
+
+"And send you off like this before she has taught you even the ABC of
+manners," said the lower berth.
+
+"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none herself."
+
+"Evidently," said the lower berth, "she is herself _salop_."
+
+The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin in
+Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there in her
+nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful flight, her
+eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top of her head.
+
+The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize the
+significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large angry faces
+as a target. One of the faces would certainly have received the sponge
+and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if it hadn't been for the
+prompt and skilful intervention of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the unusual
+loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into attention and
+opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were saying and saw the
+sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was Anna-Rose who held it, where
+it would be in another second, and hastily putting out a shaking little
+hand from her top berth, caught hold feebly but obstinately of the
+upright ends of Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.
+
+"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of mind and
+entire absence of candour.
+
+She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be sick, and
+the excellent child--_das gute Kind_, as her father used to call her
+because she, so conveniently from the parental point of view, invariably
+never wanted to be or do anything particularly--without hesitation
+sacrificed herself in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and
+immediately was.
+
+By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, all fury had died out.
+She never could see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after
+one of these attacks without forgiving her and everybody else
+everything.
+
+She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and tuck her
+blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, murmured,
+"Christopher--don't mind _them_--" and she suddenly realized, for they
+never called each other by those names except in great moments of
+emotion when it was necessary to cheer and encourage, what
+Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it had been done
+deliberately, she could only whisper back, because she was so afraid of
+crying, "No, no, Columbus dear--of course--who really cares about
+_them_--" and came down off the steps with no fight left in her.
+
+Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
+retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled Twinkler
+should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a crack apart
+in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be going to do next
+and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness, getting dressed, they
+merely inquired what part of Westphalia she came from, and only in the
+tone they asked it did they convey that whatever part it was, it was
+anyhow a contemptible one.
+
+"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a little, in
+spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.
+
+Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to have to
+be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.
+
+"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being a
+Twinkler it must be Westphalia."
+
+"We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words
+and making a great effort to speak politely. "We come from England."
+
+"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling. "You were
+born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in Westphalia."
+
+"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only circumstance that
+stops them is if their mothers happen to be temporarily absent."
+
+"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts to
+remain bland.
+
+"Are you pretending--pretending to _us_," said the lower berth lady,
+again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not
+German?"
+
+"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner, "but I
+don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go on being one
+directly he got to a really neutral place."
+
+"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting
+what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the
+Twinkler background.
+
+"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of
+consideration, tying her shoe-laces.
+
+"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves
+now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from
+Westphalia?"
+
+"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
+considering.
+
+She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a
+deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining
+calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she
+said.
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on
+their elbows.
+
+"That's where our father lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her
+surprise at their surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he
+died he did that there too."
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your father fled
+his country."
+
+"No. _You_ said that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door.
+She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might
+not be able to be a lady.
+
+"After all, it _is_ what you do when you go to heaven," she said as she
+opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the
+last word.
+
+"But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it were,
+from afar. "Then--you were born in Prussia?"
+
+"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the door
+quickly behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind--he had the most
+amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was Edward--took a
+lively interest in the plans and probable future of the two Annas. He
+also took a lively and solicitous interest in their present, and a
+profoundly sympathetic one in their past. In fact, their three tenses
+interested him to the exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief
+desire was to see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting
+them in the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends--he distrusted Uncle Arthur,
+and therefore his friends--into the safe and pleasant waters of real
+American hospitality and kindliness.
+
+He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the tap. He
+reminded himself of that which he had been taught since childhood, of
+the mighty heart of America which, once touched, would take persons like
+the twins right in and never let them out again. But it had to be
+touched. It had, as it were, to be put in connection with them by means
+of advertisement. America, he reflected, was a little deaf. She had to
+be shouted to. But once she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...
+
+He cogitated much in his cabin--one with a private bathroom, for Mr.
+Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample means--on these two defenceless
+children. If they had been Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons
+plainly in need of relief! As it was, America would be likely, he
+feared, to consider that either Germany or England ought to be looking
+after them, and might conceivably remain chilly and uninterested.
+
+Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn't many friends in America, and those he
+had didn't like him. At least that was what Mr. Twist gathered from the
+conversation of Anna-Rose. She didn't positively assert but she very
+candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite believe that Uncle
+Arthur's friends wouldn't be warm ones. Their hospitality he could
+imagine fleeting and perfunctory. They would pass on the Twinklers as
+soon as possible, as indeed why should they not? And presently some
+dreary small job would be found for them, some job as pupil-teacher or
+girls' companion in the sterile atmosphere of a young ladies' school.
+
+As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike, Mr.
+Twist disliked Uncle Arthur. Patriotism was nothing at any time to Mr.
+Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur's particular kind of
+patriotism was very odious to him. To wreak it on these two poor aliens!
+Mr. Twist had no words for it. They had been cut adrift at a tender age,
+an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American son and brother, was unable
+to regard unmoved, and packed off over the sea indifferent to what might
+happen to them so long as Uncle Arthur knew nothing about it. Having
+flung these kittens into the water to swim or drown, so long as he
+didn't have to listen to their cries while they were doing it, Uncle
+Arthur apparently cared nothing.
+
+All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose up
+within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and ask him
+what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him whether he
+called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do this, being on a
+ship heading for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of
+the ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,--but the right sort
+of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards you as a
+sacred and precious charge.
+
+In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying,
+red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured him under-sized
+and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields
+of England to his trembling household. He was quite disconcerted one day
+to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and
+not fat at all, except in one place.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye view of
+Uncle Arthur.
+
+"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of her
+dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck when it got
+to his waistcoat."
+
+"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to explain and
+describe further if required.
+
+But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of Uncle
+Arthur, and this time got him right,--the tall, not bad-looking man,
+clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than he, Mr. Twist, had. He
+had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now perceived that he could be
+hardly more than middle-aged and that Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he
+felt an almost painful sympathy, had a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get
+through before she was done.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word middle-aged as correct.
+"Neither of his ends looks much older than yours do. He's aged in the
+middle. That's the only place. Where the bomb is."
+
+"I suppose that's why it's called middle-aged," said Anna-Felicitas
+dreamily. "One middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It
+must be queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself gradually
+rotting."
+
+These were the sorts of observations, Mr. Twist felt, that might
+prejudice his mother against the twins If they could be induced not to
+say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he felt that
+his house, of all houses in America, should be offered them as a refuge
+whenever they were in need of one. But his mother was not, he feared,
+very adaptable. In her house--it was legally his, but it never felt as
+if it were--people adapted themselves to her. He doubted whether the
+twins could or would. Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was
+candour. They had no _savoir faire_. They seemed incapable of anything
+but naturalness, and their particular type of naturalness was not one,
+he was afraid, that his mother would understand.
+
+She had not been out of her New England village, a place called briefly,
+with American economy of time, Clark, for many years, and her ideal of
+youthful femininity was still that which she had been herself. She had,
+if unconsciously, tried to mould Mr. Twist also on these lines, in spite
+of his being a boy, and owing to his extreme considerateness had not yet
+discovered her want of success. For years, indeed, she had been
+completely successful, and Mr. Twist arrived at and embarked on
+adolescence with the manners and ways of thinking of a perfect lady.
+
+Till he was nineteen he was educated at home, as it were at his mother's
+knee, at any rate within reach of that sacred limb, and she had taught
+him to reverence women; the reason given, or rather conveyed, being that
+he had had and still was having a mother. Which he was never to forget.
+In hours of temptation. In hours of danger. Mr. Twist, with his virginal
+white mind, used to wonder when the hours of temptation and of danger
+would begin, and rather wish, in the elegant leisure of his
+half-holidays, that they soon would so that he might show how determined
+he was to avoid them.
+
+For the ten years from his father's death till he went to Harvard, he
+lived with his mother and sister and was their assiduous attendant. His
+mother took the loss of his father badly. She didn't get over it, as
+widows sometimes do, and grow suddenly ten years younger. The sight of
+her, so black and broken, of so daily recurring a patience, of such
+frequent deliberate brightening for the sake of her children, kept Mr.
+Twist, as he grew up, from those thoughts which sometimes occur to young
+men and have to do with curves and dimples. He was too much absorbed by
+his mother to think on such lines. He was flooded with reverence and
+pity. Through her, all women were holy to him. They were all mothers,
+either actual or to be--after, of course, the proper ceremonies. They
+were all people for whom one leapt up and opened doors, placed chairs
+out of draughts, and fetched black shawls. On warm spring days, when he
+was about eighteen, he told himself earnestly that it would be a
+profanity, a terrible secret sinning, to think amorously--yes, he
+supposed the word was amorously--while there under his eyes, pervading
+his days from breakfast to bedtime, was that mourning womanhood, that
+lopped life, that example of brave doing without any hope or expectation
+except what might be expected or hoped from heaven. His mother was
+wonderful the way she bore things. There she was, with nothing left to
+look forward to in the way of pleasures except the resurrection, yet
+she did not complain.
+
+But after he had been at Harvard a year a change came over Mr. Twist.
+Not that he did not remain dutiful and affectionate, but he perceived
+that it was possible to peep round the corners of his mother, the
+rock-like corners that had so long jutted out between him and the view,
+and on the other side there seemed to be quite a lot of interesting
+things going on. He continued, however, only to eye most of them from
+afar, and the nearest he got to temptation while at Harvard was to read
+"Madame Bovary."
+
+After Harvard he was put into an engineering firm, for the Twists only
+had what would in English money be five thousand pounds a year, and
+belonged therefore, taking dollars as the measure of standing instead of
+birth, to the middle classes. Aunt Alice would have described such an
+income as ample means; Mrs. Twist called it straitened circumstances,
+and lived accordingly in a condition of perpetual self-sacrifice and
+doings without. She had a car, but it was only a car, not a
+Pierce-Arrow; and there was a bathroom to every bedroom, but there were
+only six bedrooms; and the house stood on a hill and looked over the
+most beautiful woods, but they were somebody else's woods. She felt, as
+she beheld the lives of those of her neighbours she let her eyes rest
+on, who were the millionaires dotted round about the charming environs
+of Clark, that she was indeed a typical widow,--remote, unfriended,
+melancholy, poor.
+
+Mrs. Twist might feel poor, but she was certainly comfortable. It was
+her daughter Edith's aim in life to secure for her the comfort and
+leisure necessary for any grief that wishes to be thorough. The house
+was run beautifully by Edith. There were three servants, of whom Edith
+was one. She was the lady's maid, the head cook, and the family butler.
+And Mr. Twist, till he went to Harvard, might be described as the
+page-boy, and afterwards in his vacations as the odd man about the
+house. Everything centred round their mother. She made a good deal of
+work, because of being so anxious not to give trouble. She wouldn't get
+out of the way of evil, but bleakly accepted it. She wouldn't get out of
+a draught, but sat in it till one or other of her children remembered
+they hadn't shut the door. When the inevitable cold was upon her and she
+was lamentably coughing, she would mention the door for the first time,
+and quietly say she hadn't liked to trouble them to shut it, they had
+seemed so busy with their own affairs.
+
+But after he had been in the engineering firm a little while, a further
+change came over Mr. Twist. He was there to make money, more money, for
+his mother. The first duty of an American male had descended on him. He
+wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in spite of his own tastes
+being so simple that his income of Ł5000--it was his, not his mother's,
+but it didn't feel as if it were--would have been more than sufficient
+for him. Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that
+might comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined
+an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made
+to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether
+beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for him, and
+definitely grew up.
+
+The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him to be at
+home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board with her brother
+Charles, a clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic Refreshment
+at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of which Uncle Charles
+poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable meals--for he practised
+the austerities and had no wife--dribbled at its spout. Hold it as
+carefully as one might it dribbled at its spout, and added to the
+confused appearance of the table by staining the cloth afresh every time
+it was used.
+
+Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and generosity,
+his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth, being all amiability
+and affection, above the nose was quite different. In the middle came
+his nose, a nose that led him to improve himself, to read and meditate
+the poets, to be tenacious in following after the noble; and above were
+eyes in which simplicity sat side by side with appreciation; and above
+these was the forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were
+inventions.
+
+He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he came into
+daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood he had often
+fixed up little things for Edith,--she was three years older than he,
+and was even then canning and preserving and ironing,--little
+simplifications and alleviations of her labour; but they had been just
+toys, things that had amused him to put together and that he forgot as
+soon as they were done. But the teapot revealed to him clearly what his
+forehead was there for. He would not and could not continue, being the
+soul of considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
+every meal--they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
+supper--and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at every
+meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful with it.
+He handled it with the most delicate precision. He gave it time. He
+never hurried it. He never filled it more than half full. And yet at the
+end of every pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the
+cloth.
+
+Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different pattern,
+with a curved spout instead of a straight one.
+
+The same thing happened.
+
+Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot section
+trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring water, provided by
+a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant, out of each different
+make of teapot into cups.
+
+They all dribbled.
+
+Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought and
+thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin hand; and
+what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it as complete in
+every detail as Pallas Athene when she very similarly sprang, was that
+now well-known object on every breakfast table, Twist's Non-Trickler
+Teapot.
+
+In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His mother
+passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still would only
+call a modest competence, but what in England would have been regarded
+as wallowing in money. She left off being middle-class, and was received
+into the lower upper-class, the upper part of this upper-class being
+reserved for great names like Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With
+these Mrs. Twist could not compete. She would no doubt some day, for
+Edward was only thirty and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was
+able to add to the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss
+of the elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. It was as
+though an east wind veered round for a brief space a little to the
+south.
+
+Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every other
+reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she once more
+sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist, and hung her
+cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a peg. When the
+novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of six, and a great deal
+of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten times of everything else
+instead of only once, began to wear off, Mrs. Twist drooped again, and
+pulled the departed Twist out of the decent forgetfulness of the past,
+and he once more came to dinner in the form of his favourite dishes, and
+assisted in the family conversations by means of copious quotations from
+his alleged utterances.
+
+Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy thousand
+pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having invented and
+patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths of America, and
+indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to receive his
+percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But so much had he
+changed since his adolescence that he preferred to stick to his
+engineering and his office in New York rather than go home and be happy
+with his mother.
+
+She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She understood his
+behaviour still less when he went off to France in 1915, himself
+equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.
+
+For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided Mrs.
+Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an only son in
+danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was never so much
+called upon as during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest,
+and there was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of
+the funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.
+
+While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the Twinklers--this
+was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she tried Anna-Rose's patience
+severely by asking her not once but several times whether she didn't
+think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose disliked it from the first because of
+the suggestion it contained that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them
+as works of mercy--while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at
+his home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
+to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense slaughtering
+of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being now the head
+servant of many instead of three was more than double as hard-worked as
+she used to be, was on her feet those last few days without stopping.
+And she had to go and meet Edward in New York as well. Whether Mrs.
+Twist feared that he might not come straight home or whether it was what
+she said it was, that dear Edward must not be the only person on the
+boat who had no one to meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that
+when it came to the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had
+difficulty in maintaining her usual brightness.
+
+Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the _St. Luke_
+got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey from New York, and
+during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared for. She thought Edith
+surprisingly thoughtless to be so much pleased to go. She examined her
+flat and sinewy form with disapproval when she came in hatted and booted
+to say good-bye. No wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't
+help her either now--she was too old. She had missed her chances, poor
+thing.
+
+Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years before, when
+Edward was still in the school room, who had almost married Edith. He
+was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had come to Clark to stay
+with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to do through a long vacation,
+and had taken to dropping in at all hours and interrupting Edith in her
+housekeeping; and Edith, even then completely flat but of a healthy
+young uprightness and bright of eyes and hair, had gone silly and
+forgotten how to cook, and had given her mother, who surely had enough
+sorrows already, an attack of indigestion.
+
+Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
+necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith. And
+besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry. She told
+herself that she could not bear the thought of poor Edith's running the
+risk of an affliction similar to her own. If one hasn't a husband one
+cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw. If Edith married she would
+certainly lose him unless he lost her. Marriage had only two solutions,
+she explained to her silent daughter,--she would not, of course, discuss
+with her that third one which America has so often flown to for solace
+and relief,--only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either one
+died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other one did.
+It was only a question of time before one of the married was left alone
+to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it always ended black.
+"And think of my having to see you like _this_" she said, with a gesture
+indicating her sad dress.
+
+Edith was intimidated; and the young man presently went away whistling.
+He was the only one. Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely
+from her mind; and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet
+Edward in the clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she
+unconsciously felt a faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time
+to get married in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been
+married at twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone
+through, was hardly more gray than Edith's.
+
+"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself after
+bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable to bear
+the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased face, went
+off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked her, if she
+still had a minute to spare, to help her to the sofa, because she felt
+faint.
+
+"I expect the excitement has been too much for me," she murmured, lying
+down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined in affection and
+attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and settled down to getting
+her mother well again in time for Edward.
+
+Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York, and he
+accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he mightn't otherwise
+have done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the _St. Luke_ was so near its journey's end that people were
+packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the scraps of talk
+the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried condition of mind Mr.
+Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of the days had produced in
+them, and began to consider their prospects with more attention. This
+attention soon resulted in anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being
+irritable. Anna-Felicitas didn't show hers at all.
+
+It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America and
+never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future for them
+once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about a new life and
+a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer it; but when the new
+world was really upon them, and the new life, with all the multitudinous
+details that would have to be tackled, going to begin in a few hours,
+their hearts became uneasy and sank within them. England hadn't liked
+them. Suppose America didn't like them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked
+them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's friends didn't like them either? Their
+hearts sank to, and remained in, their boots.
+
+Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from what
+Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their fellow-passengers,
+was a chamois-leather bag containing their passports, a letter to the
+bank where their Ł200 was, a letter to those friends of Uncle Arthur's
+who were to be tried first, a letter to those other friends of his who
+were to be the second line of defence supposing the first one failed,
+and ten pounds in two Ł5 notes.
+
+Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used in bed
+most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so miserable, had given
+Anna-Rose one of the Ł5 notes for the extra expenses of the journey
+till, in New York, she should be able to draw on the Ł200, though what
+expenses there could be for a couple of girls whose passage was paid
+Uncle Arthur was damned, he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had
+secretly added the other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it
+would have to be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to
+be ready for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing
+restlessness of the passengers that it would soon be time to go and
+change it. How many dollars ought she to get?
+
+Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have asked him
+long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the end of their
+journey. Only yesterday there was the same old limitless sea everywhere,
+the same old feeling that they were never going to arrive. Now the waves
+had all gone, and one could actually see land. The New World. The place
+all their happiness or unhappiness would depend on.
+
+She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as if she
+had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and was going to
+say something appropriate and encouraging on the Christopher and
+Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been pondering the Ł5 notes
+problem, wouldn't listen.
+
+"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, "isn't like a
+shilling or a mark, but on the other hand neither is it like a pound."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate business.
+
+"It's four times more than one, and five times less than the other,"
+said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how you've got to count. That's what Aunt
+Alice said."
+
+"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said Anna-Rose, frowning. "As if
+it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange. Uncle Arthur
+said we weren't to forget that."
+
+Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange, and
+Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who had to be
+kept in her proper place, especially when one was just getting to
+America and she might easily become above herself, said that it was
+something that varied. ("The exchange, you know, varies," Uncle Arthur
+had said when he gave her the Ł5 note. "You must keep your eye on the
+variations." Anna-Rose was all eagerness to keep her eye on them, if
+only she had known what and where they were. But one never asked
+questions of Uncle Arthur. His answers, if one did, were confined to
+expressions of anger and amazement that one didn't, at one's age,
+already know.)
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose out of the
+corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her further.
+
+"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking in the
+direction he usually appeared from.
+
+"We won't always have _him_" remarked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.
+
+The young lady of the nails appeared at that moment in a hat so
+gorgeous that the twins stopped dead to stare. She had a veil on and
+white gloves, and looked as if she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue
+the very next minute.
+
+"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come--"
+
+"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist," said
+Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody specially and means nothing
+in particular.
+
+"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you," said Anna-Rose.
+"There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now, remember. I won't."
+
+"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+"I shall be walking about New York."
+
+"Oh, _you'll_ see," said Anna-Rose irritably.
+
+She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the tipping,
+and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's friends, whose
+names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so naturally she was
+irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood this better than
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she said, after a moment's
+pause during which she wondered whether, in the interests of Anna-Rose's
+restoration to calm, she mightn't have to be sick again. She did hope
+she wouldn't have to. She had supposed she had done with that. It is
+true there were now no waves, but she knew she had only to go near the
+engines and smell the oil. "Let's go and put on our hats," she
+suggested, slipping her hand through Anna-Rose's arm.
+
+Anna-Rose let herself be led away, and they went to their cabin; and
+when they came out of it half an hour later, no longer with that bald
+look their caps had given them, the sun catching the little rings of
+pale gold hair that showed for the first time, and clad, instead of in
+the disreputable jerseys that they loved, in neat black coats and
+skirts--for they still wore mourning when properly dressed--with
+everything exactly as Aunt Alice had directed for their arrival, the
+young men of the second class could hardly believe their eyes.
+
+"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to Anna-Felicitas as she
+passed him, "but you're looking very well to-day."
+
+"I expect that's because I _am_ well," said Anna-Felicitas amiably.
+
+Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated "My!"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by the difference
+the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid days of cap and
+jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do somehow seem very splendid."
+
+"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd make the very angels jealous,
+and get pulling off their haloes and kicking them over the edge of
+heaven."
+
+"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have squeezed them
+out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing lost in admiration at
+Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge nice hats easily at all."
+
+And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye fell on
+Anna-Felicitas, "_Ja, ja, die hat Rasse._"
+
+And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair that spent
+the night in a different part of the cabin from her head and had been
+seen doing it by Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and was grudging.
+"_Gewiss_," she muttered back, "_bis auf der Nase. Die Nase aber
+entfremdet mich. Die ist keine echte Junkernase_."
+
+So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came a
+little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for there were
+the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives every minute now.
+
+Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say, that does
+make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light lay over New
+York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air, a delicate dry
+crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got close, were delicate
+too--delicate pale gold, and green, and brown, and they seemed so
+composed and calm, the twins thought, standing there quietly after the
+upheavals and fidgetiness of the Atlantic. New York was well into the
+Fall, the time of year when it gets nearest to beauty. The beauty was
+entirely in the atmosphere, and the lights and shadows it made. It was
+like an exquisite veil flung over an ugly woman, hiding, softening,
+encouraging hopes.
+
+Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides. Everybody was
+exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly and talkative. They
+all waved whenever another boat passed. Those who knew America pointed
+out the landmarks to those who didn't. Mr. Twist pointed them out to the
+twins, and so did the young man who had remarked favourably on
+Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as they did it simultaneously and there was
+so much to look at and so many boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had
+actually got to the statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her Ł10
+and the dollars.
+
+The young man was saying how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and
+the word dollars made Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where it very
+visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I forgot--I must get change.
+And how much do you think we ought to tip the stewardess? I've never
+tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish--I wish I hadn't to."
+
+She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to someone
+so much older than herself and who till almost that very morning had
+treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of tiresome children.
+Surely she would be most offended at being tipped by people such years
+younger than herself?
+
+Mr. Twist thought not.
+
+"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar. That's the figure. Not a
+cent more, or you girls'll get inflating prices and Wall Street'll bust
+up."
+
+Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place where her
+bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't seemed to mind them
+quite so much last night, and still less that morning, and perhaps some
+little memento--something that wasn't money--
+
+"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man, bursting into
+hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he was a low young man.
+
+Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
+shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also stewards,
+softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it didn't mean they
+wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he would do the tipping for her
+if she liked.
+
+Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess had haunted her
+at intervals throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night. She
+felt that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard
+that she couldn't begin with somebody more her own size.
+
+"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel," she said, "I can give
+you my Ł5 notes, and perhaps you would get them changed for me and
+deduct what you think the stewardess ought to have."
+
+Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to stay behind
+with the exuberant young man though she was quite unconscious of his
+presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel, where after a great
+deal of private fumbling, her back turned to them, she produced the two
+much-crumpled Ł5 notes.
+
+"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well," said Anna-Rose eagerly. "I
+don't think I _could_ offer him a tip. He has been so fatherly to us.
+And imagine offering to tip one's father."
+
+Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in time. He
+promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that the tips he
+bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back with messages of
+thanks from the tipped--such polite ones from the stewardess that the
+twins were astonished--and gave Anna-Rose a packet of very dirty-looking
+slices of green paper, which were dollar bills, he said, besides a
+variety of strange coins which he spread out on a ledge and explained to
+her.
+
+"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr. Twist, counting
+out the money.
+
+"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did you keep your eye on
+its variations?" she added a little loudly, with a view to rousing
+respect in Anna-Felicitas who was lounging against a seat and showing a
+total absence of every kind of appropriate emotion.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause. "I kept both my eyes
+on all of them."
+
+Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess each
+with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because the exchange
+was so favourable this had made no difference to the Ł5 notes. Reducing
+each Ł5 note into German marks, which was the way the Twinklers, in
+spite of a year in England, still dealt in their heads with money before
+they could get a clear idea of it, there would have been two hundred
+marks; and as it took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two
+hundred marks would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside
+that extra complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the
+exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping
+quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said
+Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end of her
+calculation, fifty dollars.
+
+"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with respectful attention.
+"Here they are."
+
+"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't be _exactly_ fifty dollars.
+The tips anyhow would alter that."
+
+"Yes, but you forget the exchange."
+
+Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
+Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
+sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as Anna-Rose
+industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was the better of
+the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to authority on the
+subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations
+roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for
+withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might
+have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on
+and was unable to respect her.
+
+Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to rejoice
+in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from asking
+questions.
+
+"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a little.
+
+She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her bag.
+They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into her pocket,
+for which also there were too many; but she refused Anna-Felicitas's
+offer to put some of them in hers on the ground that sooner or later she
+would be sure to forget they weren't her handkerchief and would blow her
+nose with them.
+
+"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to Mr. Twist, as she
+stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous patting to get it to look
+inconspicuous. "We're never going to forget you, Anna-F. and me. We'll
+write to you often, and we'll come and see you as often as you like."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched the shore of Long
+Island sliding past. "Of course you've got your relations, but relations
+soon pall, and you may be quite glad after a while of a little fresh
+blood."
+
+Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several other things
+Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said about relations,
+again with that air of addressing nobody specially and meaning nothing
+in particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with the obesity of her pocket.
+
+"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist, whose misgivings as
+to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother grew rather than subsided,
+"I shall certainly come to see you."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes
+far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't. He wouldn't let the maids have any, so
+they had to go out and do the following themselves. We had a follower
+once, didn't we, Anna-R.?" she continued her voice pensive and
+reminiscent. "He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite old. At least
+thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he _could_ follow. But he did.
+And he used to come home to tea with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of
+chocolate for us out of his pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We
+ate them and felt perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he
+tried to kiss one of us--I forget which. And that, combined with the
+chocolates, revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we told
+him they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to some place
+where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by Uncle Arthur's
+vengeance, and we said how surprised we were, because he was so old and
+we didn't know followers were as old as that ever."
+
+"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having subdued the
+swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates and then not want to
+kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing, Anna-F. and me. Still, we were
+full of his chocolates; there was no getting away from that. So we
+talked it over after he had gone, and decided that next day when he came
+we'd tell him he might kiss one of us if he still wanted to, and we drew
+lots which it was to be, and it was me, and I filled myself to the brim
+with chocolates so as to feel grateful enough to bear it, but he didn't
+come."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come again for a long while, and
+when he did there was no follow left in him. Quite the contrary."
+
+Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because it was
+the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her. He was used
+to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of Anna-Rose who had looked
+upon him as her best friend since the day he had wiped up her tears; but
+Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell to talk. She had uttered languid and
+brief observations from time to time with her eyes shut and her head
+lolling loosely on her neck, but this was the first time she had been,
+as it were, an ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet,
+walking about, looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in
+a condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.
+
+Mr. Twist was a born mother. The more trouble he was given the more
+attached he became. He had rolled Anna-Felicitas up in rugs so often
+that to be not going to roll her up any more was depressing to him. He
+was beginning to perceive this motherliness in him himself, and he gazed
+through his spectacles at Anna-Felicitas while she sketched the rise and
+fall of the follower, and wondered with an almost painful solicitude
+what her fate would be in the hands of the Clouston Sacks.
+
+Equally he wondered as to the other one's fate; for he could not think
+of one Twinkler without thinking of the other. They were inextricably
+mixed together in the impression they had produced on him, and they
+dwelt together in his thoughts as one person called, generally,
+Twinklers. He stood gazing at them, his motherly instincts uppermost,
+his hearty yearning over them now that the hour of parting was so near
+and his carefully tended chickens were going to be torn from beneath his
+wing. Mr. Twist was domestic. He was affectionate. He would have loved,
+though he had never known it, the sensation of pattering feet about his
+house, and small hands clinging to the apron he would never wear. And it
+was entirely characteristic of him that his invention, the invention
+that brought him his fortune, should have had to do with a teapot.
+
+But if his heart was uneasy within him at the prospect of parting from
+his charges their hearts were equally uneasy, though not in the same
+way. The very name of Clouston K. Sack was repugnant to Anna-Rose; and
+Anna-Felicitas, less quick at disliking, turned it over cautiously in
+her mind as one who turns over an unknown and distasteful object with
+the nose of his umbrella. Even she couldn't quite believe that any good
+thing could come out of a name like that, especially when it had got
+into their lives through Uncle Arthur. Mr. Twist had never heard of the
+Clouston Sacks, which made Anna-Rose still more distrustful. She wasn't
+in the least encouraged when he explained the bigness of America and
+that nobody in it ever knew everybody--she just said that everybody had
+heard of Mr. Roosevelt, and her heart was too doubtful within her even
+to mind being told, as he did immediately tell her within ear-shot of
+Anna-Felicitas, that her reply was unreasonable.
+
+Just at the end, as they were all three straining their eyes, no one
+with more anxiety than Mr. Twist, to try and guess which of the crowd on
+the landing-stage were the Clouston Sacks, they passed on their other
+side the _Vaterland_, the great interned German liner at its moorings,
+and the young man who had previously been so very familiar, as Anna-Rose
+said, but who was only, Mr. Twist explained, being American, came
+hurrying boldly up.
+
+"You mustn't miss this," he said to Anna-Felicitas, actually seizing her
+by the arm. "Here's something that'll make you feel home-like right
+away."
+
+And he led her off, and would have dragged her off but for
+Anna-Felicitas's perfect non-resistance.
+
+"He _is_ being familiar," said Anna-Rose to Mr. Twist, turning very red
+and following quickly after him. "That's not just being American.
+Everybody decent knows that if there's any laying hold of people's arms
+to be done one begins with the eldest sister."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't realize that you _are_ the elder," said Mr. Twist.
+"Strangers judge, roughly, by size."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not
+heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left
+sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the
+worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come
+to the end of what she can do in that direction. I see it growing on
+her. Every Sunday she's inches prettier than she was the Sunday before.
+And wherever I take her to live, and however out of the way it is, I'm
+sure the path to our front door is going to be black with suitors."
+
+This dreadful picture so much perturbed her, and she looked up at Mr.
+Twist with such worried eyes, that he couldn't refrain from patting her
+on her shoulder.
+
+"There, there," said Mr. Twist, and he begged her to be sure to
+let him know directly she was in the least difficulty, or even
+perplexity,--"about the suitors, for instance, or anything else.
+You must let me be of some use in the world, you know," he said.
+
+"But we shouldn't like it at all if we thought you were practising being
+useful on us," said Anna-Rose "It's wholly foreign to our natures to
+enjoy being the objects of anybody's philanthropy."
+
+"Now I just wonder where you get all your long words from," said Mr.
+Twist soothingly; and Anna-Rose laughed, and there was only one dimple
+in the Twinkler family and Anna-Rose had got it.
+
+"What do you want to get looking at _that_ for?" she
+asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd
+staring at the _Vaterland_, and got to where Anna-Felicitas
+stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang
+the young man was treating her to,--that terse, surprising, swift
+hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was
+hearing in such abundance for the first time.
+
+The American passengers appeared one and all to be rejoicing over the
+impotence of the great ship. Every one of them seemed to be violently
+pro-Ally, derisively conjecturing the feelings of the _Vaterland_ as
+every day under her very nose British ships arrived and departed and
+presently arrived again,--the same ships she had seen depart coming back
+unharmed, unhindered by her country's submarines. Only the two German
+ladies, once more ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It
+was incredible to them, simply _unfassbar_ as they said in their
+thoughts, that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare
+lay a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything
+belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. Well, these Americans,
+these dollar-grubbing Yankees, would soon get taught a sharp, deserved
+lesson--but at this point they suddenly remembered they were Americans
+themselves, and pulled up their thoughts violently, as it were, on their
+haunches.
+
+They turned, however, bitterly to the Twinkler girl as she pushed her
+way through to her sister,--those renegade Junkers, those contemptible
+little apostates--and asked her, after hearing her question to
+Anna-Felicitas, with an extraordinary breaking out of pent-up emotion
+where she, then, supposed she would have been at that moment if it
+hadn't been for Germany.
+
+"Not here I think," said Anna-Rose, instantly and fatally ready as she
+always was to answer back and attempt what she called reasoned
+conversation. "There wouldn't have been a war, so of course I wouldn't
+have been here."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't so much as have been born without Germany," said the
+lady whose hair came off, with difficulty controlling a desire to shake
+this insolent and perverted Junker who could repeat the infamous English
+lie as to who began the war. "You owe your very existence to Germany.
+You should be giving thanks to her on your knees for her gift to you of
+life, instead of jeering at this representative--" she flung a finger
+out toward the _Vaterland_--"this patient and dignified-in
+-temporary-misfortune representative, of her power."
+
+"I wasn't jeering," said Anna-Rose, defending herself and clutching at
+Anna-Felicitas's sleeve to pull her away.
+
+"You wouldn't have had a father at all but for Germany," said the other
+lady, the one whose hair grew.
+
+"And perhaps you will tell me," said the first one, "where you would
+have been _then_."
+
+"I don't believe," said Anna-Rose, her nose in the air, "I don't
+believe I'd have ever been at a loss for a father."
+
+The ladies, left speechless a moment by the arrogance as well as several
+other things about this answer gave Anna-Rose an opportunity for further
+reasoning with them, which she was unable to resist. "There are lots of
+fathers," she said, "in England, who would I'm sure have been delighted
+to take me on if Germany had failed me."
+
+"England!"
+
+"Take you on!"
+
+"An English father for you? For a subject of the King of Prussia?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid I--I'm going to be sick," gasped Anna-Felicitas suddenly.
+
+"You're never going to be sick in this bit of bathwater, Miss Twinkler?"
+exclaimed the young man, with the instant ungrudging admiration of one
+who is confronted by real talent. "My, what a gift!"
+
+Anna-Rose darted at Anna-Felicitas's drooping head, that which she had
+been going to say back to the German ladies dissolving on her tongue.
+"Oh no--_no_--" she wailed. "Oh _no_--not in your best hat, Columbus
+darling--you can't--it's not done--and your hat'll shake off into the
+water, and then there'll only be one between us and we shall never be
+able to go out paying calls and things at the same time--come away and
+sit down--Mr. Twist--Mr. Twist--oh, please come--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas allowed herself to be led away, just in time as she
+murmured, and sat down on the nearest seat and shut her eyes. She was
+thankful Anna-Rose's attention had been diverted to her so instantly,
+for it would have been very difficult to be sick with the ship as quiet
+as one's own bedroom. Nothing short of the engine-room could have made
+her sick now. She sat keeping her eyes shut and Anna-Rose's attention
+riveted, wondering what she would do when there was no ship and
+Anna-Rose was on the verge of hasty and unfortunate argument. Would she
+have to learn to faint? But that would terrify poor Christopher so
+dreadfully.
+
+Anna-Felicitas pondered, her eyes shut, on this situation. Up to now in
+her life she had always found that situations solved themselves. Given
+time. And sometimes a little assistance. So, no doubt, would this one.
+Anna-Rose would ripen and mellow. The German ladies would depart hence
+and be no more seen; and it was unlikely she and Anna-Rose would meet at
+such close quarters as a ship's cabin any persons so peculiarly and
+unusually afflicting again. All situations solved themselves; or, if
+they showed signs of not going to, one adopted the gentle methods that
+helped them to get solved. Early in life she had discovered that objects
+which cannot be removed or climbed over can be walked round. A little
+deviousness, and the thing was done. She herself had in the most
+masterly manner when she was four escaped church-going for several years
+by a simple method, that seemed to her looking back very like an
+inspiration, of getting round it. She had never objected to going, had
+never put into words the powerful if vague dislike with which it filled
+her when Sunday after Sunday she had to go and dangle her legs
+helplessly for two hours from the chair she was put on in the enclosed
+pew reserved for the _hohe gräfliche Herrschaften_ from the Slosh.
+
+Her father, a strict observer of the correct and a pious believer in
+God for other people, attended Divine Service as regularly as he wound
+the clocks and paid the accounts. He _repräsentierte_, as the German
+phrase went; and his wife and children were expected to _repräsentieren_
+too. Which they did uncomplainingly; for when one has to do with
+determined husbands and fathers it is quickest not to complain. But the
+pins and needles that patient child endured, Anna-Felicitas remembered,
+looking back through the years at the bunched-up figure on the chair as
+at a stranger, were something awful. The edge of the chair just caught
+her legs in the pins and needles place. If she had been a little bigger
+or a little smaller it wouldn't have happened; as it was, St. Paul
+wrestling with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas
+perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after Sunday
+bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside her, and she
+heard her own voice floating out into the void above the heads of the
+mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible distinctness in a sort
+of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a
+second time, in the breathless suspension of mumbling that followed upon
+this: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a third time she
+opened her mouth to repeat the outrageous statement, regardless of her
+mother's startled hand laid on her arm, and of Anna-Rose's petrified
+stare, and of the lifted faces of the congregation, and of the bent,
+scandalized brows of the pastor,--impelled by something that possessed
+her, unable to do anything but obey it; but her father, a man of deeds,
+rose up in his place, took her in his arms, and carried her down the
+stairs and out of the church. And the minute she found herself really
+rescued, and out where the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
+larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as affectionately
+against her father's head as if she were a daughter to be proud of, and
+would have purred if she had had had a purr as loudly as the most
+satisfied and virtuous of cats.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, standing her up on a convenient tomb so
+that her eyes were level with his, "is it then true about the cold
+potato?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her legs
+were feeling like again.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, "do you not know it is wrong to lie?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her eyes,
+gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the trees.
+
+"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, _Kind_, you know what a
+lie is?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her satisfaction at
+being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he still stood staring
+at her she put her hands one on each of his cheeks and squeezed his face
+together and murmured, "Oh, I do _love_ you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat with her
+eyes shut long after she needn't have.
+
+She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the future
+so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of the Baltic
+again, where bits of amber where washed up after a storm, and the pale
+rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was hardly salt, and the air
+seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the cottage gardens in the little
+village that clustered round a clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in
+them, for there was something in the soil that made lilacs be more
+wonderful there than anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole
+forest as far as one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After
+rain on a May evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running
+down the black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to
+the shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
+the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that lifting of
+one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea smell and the
+lilac. And then there was home to come back to when the forest began to
+look too dark and its deep silence made one's flesh creep--home, and a
+light in the window where ones mother was. Incredible the security of
+those days, the safe warmth of them, the careless roominess....
+
+"You know if you _could_ manage to feel a little better, Anna-F.," said
+Anna-Rose's voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get
+off this ship."
+
+Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
+self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the deck
+except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last alongside
+the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was ashamed of
+herself for having wandered off so easily and comfortably into the past,
+and left poor Christopher alone in the difficult present.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her hat a
+tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for anything,
+especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep. Have you--" she
+hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are they--are the Clouston Sacks
+visible yet?"
+
+"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too, and
+looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here sooner to
+see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them, and they looked
+so like what I think they will look like that I went into our cabin
+again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them. They've found the people
+they were after, and have gone."
+
+"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and I think
+we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know what they're
+like and they don't know what you're like it may be difficult. Heaven
+forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you, but I have to catch a
+train if I'm to get home to-night, and I don't intend to catch it until
+I've handed you over safely to the Sacks."
+
+"Those Sacks--" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished irrelevantly by
+remarking that it was the details of life that were discouraging,--from
+which Anna Felicitas knew that Christopher's heart was once more in her
+boots.
+
+"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
+"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but at
+some time when we're more at leisure."
+
+It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks
+would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning
+that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their
+plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack
+lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they
+knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist
+knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet
+their young charges, stay that night in New York, and continue on to
+Boston next day. The twins were so certain they would be met that Mr.
+Twist was certain too. He had concluded, with a growingly empty feeling
+in his heart as the time of separation drew near, that all that now
+remained for him to do on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over
+to the Sacks. And then leave them. And then go home to that mother he
+loved but had for some time known he didn't like,--go home a bereft and
+lonely man.
+
+But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been Sacks for
+all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody in fact seemed
+to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said, "Are you the
+Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms; the air was full
+of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate kissing of relations; but
+nobody took any notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
+waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's luggage--only his
+was baggage--was examined, and the kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed
+hither and thither, and broke up into groups, and was shot through by
+interviewers, and got packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and
+thinner, and at last was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it
+was no longer possible.
+
+There were no Sacks.
+
+To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed hall
+piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly and asked
+if they were intending to meet some young ladies called Twinkler. His
+tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one of inquiry, it
+almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were cold. He wandered
+about uncertainly from group to group, his soft felt hat on the back of
+his head and his brow getting more and more puckered; and Anna-Rose,
+anxiously looking on from afar, became impatient at last of these
+refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and thought that perhaps Mr. Twist
+wasn't making himself clear.
+
+Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she approached a
+group on her own account and asked them, enunciating her words very
+clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack.
+
+The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at her in
+astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr. Twist being
+turned away for the fifth time in the distance a wave of red despair
+came over her, and she said, reproach in her voice and tears in her
+eyes, "But _somebody's_ got to be the Sacks."
+
+Upon which the group she was addressing stared at her in a more
+astonished silence than ever.
+
+Mr. Twist came up mopping his brow and took he arm and led her back to
+Anna-Felicitas, who was taking care of the luggage and had sat down
+philosophically to await developments on a bag of sulphur. She didn't
+yet know what sulphur looked like on one's clothes after one has sat on
+it, and smiled cheerfully and encouragingly at Anna-Rose as she came
+towards her.
+
+"There _are_ no Sacks," said Anna-Rose, facing the truth.
+
+"It's exactly like that Uncle Arthur of yours," said Mr. Twist, mopping
+his forehead and speaking almost vindictively. "Exactly like him. A man
+like that _would_ have the sort of friends that don't meet one."
+
+"Well, we must do without the Sacks," said Anna-Felicitas, rising from
+the sulphur bag with the look of serene courage that can only dwell on
+the face of one who is free from care as to what has happened to him
+behind. "And it isn't," she added sweetly to Mr. Twist, "as if we hadn't
+got _you_."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, suddenly seeing daylight. "Of course. What do
+Sacks really matter? I mean, for a day or two? You'll take us somewhere
+where we can wait till we've found them."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Some nice quiet old-fashioned coffee-house
+sort of place, like the one the Brontes went to in St. Paul's Churchyard
+the first time they were launched into the world."
+
+"Yes. Some inexpensive place."
+
+"Suited to the frugal."
+
+"Because although we've got Ł200, even that will need watching or it
+will go."
+
+During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead. As often
+as he mopped it it broke out afresh and had to be mopped again. They
+were the only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He
+couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim,
+locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers attentively.
+
+Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her wharves and
+landing-places with officials specially appointed to guard the purity of
+family life. Family life obviously cannot be pure without a marriage
+being either in it or having at some time or other passed through it.
+The officials engaged in eyeing Mr. Twist and the twins were all married
+themselves, and were well acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the
+Twist and Twinkler party as they might, they could see no trace of
+marriage anywhere about it.
+
+On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it amounted
+to conscious illegality.
+
+"Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward abruptly.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead.
+
+"These here--" said the official, jerking his thumb at the twins. "They
+your sisters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like him?"
+
+"Daughters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of repudiation. "You
+_can't_ really think we look as much like him as all that?"
+
+"Wife and sister-in-law?"
+
+Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose
+forgetting her cares for a moment. But they were flattered, because it
+was at least a proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up.
+
+"Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters, and
+they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell me--"
+
+"These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said Mr.
+Twist vehemently.
+
+"Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out his jaw.
+"This is a free country, and I'll have no darned cheek."
+
+"These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more
+patiently. "They're my friends."
+
+"Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're going to
+do with them next."
+
+"Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered brow at
+the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew."
+
+The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant contempt. He
+had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed already. There had
+been a slump in sinners the past week, and he was as full of suppressed
+energy and as much tormented by it as an unexercised and overfed horse.
+"Step this way," he ordered curtly, waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden
+erection that was apparently an office. "Oh, don't you worry about the
+girls," he added, as his prey seemed disinclined to leave them.
+
+But Mr. Twist did worry. He saw Ellis Island looming up behind the two
+figures that were looking on in an astonishment that had not yet had
+time to turn into dismay as he was marched off out of sight. "I'll be
+back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.
+
+"That's as may be," remarked the official grimly.
+
+But he was back; if not in a minute in a little more than five minutes,
+still accompanied by the official, but an official magically changed
+into tameness and amiability, desirous to help, instructing his
+inferiors to carry Mr. Twist's and the young ladies' baggage to a taxi.
+
+It was the teapot that had saved him,--that blessed teapot that was
+always protruding itself benevolently into his life. Mr. Twist had
+identified himself with it, and it had instantly saved him. In the
+shelter of his teapot Mr. Twist could go anywhere and do anything in
+America. Everybody had it. Everybody knew it. It was as pervasive of
+America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly pervasive. It was only less
+visible because it stayed at home. It was more like a wife than Ford's
+cars were. From a sinner caught red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable
+creator, leapt to the position of one who can do no wrong, for he had
+not only placed his teapot between himself and judgment but had
+accompanied his proofs of identity by a suitable number of dollar bills,
+pressed inconspicuously into the official's conveniently placed hand.
+
+The twins found themselves being treated with distinction. They were
+helped into the taxi by the official himself, and what was to happen to
+them next was left entirely to the decision and discretion of Mr.
+Twist--a man so much worried that at that moment he hadn't any of
+either. He couldn't even answer when asked where the taxi was to go to.
+He had missed his train, and he tried not to think of his mother's
+disappointment, the thought was so upsetting. But he wouldn't have
+caught it if he could, for how could he leave these two poor children?
+
+"I'm more than ever convinced," he said, pushing his hat still further
+off his forehead, and staring at the back of the Twinkler trunks piled
+up in front of him next to the driver, while the disregarded official at
+the door still went on asking him where he wished the cab to go to,
+"that children should all have parents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The hotel they were finally sent to by the official, goaded at
+last by Mr. Twist's want of a made-up mind into independent
+instructions to the cabman, was the Ritz. He thought this very
+suitable for the evolver of Twist's Non-Trickler, and it was only
+when they were being rushed along at what the twins, used to the
+behaviour of London taxis and not altogether unacquainted with
+the prudent and police-supervised deliberation of the taxis of
+Berlin, regarded as a skid-collision-and-mutilation-provoking
+speed, that a protest from Anna-Rose conveyed to Mr. Twist where
+they were heading for.
+
+"An hotel called Ritz sounds very expensive," she said. "I've heard
+Uncle Arthur talk of one there is in London and one there is in Paris,
+and he said that only damned American millionaires could afford to stay
+in them. Anna-Felicitas and me aren't American millionaires--"
+
+"Or damned," put in Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--but quite the contrary," said Anna-Rose, "hadn't you better take us
+somewhere else?"
+
+"Somewhere like where the Brontes stayed in London," said Anna-Felicitas
+harping on this idea. "Where cheapness is combined with historical
+associations."
+
+"Oh Lord, it don't matter," said Mr. Twist, who for the first time in
+their friendship seemed ruffled.
+
+"Indeed it does," said Anna-Rose anxiously.
+
+"You forget we've got to husband our resources," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that because we've got Ł200 we're
+the same as millionaires," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, "frequently told us that Ł200 is a
+very vast sum; but he equally frequently told us that it isn't."
+
+"It was when he was talking about having given to us that he said it was
+such a lot," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He said that as long as we had it we would be rich," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "but directly we hadn't it we would be poor."
+
+"So we'd rather not go to the Ritz, please," said Anna-Rose, "if you
+don't mind."
+
+The taxi was stopped, and Mr. Twist got out and consulted the driver.
+The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for the twins
+floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle Charles would
+speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit, and approached
+those he did speak to with caution till they were sixty. He regarded
+them as one of the chief causes of modern unrest. He liked them so much
+that he hated them. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.
+Uncle Charles was no good as a refuge.
+
+"Well now, see here," said the driver at last, after Mr. Twist had
+rejected such varied suggestions of something small and quiet as the
+Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Biltmore, "you tell me where you want
+to go to and I'll take you there."
+
+"I want to go to the place your mother would stay in if she came up for
+a day or two from the country," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Get right in then, and I'll take you back to the Ritz," said the
+driver.
+
+But finally, when his contempt for Mr. Twist, of whose identity he was
+unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy pleasantries with
+him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in a street off the less
+desirable end of Fifth Avenue, and got rid of him.
+
+It was one of those quiet and cheap New York hotels that yet are both
+noisy and expensive. It was full of foreigners,--real foreigners, the
+twins perceived, not the merely technical sort like themselves, but
+people with yellow faces and black eyes. They looked very seedy and
+shabby, and smoked very much, and talked volubly in unknown tongues. The
+entrance hall, a place of mottled marble, with clerks behind a counter
+all of whose faces looked as if they were masks, was thick with them;
+and it was when they turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas
+passed and Anna-Rose was thinking proudly, "Yes, you don't see anything
+like that every day, do you," and herself looked fondly at her Columbus,
+that she saw that it wasn't Columbus's beauty at all but the sulphur on
+the back of her skirt.
+
+This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in the lift
+to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was trying to brush
+it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best one.
+
+"That's all your grips, ain't it?" said the youth in buttons who had
+come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom floor.
+
+"Our what?" said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. "Do you mean
+our bags?"
+
+"No. Grips. These here," said the youth.
+
+"Is that what they're called in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with the
+intelligent interest of a traveller determined to understand and
+appreciate everything, while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the
+condition of the best skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before
+the youth, continued to brush her down as best she could with her
+handkerchief.
+
+"I don't call them. It's what they are," said the youth. "What I want to
+know is, are they all here?"
+
+"How interesting that you don't drop your h's," said Anna-Felicitas,
+gazing at him. "The rest of you is so _like_ no h's."
+
+The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he didn't
+follow.
+
+"Those _are_ all our--grips, I think," said Anna-Rose counting them
+round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. "Thank you very much," she
+added after a pause, as he still lingered.
+
+But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in England.
+Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off the table, and
+shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle was empty. "Want some
+ice water?" he inquired.
+
+"What for?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What for?" echoed the youth.
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's manner
+which seemed to her familiar, "we don't want ice water, but we should be
+glad of a little hot water."
+
+"You'll get all you want of that in there," said the youth, jerking his
+head towards a door that led into a bathroom. "It's ice water and ink
+that you get out of me."
+
+"Really?" said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more intelligent
+interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being America, a country,
+she had heard, of considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his person
+bristling with taps which only needed turning.
+
+"We don't want either, thank you," said Anna-Rose.
+
+The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brushing began to grow vehement. Why
+didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and hurt his
+feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he? Anna-Felicitas, who was
+much too pleasantly detached, thought Anna-Rose, for such a situation,
+the door being wide open to the passage and the ungetridable youth
+standing there staring, was leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing
+her hair.
+
+"Suppose you're new to this country," said the youth after a pause.
+
+"Brand," said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Then p'raps," said the youth, "you don't know that the feller who
+brings up your grips gets a tip."
+
+"Of course we know that," said Anna-Rose, standing up straight and
+trying to look stately.
+
+"Then if you know why don't you do it?"
+
+"Do it?" she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into respectfulness by
+haughtily throwing back her head. "Of course we shall do it. At the
+proper time and place."
+
+"Which is, as you must have noticed," added Anna-Felicitas gently,
+"departure and the front door."
+
+"That's all right," said the youth, "but that's only one of the times
+and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is the first
+one."
+
+"Do I understand," said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified, while
+her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one offer people
+like this?--"that to America one tips at the beginning as well?"
+
+"Yep," said the youth. "And in the middle too. Right along through.
+Never miss an opportunity, is as good a slogan as you'll get when it
+comes to tipping."
+
+"I believe you'd have liked Kipps," said Anna-Felicitas meditatively,
+shaking some dust off her hat and remembering the orgy of tipping that
+immortal young man went in for at the seaside hotel.
+
+"What I like now," said the youth, growing more easy before their
+manifest youth and ignorance, "is tips. Guess you can call it Kipps if
+it pleases you."
+
+Anna-Rose began to fumble nervously in her purse "It's horrid, I think,
+to ask for presents," she said to the youth in deep humiliation, more on
+his account than hers.
+
+"Presents? I'm not asking for presents. I'm telling you what's done,"
+said the youth. And he had spots on his face. And he was repugnant to
+her.
+
+Anna-Rose gave him what looked like a shilling. He took it, and
+remarking that he had had a lot of trouble over it, went away; and
+Anna-Rose was still flushed by this encounter when Mr. Twist knocked and
+asked if they were ready to be taken down to tea.
+
+"He might have said thank you," she said indignantly to Anna-Felicitas,
+giving a final desperate brushing to the sulphur.
+
+"I expect he'll come to a bad end," said Anna-Felicitas soothingly.
+
+They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing such a
+thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables laid for
+dinner. It wasn't the custom much in America, explained Mr. Twist, to
+have tea, and no preparations were made for it in hotels of that sort.
+The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be discouraged, were showing
+their detachment from it by sitting in a corner of the room playing
+dominoes. It was a big room, all looking-glasses and windows, and the
+street outside was badly paved and a great noise of passing motor-vans
+came in and drowned most of what Mr. Twist was saying. It was an
+unlovely place, a place in which one might easily feel homesick and that
+the world was empty of affection, if one let oneself go that way. The
+twins wouldn't. They stoutly refused, in their inward recesses, to be
+daunted by these externals. For there was Mr. Twist, their friend and
+stand-by, still with them, and hadn't they got each other? But they felt
+uneasy all the same; for Mr. Twist, though he plied them with buttered
+toast and macaroons and was as attentive as usual, had a somnambulatory
+quality in his attention. He looked like a man who is doing things in a
+dream. He looked like one who is absorbed in something else. His
+forehead still was puckered, and what could it be puckered about, seeing
+that he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a clear
+and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a man?
+
+"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last, when he
+hadn't even heard a question she asked,--he, the polite, the interested,
+the sympathetic friend of the journey across.
+
+Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in his
+pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at and said,
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in my
+mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.
+
+"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "you've got the idea
+we want such a lot of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel
+quite comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant friends?"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.
+
+"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but as
+co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.
+
+"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said Anna-Rose,
+supporting Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas. "For
+instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we were on it
+so heavily and so long."
+
+"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're starting
+a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on _instantly_."
+
+"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What were we
+made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on our own feet?"
+
+"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends with
+everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and human
+flesh subsisting."
+
+"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it seems
+to give you a lot of satisfaction."
+
+"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such perfect
+equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as objects to be
+looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all be."
+
+"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed in her heart she
+loved and clung to Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all
+you've done for us and the way you were so kind to us on the
+boat,--we've been _most_ obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much
+indeed, I know."
+
+"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in Anna-Felicitas, "and
+we've got to start life now in earnest."
+
+"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me what it
+is you propose to do next?"
+
+"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."
+
+"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."
+
+"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved abominably,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+
+"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed to
+Boston."
+
+"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the really proper
+and natural course was for him to have been able to take them to his
+mother. Pity one's mother wasn't--
+
+He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on the verge
+of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of New York,
+this one evening, let us go and look at it."
+
+He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose pulled
+out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe determination.
+
+"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless to
+protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American manhood. I
+only listened with half an ear to all the things you both said in the
+taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise of finding myself
+still with you instead of on the train for Clark, and because you both
+of you do say so very many things. But understand once and for all that
+in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man. I'm
+that man till I've left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be
+Sack--confound him," finished Mr. Twist suddenly.
+
+And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
+indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet seen
+in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to put him
+to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an established custom,
+surely," he said more gently.
+
+So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
+Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy, while
+reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack, who was, in
+their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might
+be going to be mothers' helps in the Sack _ménage_ for all they
+knew,--they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured
+guests to typists.
+
+"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"No," said the twins.
+
+He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to
+the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting
+miles. The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a
+clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river. Lamps were
+being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air. Steep grass
+slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid
+that there were houses and a street above them on their right. Up and
+down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke
+hanging in the air long after they had gone their way. It was so great a
+joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the _St. Luke_ and to
+see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
+suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible not
+to be cheerful, translated from the _St. Luke_ into such a place,
+trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.
+
+The world seemed suddenly quite good,--the simplest, easiest of objects
+to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh
+rather than cry. They trotted along humming bits of their infancy's
+songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and
+macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still
+and didn't heave or lurch beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than
+he had been for some hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent
+a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in
+New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with
+her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the
+Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed
+them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind
+was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the
+Sacks. He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back
+to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from Boston.
+
+If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in
+Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he wouldn't have
+had the heart to press them to go; and then what would he have done with
+them? Their second and last line of defence, supposing they had
+considered the Sacks had failed and were to be ruled out, was in
+California, a place they spoke of as if it were next door to Boston and
+New York. How could he have let them set out alone on that four days'
+journey, with the possibility of once more at its end not being met? No
+wonder he had been abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of
+his forehead going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to
+the Sacks. For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without
+preparation and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York
+while he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist,
+the verb dropping into his mind with the _aplomb_ of an inspiration, are
+the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle. Already
+he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office
+down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had
+heard Mr. Twist's name, and because of, second, his politeness, his
+confidential manner as of an understanding sympathizer with a rich man's
+recreations, when he had. The tea, which he, had poured out of one of
+his own teapots, had been completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was
+only this teapot that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave
+Trafficker. He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the
+Twinklers, or into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a
+country, Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh
+from where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
+surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
+toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't be
+uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America
+untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected
+amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to
+buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to his private
+purities.
+
+He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
+pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist
+the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They walked along,
+talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did,
+especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because
+of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual
+kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when
+they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a
+restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had
+been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals.
+They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things
+to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness;
+heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class
+cooking on the _St. Luke_, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
+lives,--great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.
+
+Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
+advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of
+the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
+happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was
+quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other tables at
+the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the
+people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked. On the ship he had
+only sometimes been aware of it,--there would come a glint of sunshine
+and settle on Anna-Rose's little cheek where the dimple was, or he would
+lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness
+of Anna-Felicitas's eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now,
+dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation,
+he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas
+was more than very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most
+unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred
+pounds to support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them
+slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about,--go off without
+explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston
+Sacks,--but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life. A girl
+should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male
+relations. As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his
+spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two
+specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So were
+her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.
+
+And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten
+o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in
+little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish
+ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in
+with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous--a
+thing he particularly disliked--and handed him a letter.
+
+The twins had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they wrote,
+no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a discussion in
+their bedroom the night before when they got back in which Anna-Rose
+supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments, and it ended in
+Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to her original
+standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by the comfort and
+security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been inclined to slip.
+
+It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest. Anna-Felicitas
+had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently affectionate as a
+wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason into her husband.
+Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a husband, bristled at the
+mere breath of criticism of her superior intelligence and wisdom. She
+was the leader of the party, the head and guide, the one who had the
+dollars in her pocket, and being the eldest naturally must know best.
+Besides, she was secretly nervous about taking Anna-Felicitas about
+alone. She too had observed the stares of the public, and had never
+supposed that any of them might be for her. How was she to get to Boston
+successfully with so enchanting a creature, through all the
+complications of travel in an unknown country, without the support and
+counsel of Mr. Twist? Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents
+cowed her. The strangeness of everything, while it delighted her so
+long as she could peep at it from behind Mr. Twist, appalled her the
+minute she was left alone with it. America seemed altogether a foreign
+country, a strange place whose inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a
+strange language. They talked English; or rather what sounded like
+English till you found that it wasn't really.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn horror of
+accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right
+to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher,
+after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write
+the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's breakfast next morning, while
+Columbus slouched about the room suggesting sentences.
+
+It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for them,
+and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
+Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved long
+words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In rolling
+sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his concern, they
+pointed out that his first duty was to his mother, and his second was
+not to squander his possessions in paying the hotel and railway bills of
+persons who had no sort of claim on him, except those general claims of
+humanity which he had already on the _St. Luke_ so amply discharged.
+They would refrain from paying their hotel bill, remembering his words
+as to the custom of the country, though their instincts were altogether
+against this course, but they could and would avoid causing him the
+further expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
+taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without him.
+They promised to write from the Sacks and let him know of their arrival
+to the address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget
+him as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
+A.-F. Twinkler.
+
+Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.
+
+The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening before
+looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on the 8.15 for
+Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at seven o'clock, had
+asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to Boston, inquired about
+the station, etc., and had specially requested that Mr. Twist should not
+be disturbed.
+
+"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and didn't
+like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you knew all about
+it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.
+
+"So I did--so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go back to his
+breakfast for three.
+
+"So he did--so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to the other
+clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from the
+expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting things to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary intensity
+at the station in getting their tickets, trying to understand the black
+man who seized and dealt with their luggage, and closely following him
+wherever he went in case he should disappear, were sitting in a state of
+relaxation and relief in the Boston express, their troubles over for at
+least several hours.
+
+The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who had
+children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay behind
+the twins' assumption a of severe dignity, and took them in hand and
+got seats for them in the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars,
+parlour or otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to
+the booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
+third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the press
+and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as these
+dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in them some
+time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants offering them
+fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just as if they had been
+in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked admiringly, that counting their
+money they discovered what a hole the journey had made in it. But they
+were too much relieved at having accomplished so much on their own,
+quite uphelped for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it
+particularly to heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the
+Ł200, and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train
+again for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
+they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr. Twist's
+purse.
+
+The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and privately in
+chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger should start staring
+at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her back altogether on him; to
+have one's feet on footstools when they were the sort of feet that don't
+reach the ground; to see the lovely autumn country flying past, hills
+and woods and fields and gardens golden in the October sun, while the
+horrible Atlantic was nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly
+reminiscent of English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a
+bit like either; to be able to have the window wide open without
+getting soot in one's eyes because one of the ministering angels--clad,
+this one, appropriately to heaven, in white, though otherwise
+black--pulled up the same sort of wire screen they used to have in the
+windows at home to keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve,
+when they grew bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers
+and cause the black angel to spread a little table between them and
+bring clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
+curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to have
+the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose mouth was
+full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee from his own
+private supply at last when they had refused regretfully a dozen
+suggestions to buy--"Have a bit," he said, thrusting it under their
+noses. "As a gentleman to ladies--no pecuniary obligations--come on,
+now;" all this was to the twins too interesting and delightful for
+words.
+
+They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered, and
+since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant in return,
+intermittent amenities passed between them and the young man as he
+journeyed up and down through the cars.
+
+"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some reluctance, for
+presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee
+didn't seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside
+them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they
+took some more.
+
+They nodded and smiled stickily.
+
+"English, I guess."
+
+They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of
+their toffee-filled jaws.
+
+Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had
+given the captain of the _St. Luke,_ and said, "Practically."
+
+"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in
+"practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but
+the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.
+
+"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws
+clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to be asked that
+the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us. We'd better
+decide what we're going to say, and practise saying it without
+hesitation."
+
+Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.
+
+"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
+swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it
+would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise, then
+reflection, and then suspicion."
+
+"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
+disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is German
+when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like Germans.
+Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In God's eye we're
+not, and that's the principal eye after all."
+
+Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that parents
+when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they're going to
+place their children in."
+
+"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I mean,"
+she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the
+perfect love and forethought of their mother, "fathers don't."
+
+They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to
+sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam
+broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the
+Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful
+security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and
+clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be
+clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was
+so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
+cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn't an
+idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now--Aunt Alice had said, "You
+must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and
+when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist's in her
+desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently
+to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what
+gentlewomen were instinctively.
+
+"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose
+repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time provided
+Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, "seeing that we're
+supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do is to behave according
+to our instincts."
+
+But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts, especially
+Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being older, but even
+hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions
+according to the other person's behaviour. Her instinct, for instance,
+when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit
+him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard
+that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant,
+teacher, visitor and relation--except her mother--in her Prussian home.
+Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman,
+for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
+drip tact.
+
+"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when
+the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, "says
+that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been there."
+
+"Sensitive--sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup.
+"Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they
+are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including
+sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really---" He
+raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. "You merely add half as much
+again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of
+their sensitiveness, and it's all right."
+
+"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.
+
+As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's recipe for
+social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the
+meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her
+cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have been tact. But it was
+instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took
+possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in
+the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to
+Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person's _morale_,
+but she did very much wish that principles weren't such important things
+and one needn't have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr.
+Twist.
+
+"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered severely to
+Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow
+passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.
+
+On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks,--certainly one
+Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their
+faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting. But once again no
+Sacks were there. The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of
+the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the
+Twinklers.
+
+"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when it was
+finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have acquired the
+meeting habit."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what Aunt Alice
+used to complain about the housemaids,--neither punctual nor
+methodical."
+
+"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not escape us.
+I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of not having them.
+We will now proceed to track them to their lair."
+
+For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was still
+there. It was going on further and further away from the Sacks. Happy
+train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But she resisted, and
+engaged a porter.
+
+Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they had been
+the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand, and they knew
+what an American porter looked like. The porter and a taxi were engaged
+with comparative ease and assurance, and on giving the porter, who had
+staggered beneath the number of their grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud
+on his face, they doubled it instantly sooner than have trouble, and
+trebled it equally quickly on his displaying yet further
+dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled up
+round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating themselves
+on how much easier it was to get away from a train than to get into one.
+
+But the minute their activities were over and they had time to think,
+silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They both composed
+their faces to indifference to hide that they were nervous, examining
+the streets they passed through with a calm and _blasé_ stare worthy of
+a lorgnette. It was the tact part of the coming encounter that was
+chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose, and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her
+conviction that nobody who was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly
+be agreeable. "By their friends ye shall know them," thought
+Anna-Felicitas, staring out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also
+the persistence of the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations
+was discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
+wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and Anna-Rose
+being German.
+
+This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
+particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
+little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a hurt
+finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being knocked.
+Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable behaviour of
+Providence which had led their mother, so safely and admirably English,
+to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry somebody who wasn't. Of
+course there was this to be said for it, that she wasn't their mother
+then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas felt sure she wouldn't have. Then,
+perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult to follow she gave
+them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's arm and gave it a
+squeeze.
+
+"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be very
+eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi stopped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and almost
+before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the intervening
+wide pavement and thrust his face through the window.
+
+"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.
+
+He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open; for it
+seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside it in a
+seething mass.
+
+"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
+grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."
+
+"They ain't," said the boy promptly.
+
+"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her surprise.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you my
+Sunday shirt they ain't."
+
+The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their conversations
+with the lower classes to be talked to about shirts.
+
+The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick that it
+flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going off.
+
+"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself. "We'll go up
+and see for ourselves."
+
+"You won't see," said the boy.
+
+"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.
+
+"You won't see," he said, pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do
+see Sacks up there I'm a Hun."
+
+The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas,
+two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to
+American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks,
+an _attaché_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.
+Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that
+they might almost as well have been grips themselves.
+
+"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
+difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and
+pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay
+and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was
+rolling.
+
+"In where?" crackled the boy.
+
+"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston
+Sack are."
+
+"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the boy,
+increasing the loudness of his crackling.
+
+"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
+disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
+immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
+_attaché_ case.
+
+"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
+One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
+said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."
+
+"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
+you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
+them is dead?"
+
+"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
+Left. Got," said the boy.
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
+meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
+You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
+all."
+
+Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
+to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.
+
+"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
+view. "Well, I don't know about that--"
+
+"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
+Sack who is here?"
+
+"Mr.," said the boy.
+
+"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
+followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.
+
+The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
+the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
+them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
+the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
+to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.
+
+"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
+inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
+Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
+up, "when it is really a lift?"
+
+"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.
+
+"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
+a lift."
+
+The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
+but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
+stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
+then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
+obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an
+idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
+entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life of
+the Sacks.
+
+The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the door of
+a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered, the actual
+door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they wished to commit
+suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of their own front door.
+They would then fall, infinitely far, on to the roof of the lift lurking
+at the bottom.
+
+The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once exposed
+to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a manservant
+standing in it staring at them.
+
+Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of his lift,
+approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him by saying,
+"Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and whispered in his
+ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who, however, regarded it as
+some expression peculiarly American and were left unmoved by it, "The
+co-respondents."
+
+The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only been gone
+a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and
+authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to
+be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she
+wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole possession now. Nobody knew where
+Mrs. Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
+among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his
+heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
+servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was
+all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins,
+his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there
+before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were,
+cold.
+
+"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear little
+voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open
+and the gentleman himself appeared.
+
+"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping suddenly when he saw
+them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's voice--"
+
+"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright
+conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"
+
+She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to him and
+held out their hands.
+
+"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have noticed it.
+
+Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like
+a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and
+shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about
+him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder,
+and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of
+his collar.
+
+"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I wonder?"
+
+"There hasn't been much time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
+less than two months since there were all those letters."
+
+"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"
+
+"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was
+unnerved.
+
+"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.
+
+Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last
+few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of the lift-boy,
+lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant's face Even
+to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.
+
+Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room.
+"Come in, come in," he said distractedly.
+
+They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant lingered a
+moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his
+lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen. "I'm darned," was all he
+could articulate. "I'm darned."
+
+"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on getting
+inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her determined
+cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"
+
+"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse
+me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day--it makes me stupid--"
+
+"Oh, I'm _very_ sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.
+
+"And so am I--_very_," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous. "Have
+you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like that--"
+
+"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you. The effect, you see,
+is that I can't think very clearly. But do tell me--why luggage?
+Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."
+
+"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't there--isn't there
+always luggage in America too when people come to stay with one?"
+
+"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
+forehead again.
+
+"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."
+
+"So naturally we've come."
+
+"But _is_ it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them distractedly.
+
+"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs. Sack,
+which is the same thing--"
+
+"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it were. It
+ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here--"
+
+"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to meet us in New
+York, or where?"
+
+"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's--gone."
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh," he went
+on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him, he fought with
+and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in the hall I
+thought--I had a moment's hope--for a minute I believed--she had come
+back. So I went out. Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
+strangers--"
+
+The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice, were so
+much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile that the
+twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion
+and passed no judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an
+American one naturally behaved like that.
+
+"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call us
+strangers. We're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said Mr. Sack. "But I
+can't call to mind--"
+
+"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're the
+nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit--as I'm sure,"
+Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for being."
+
+Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty
+girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.
+
+"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile all
+over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly unvain as a
+person intent on something else would be.
+
+"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she continued,
+"because he showed us your answers back. You invited us to come and stay
+with you. And, as you perceive, we've done it."
+
+"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said Mr. Sack, "before
+all this--do I remember something about it? I've had such trouble
+since--I've been so distracted one way and another--it may have slipped
+away out of my memory under the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and
+looked round the room helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
+now."
+
+"We're _very_ sorry you've had trouble," said Anna-Felicitas
+sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though. Man that is born of
+woman is full of misery. That's what the Burial Service says, and it
+ought to know."
+
+Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
+pretty--" he again began.
+
+"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted Anna-Rose.
+
+"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for a long while,
+I'm afraid--"
+
+"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said miserably.
+
+There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each other.
+
+"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a little pull.
+
+"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
+warning.
+
+Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind his
+back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas, forgetful of
+what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge of the table and
+began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.
+
+"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with friendly and
+interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's
+wife, the one we're the nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost
+contumely from their husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been
+something awful to yours."
+
+"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her. I do
+worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in Boston. I was as
+proud of her as any man has ever been of his wife."
+
+"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and I'm
+interested."
+
+"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so constructed--that I could
+be fond of other people as well as of her," said Mr. Sack.
+
+"Well, _that's_ nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."
+
+"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very politely
+indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to
+like other people as well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"
+
+"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
+about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
+"but that I liked other people so _much_."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
+whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
+ache."
+
+"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"
+
+"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
+of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"
+
+"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."
+
+"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
+against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
+know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"
+
+Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
+with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
+Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.
+
+"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
+situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
+people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
+other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
+it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
+afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
+beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
+have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
+with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."
+
+"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
+to her. "Were you going to?"
+
+"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
+can produce a mother--"
+
+"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
+it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
+the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
+of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
+wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to
+her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her
+own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
+caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while
+she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on
+his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting
+and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only, her Irish terrier
+hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had looked much more efficient.
+
+"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances--"
+
+"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more turns in
+front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect his thoughts,
+"that I--that we--had arranged to look after you?"
+
+"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of
+course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us
+welcome. He showed us the letter."
+
+"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--_that_ man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.
+
+"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.
+
+"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly quite clear, "you
+must be--why, you _are_ the Twinklers."
+
+"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals since
+we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said Anna-Rose
+with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say good-bye."
+
+"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas, "but
+where are we to go to?"
+
+"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of her size,
+"Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's other friends.
+But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train and go to Clark, to
+Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother, son and
+daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired after a long
+afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to strike and, with
+the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and announce supper, but
+waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet recovered from an elaborate
+welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the lovely twilight of a golden day,
+were hastening up the winding road from the station towards them.
+Silent, and a little exhausted, the unconscious Twists sat in their
+drawing-room, a place of marble and antimacassars, while these light
+figures, their shoes white with the dust of a country-side that had had
+no rain for weeks, sped every moment nearer.
+
+The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through quiet,
+delicious evening country, and there was one little star twinkling
+encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed Clark would be.
+At the station there had been neither porter nor conveyance, nor indeed
+anybody or anything at all except themselves, their luggage, and a thin,
+kind man who represented authority. Clark is two miles away from its
+station, and all the way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a
+cluster of those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way
+places till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
+immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening sky.
+
+"You can't miss it," encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along
+after your noses till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate.
+I'll look after the menagerie--" thus did he describe the Twinkler
+luggage. "Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get
+there. Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
+arriving this very day. _I_ wouldn't have forgotten you. No, not for a
+dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.
+
+"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas, "when he
+isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."
+
+"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as they
+walked off. "He's a _great_ friend of ours."
+
+"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum; and as
+the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he had been
+interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the train.
+
+"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road does. Give
+yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about stick to it. You'll
+meet other roads, but don't you take any notice of them."
+
+Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the twins went
+up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be going to see
+their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had, ever since the
+collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him very much. As they
+hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet fields, between
+yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing duskier and the beckoning
+star lighter, they remembered Mr. Twist's extraordinary kindness, his
+devoted and unfailing care, with the warmest feelings of gratitude and
+affection. Even Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often had he rearranged
+her head when it was hopelessly rolling about; how often had he fed her
+when she felt better enough to be hungry. Anna-Felicitas was very
+hungry. She still thought highly of pride and independence, but now
+considered their proper place was after a good meal. And Anna-Rose, with
+all the shameless cheerfulness of one who for a little has got rid of
+her pride and is feeling very much more comfortable in consequence
+remarked that one mustn't overdo independence.
+
+"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm so dreadfully hungry. I do so
+terribly want supper. And I'm sure it's supper-time, and the Twists will
+have finished and we mightn't get any."
+
+"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!" exclaimed Anna-Rose, proud
+and confident.
+
+But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they raced
+the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist doorstep
+panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head maid's surprised
+and ungarnished inquiry as to what they wanted, when she opened the door
+and found them there.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she could speak.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked, thinking perhaps
+they might be a deputation of elder school children sent to recite
+welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe return from the seat of war.
+Yet she knew all the school children and everybody else in Clark, and
+none of them were these.
+
+"No--from the station," panted Anna-Rose.
+
+"We didn't see any village," panted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling with her breath.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "Having supper," she said curtly.
+
+"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I hope he isn't eating it
+all."
+
+"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting on her dignity.
+"The Miss Twinklers."
+
+"The who?" said Amanda.
+
+"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still more dignity, for
+there was that in Amanda's manner which roused the Junker in her.
+
+"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda briefly.
+
+"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of conviction,
+"that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise he'll show no
+resentment whatever."
+
+Amanda half shut the door.
+
+"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into what was
+left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that we're totally
+unaccustomed to the doorstep?"
+
+Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
+herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and equal
+America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but taken
+aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that did it. She
+wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except on Sundays when
+the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she wasn't used to
+politeness. That so much of it should come out of objects so young
+rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.
+
+She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through it;
+instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.
+
+"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have arrived," said
+Anna-Rose, looking every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of
+Anna-Rose, but every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want
+of discipline, was sheer Junker.
+
+Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life, was
+stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was about to
+fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and ill-considered
+assertion that if he was her master she was his mistress and so there
+now, when the bell which had rung once already since they had been
+standing parleying rang again and more impatiently, and the dining-room
+door opened and a head appeared. The twins didn't know that it was
+Edith's head, but it was.
+
+"Amanda--" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the nearest
+she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice; but she
+stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked like a crowd.
+"Oh--" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh--" And was for withdrawing her head
+and shutting the door.
+
+But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light shining
+behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with outstretched
+hands.
+
+"How do you do," they both said cordially. "_Don't_ go away again."
+
+Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly feeding
+mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held it to behind
+her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was taken and shaken even
+as Mr. Sack's had been.
+
+"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively moving her nose,
+a particularly delicate instrument, round among the various really
+heavenly smells that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them
+out and guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed
+into her mouth.
+
+The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr. Twist
+suddenly appeared in the doorway.
+
+"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.
+
+Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances changed
+colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was stirred, and
+they were red now, and seemed translucent with the bright light behind
+him shining through them.
+
+The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they were to
+see him again. It was as if for years they had been separated from their
+dearest friend. The few hours since the night before had been enough to
+turn their friendship and esteem for him into a warm proprietary
+affection. They felt that Mr. Twist belonged to them. Even
+Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she beheld him were bright with
+pleasure.
+
+"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in her
+voice, and catching hold of his arm.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of his
+other arm.
+
+"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"They weren't our difficulties--"
+
+"They were the Sacks'--"
+
+"But they reacted on us--"
+
+"And so here we are."
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" asked the voice inside.
+
+"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose eagerly.
+
+"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got there,"
+said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they did
+that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas
+
+"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we turned
+straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.
+
+"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in that
+moment of excitement not without complacency at her own aptness.
+
+"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.
+
+"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas, "because of
+perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten it all, and we so
+dreadfully hungry--"
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and more
+insistently.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the situation in
+his mind.
+
+He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have been
+natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her, if she
+hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to his
+fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined to the
+first-class passengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he had hardly
+spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the women.
+
+Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's
+becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled with ladies. Sin would be
+bad enough--for Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even
+with ladies it is possible to sin--but marriage for Edward would be even
+worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had at
+least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and done
+with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but there was
+no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy thing, and you
+don't repent of holy things,--at least, you oughtn't to. If, as
+ill-advised young men so often would, Edward wanted as years went on to
+marry in spite of his already having an affectionate and sympathetic
+home with feminine society in it, then it seemed to Mrs. Twist most
+important, most vital to the future comfort of the family, that it
+should be someone she had chosen herself. She had observed him from
+infancy, and knew much better than he what was needed for his happiness;
+and she also knew, if there must be a wife, what was needed for the
+happiness of his mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about
+the second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of
+hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the slums of
+a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the Twinklers into
+her mental range. Not during those first hours, anyhow. There would be
+plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient unto the day would be the
+Twinklers thereof.
+
+But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had said
+nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his mother
+asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained him, he said
+as many another honest man, pressed by the searching affection of
+relations, has said before him, that it was business. Now it appeared
+that he would have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't
+business. It was these."
+
+His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially he hated
+to have lied,--at the moment, one plunged in spurred by sudden
+necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating one's
+degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his mother, he
+well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her. She had been so
+terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh from praying,--for
+before he went to Harvard he used to pray--he had on one or two
+occasions for a few minutes endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer
+fright at the effect of his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her
+to forget it and forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded
+by his having lied.
+
+The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with a
+sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in France, to
+come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling one's way about
+among tender places ...
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third time.
+
+"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to know who
+we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"
+
+"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full
+satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't run
+anywhere.
+
+"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.
+
+"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.
+
+Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed out. She
+was gazing at the Twinklers with the same kind eyes her brother had,
+but without the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and
+anxiety were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the
+twins hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually
+have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.
+
+"Edith--Edward--Amanda," called the voice, this time with unmistakable
+anger.
+
+For one more moment Mr. Twist stood uncertain, looking down at the happy
+confident faces turned up to him exactly, as Anna-Felicitas had just
+said, like flowers turning to the sun. Visions of France flashed before
+him, visions of what he had known, what he had just come back from. His
+friends over there, the gay courage, the helpfulness, the ready,
+uninquiring affection, the breadth of outlook, the quick friendliness,
+the careless assumption that one was decent, that one's intentions were
+good,--why shouldn't he pull some of the splendid stuff into his poor,
+lame little home? Why should he let himself drop back from heights like
+those to the old ridiculous timidities, the miserable habit of avoiding
+the truth? Rebellion, hope, determination, seized Mr. Twist. His eyes
+shone behind his spectacles. His ears were two red flags of revolution.
+He gripped hold of the twins, one under each arm.
+
+"You come right in," he said, louder than he had ever spoken in his
+life. "Edith, see these girls? They're the two Annas. Their other name
+is Twinkler, but Anna'll see you through. They want supper, and they
+want beds, and they want affection, and they're going to get it all. So
+hustle with the food, and send the Cadillac for their baggage, and fix
+up things for them as comfortably as you know how. And as for Mrs.
+Sack," he said, looking first at one twin and then at the other, "if it
+hadn't been for her running away from her worthless husband--I'm
+convinced that fellow Sack is worthless--you might never have come here
+at all. So you see," he finished, laughing at Anna-Rose, "how good comes
+out of evil."
+
+And with the sound of these words preceding him he pushed open the
+dining-room door and marched them in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+At the head of the table sat his mother; long, straight, and grave. She
+was in the seat of authority, the one with its back to the windows and
+its face to the door, from whence she could see what everybody did,
+especially Amanda. Having seen what Amanda did, she then complained to
+Edith. She didn't complain direct to Amanda, because Amanda could and
+did give notice.
+
+Her eyes were fixed on the door. Between it and her was the table,
+covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and therefore,
+according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious days, all the
+food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in together, and
+Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten oyster patties lay on
+Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected champagne had bubbled itself
+flat. Her hand still held her fork, but loosely, as an object that had
+lost its interest, and her eyes and ears for the last five minutes had
+not departed from the door.
+
+At first she had felt mere resigned annoyance that Amanda shouldn't have
+answered the bell, but she didn't wish to cast a shadow over Edward's
+homecoming by drawing poor Edith's attention before him to how very
+badly she trained the helps, and therefore she said nothing at the
+moment; then, when Edith, going in search of Amanda, had opened the door
+and let in sounds of argument, she was surprised, for she knew no one so
+intimately that they would be likely to call at such an hour; but when
+Edward too leapt up, and went out and stayed out and failed to answer
+her repeated calls, she was first astonished, then indignant, and then
+suddenly was overcome by a cold foreboding.
+
+Mrs. Twist often had forebodings, and they were always cold. They seized
+her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief functions was to
+comfort and reassure her for as long a while each time as was required
+to reach the stage of being able to shake them off. Here was one,
+however, too icily convincing to be shaken off. It fell upon her with
+the swiftness of a revelation. Something unpleasant was going to happen
+to her; something perhaps worse than unpleasant,--disastrous. And
+something immediate.
+
+Those excited voices out in the hall,--they were young, surely, and they
+were feminine. Also they sounded most intimate with Edward. What had he
+been concealing from her? What disgracefulness had penetrated through
+him, through the son the neighbourhood thought so much of, into her very
+home? She was a widow. He was her only son. Impossible to believe he
+would betray so sacred a position, that he whom she had so lovingly and
+proudly welcomed a few hours before would allow his--well, she really
+didn't know what to call them, but anyhow female friends of whom she had
+been told nothing, to enter that place which to every decent human being
+is inviolable, his mother's home. Yet Mrs. Twist did instantly believe
+it.
+
+Then Edward's voice, raised and defiant--surely defiant?--came through
+the crack in the door, and every word he said was quite distinct. Anna;
+supper; affection ... Mrs. Twist sat frozen. And then the door was
+flung open and Edward tumultuously entered, his ears crimson, his face
+as she had never seen it and in each hand, held tightly by the arm, a
+girl.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her.
+
+"Mother--" he began.
+
+"How do you do," said the girls together, and actually with smiles.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her. That whole afternoon how quiet he had
+been, how listless. Quite gentle, quite affectionate, but listless and
+untalkative. She had thought he must be tired; worn out with his long
+journey across from Europe. She had made allowances for him; been
+sympathetic, been considerate. And look at him now. Never had she seen
+him with a face like that. He was--Mrs. Twist groped for the word and
+reluctantly found it--rollicking. Yes; that was the word that exactly
+described him--rollicking. If she hadn't observed his languor up to a
+few minutes ago at supper, and seen him with her own eyes refuse
+champagne and turn his back on cocktails, she would have been forced to
+the conclusion, dreadful though it was to a mother, that he had been
+drinking. And the girls! Two of them. And so young.
+
+Mrs. Twist had known Edward, as she sometimes informed Edith, all his
+life, and had not yet found anything in his morals which was not
+blameless. Watch him with what loving care she might she had found
+nothing; and she was sure her mother's instinct would not have failed
+her. Nevertheless, even with that white past before her--he hadn't told
+her about "Madame Bovary"--she now instantly believed the worst.
+
+It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst. Clark was very small,
+and therefore also very virtuous. Each inhabitant was the careful
+guardian of his neighhour's conduct. Nobody there ever did anything
+that was wrong; there wasn't a chance. But as Nature insists on a
+balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil. They were minds
+active in suspicion. They leapt with an instantaneous agility at the
+worst conclusions. Nothing was ever said in Clark, but everything was
+thought. The older inhabitants, made fast prisoners in their mould of
+virtue by age, watched with jealous care the behaviour of those still
+young enough to attract temptation. The younger ones, brought up in
+inhibitions, settled down to wakefulness in regard to each other.
+Everything was provided and encouraged in Clark, a place of pleasant
+orchards and gentle fields, except the things that had to do with love.
+Husbands were there; and there was a public library, and social
+afternoons, and an Emerson society. The husbands died before the wives,
+being less able to cope with virtue; and a street in Clark of smaller
+houses into which their widows gravitated had been christened by the
+stationmaster--a more worldly man because of his three miles off and all
+the trains--Lamentation Lane.
+
+In this village Mrs. Twist had lived since her marriage, full of dignity
+and honour. As a wife she had been full of it, for the elder Mr. Twist
+had been good even when alive, and as a widow she had been still fuller,
+for the elder Mr. Twist positively improved by being dead. Not a breath
+had ever touched her and her children. Not the most daring and
+distrustful Clark mind had ever thought of her except respectfully. And
+now here was this happening to her; at her age; when she was least able
+to bear it.
+
+She sat in silence, staring with sombre eyes at the three figures.
+
+"Mother--" began Edward again; but was again interrupted by the
+twins, who said together, as they had now got into the habit of saying
+when confronted by silent and surprised Americans, "We've come."
+
+It wasn't that they thought it a particularly good conversational
+opening, it was because silence and surprise on the part of the other
+person seemed to call for explanation on theirs, and they were
+constitutionally desirous of giving all the information in their power.
+
+"How do you do," they then repeated, loosening themselves from Mr. Twist
+and advancing down the room with outstretched hands.
+
+Mr. Twist came with them. "Mother," he said, "these are the Twinkler
+girls. Their name's Twinkler. They---"
+
+Freed as he felt he was from his old bonds, determined as he felt he was
+on emulating the perfect candour and simplicity of the twins and the
+perfect candour and simplicity of his comrades in France, his mother's
+dead want of the smallest reaction to this announcement tripped him up
+for a moment and prevented his going on.
+
+But nothing ever prevented the twins going on. If they were pleased and
+excited they went on with cheerful gusto, and if they were unnerved and
+frightened they still went on,--perhaps even more volubly, anxiously
+seeking cover behind a multitude of words.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not yet unnerved and frightened them, because they were
+too much delighted that they had got to her at all. The relief Anna-Rose
+experienced at having safely piloted that difficult craft, the clumsy if
+adorable Columbus, into a respectable Port was so immense that it
+immediately vented itself in words of warmest welcome to the lady in the
+chair to her own home.
+
+"We're _so_ glad to see you here," she said, smiling till her dimple
+seemed to be everywhere at once hardly able to refrain from giving the
+lady a welcome hug instead of just inhospitably shaking her hand. She
+couldn't even shake her hand, however, because it still held, immovably,
+the fork. "It would have been too awful," Anna-Rose therefore finished,
+putting the heartiness of the handshake she wanted to give into her
+voice instead, "if _you_ had happened to have run away too."
+
+"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband," Anna-Felicitas explained,
+smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who actually having got
+oyster patties on her plate hadn't bothered to eat them. "But of course
+you couldn't," she went on, remembering in time to be tactful and make a
+Sympathetic reference to the lady's weeds; which, indeed, considering
+Mr. Twist had told her and Anna-Rose that his father had died when he
+was ten, nearly a quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their
+heads up astonishingly and stayed very fresh. And true to her German
+training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose in her
+contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's right hand, fork
+and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious kiss of a well
+brought up Junker.
+
+Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this empty of Junkers.
+She had never even heard of them till the war, and pronounced their
+name, and so did the rest of Clark following her lead, as if it had been
+junket, only with an r instead of a t at the end. She didn't therefore
+recognize the action; but even she, outraged as she was, could not but
+see its grace. And looking up in sombre hostility at the little head
+bent over her hand and at the dark line of eyelashes on the the flushed
+face, she thought swiftly, "_She's_ the one."
+
+"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously and
+sitting on it with determination, "it's like this. (Sit down, you two,
+and get eating. Start on anything you see in this show that hits your
+fancy. Edith'll be fetching you something hot, I expect--soup, or
+something--but meanwhile here's enough stuff to go on with.) You see,
+mother--" he resumed, turning squarely to her, while the twins obeyed
+him with immense alacrity and sat down and began to eat whatever
+happened to be nearest them, "these two girls--well, to start with
+they're twins--"
+
+Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She couldn't conceive
+why he should lie. Twins the world over matched in size and features; it
+was notorious that they did. Also, it was the custom for them to match
+in age, and the tall one of these was at least a year older than the
+other one. But still, thought Mrs. Twist, let that pass. She would
+suffer whatever it was she had to suffer in silence.
+
+The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating. Perfectly
+at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved with an easy
+naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous. But still--let that
+too pass. These strangers helped themselves and helped each other, as if
+everything belonged to them; and the tall one actually asked her--her,
+the mistress of the house--if she could get _her_ anything. Well, let
+that pass too.
+
+"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.
+
+He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous hold
+one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words;
+what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in
+one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her quickly
+wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could
+do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him
+till he was seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking
+off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's childhood.
+
+Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster
+himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to
+come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the
+sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he
+rejected that as priggish.
+
+"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across them--across these
+two girls--they're both called Anna, by the way, which seems confusing
+but isn't really--I came across them on the boat----"
+
+He again stopped dead.
+
+Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed on
+Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of oyster
+patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what Mrs. Twist was
+accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas was behaving badly
+with the patties, and not even attempting to conceal, as the decent do,
+how terribly they interested her.
+
+"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her eyes on her
+son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he had told her
+that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody except men. Another
+lie. Well, let that pass too ...
+
+Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming spectacles.
+He well knew the weakness of his position from his mother's point of
+view; but why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling,
+narrow one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
+stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the old
+system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid
+offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive. Let her for
+once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind thing. But as he
+stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't very well start
+moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their presence. He couldn't
+tell her they were orphans, alone in the world, helpless, poor, and so
+unfortunately German, with them sitting there. If he did, there would be
+trouble. The twins seemed absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he
+had no doubt their ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of
+sympathy being invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those
+things he was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand.
+Or, if she understood, appreciate.
+
+He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and then ask
+his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while Edith was
+looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot, explain them to
+his mother, describe their situation, commend them to her patience and
+her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing extraordinarily hard that
+Edith would be quick.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his mother's.
+"Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar gentleness, balancing
+a piece of patty on her fork, "that you haven't yet mentioned us to your
+mother?"
+
+And Anna-Rose, struck in her turn at such an omission, paused too with
+food on the way to her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"
+
+"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.
+
+"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to their
+mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her everything
+from the beginning."
+
+Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected support,
+bowed her head--it could hardly be called a nod--in her son's direction.
+"You see--" the movement seemed to say, "even these ..."
+
+"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
+addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last night,
+he has been what I think can be quite accurately described as our
+faithful two-footed companion."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends. Practically
+inseparable."
+
+"So that it really is _very_ surprising," said Anna-Felicitas to Mr.
+Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother about us."
+
+Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy in that
+room.
+
+He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very wise,
+you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded, "but you may
+take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the
+drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
+ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the door,
+"but confound it all, I've only been home about a couple of hours."
+
+"Five," said Mrs. Twist.
+
+"Five then. What's five? No time at all."
+
+"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say confound,
+Edward?"
+
+"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he broke
+loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the
+drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his
+bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white
+wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled
+together as tight as it would go.
+
+His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply
+not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak,
+after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an
+incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she
+hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him,
+but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their children. It was
+stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental
+rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross
+things--she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could
+remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such
+things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode.
+Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards
+admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment,
+and that it was evident these girls were not like that.
+
+But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he
+had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as
+if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the
+twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them,
+and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy,
+as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that
+moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had
+told his mother that here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful
+thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her
+side, to talk.
+
+She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only started
+when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came to offering
+her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to do something
+really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing nothing else but
+noble and beautiful things, and doing them with the most single-minded
+devotion to duty and the most consistent disregard of inclination, could
+keep silence no longer. Had she not borne her great loss without a
+murmur? Had she not devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a
+good man? Had she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her
+efforts to set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in
+misfortune? She began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at
+the things this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the
+manner of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
+unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their delivery.
+
+Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because for years,
+away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted his mother; for
+years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
+unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he had
+doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her honesty,
+her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately, before he went
+to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless
+this unexpected naked justification of his doubts was shattering to him.
+
+But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew him inside
+out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the long years of
+his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and rather disposed,
+also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for him, so easy had he
+been to manage, so ready to do everything she wished. Now it appeared
+that she no more knew Edward than if he had been a stranger in the
+street.
+
+The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible
+thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger
+generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his shoulder and take
+comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his
+mother's fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the
+belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black
+pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So
+naturally kind was he--weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at
+him--that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had
+been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and
+affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think
+it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only
+he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the
+painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
+humiliated.
+
+That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his
+room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen,
+trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the
+future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope for that yet. The future
+seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that
+he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the
+other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then
+turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of
+life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or
+they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and
+she had said, "I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
+she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much
+of it in him?
+
+Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could
+fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of
+suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through
+his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the
+twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and
+goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave
+them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an
+innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of
+his mother's age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his
+instinct knew it.
+
+The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, "You
+have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of
+those girls."
+
+And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find,
+search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point of view.
+It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.
+
+Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn't try
+to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this
+bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of
+the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she
+used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to
+herself she must leave her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And
+Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.
+
+Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her second
+great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful to feel, to
+resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she could from
+Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect him; but she would
+try to protect him even now, as she had always protected him, from
+earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however, surely know in time,
+protect as she might, and judge between her and Edward. God knew
+already, and was already judging. God and Clark.... Poor Edward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by Edith,
+in the happy conviction that they had settled down comfortably for some
+time, were surprised to find at breakfast that they hadn't.
+
+They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of restfulness
+on her part that struck them while they were finishing their supper, and
+to which at last they drew her attention. She was so kind, and so like
+Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with hospitable eyes and wore
+an expression of real benevolence, it didn't escape their notice that
+she seemed to be listening to something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and
+to be expecting something that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several
+times to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared,
+and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came
+back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.
+
+At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any
+real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was
+impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and
+inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the
+inhabitants of America, to keep on being somewhere else. Edith smiled
+abstractedly at them, said nothing, and went out again.
+
+She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other
+things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they
+hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those
+they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
+and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there
+weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring
+listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed
+murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you
+were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
+now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of them.
+
+Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very
+tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their
+rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she
+was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.
+
+The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to
+seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the
+ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were
+expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for
+them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that
+astonished Edith, who didn't know how naturally Junkers make speeches,
+she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it
+was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy
+indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr.
+Twist's voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately
+as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.
+
+Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.
+
+They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each
+bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and
+pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur's, and at
+home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all. The baths there had been
+vessels brought into one's bedroom every night, into which servants next
+morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water
+into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in
+possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and
+plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
+conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other
+countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from
+Pomerania.
+
+Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the
+ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she
+went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more thoughtful than
+ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it?
+Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if
+they didn't happen to be one's own dear brother's _protegees_. And when
+they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath,
+she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed
+them good-night.
+
+Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,--one of the
+satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with you.
+Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things,
+thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which,
+being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.
+
+"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as
+Edith tucked her up and kissed her.
+
+"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose, also
+sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite
+of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical
+faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the
+drawing-room door a little surprised.
+
+At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
+appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing was
+not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's lodging and
+breakfast between, as it were, two trains.
+
+Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins remarked
+solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced the fact.
+
+"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
+Edith--Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in bed--"Why, we've
+unpacked."
+
+"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.
+
+They found difficulty in believing their ears.
+
+"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished
+pause.
+
+"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own teapot. He had
+made up his mind to be very short with the Annas until they were safely
+out of the house, and not permit himself to be entangled by them in
+controversy. Also, he didn't want to look at them if he could help it.
+He was afraid that if he did he might be unable not to take them both in
+his arms and beg their pardon for the whole horridness of the world.
+
+But if he didn't look at them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly
+surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.
+
+"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
+troubled and upset.
+
+"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.
+
+"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for at all
+times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell us where you
+think we're going to."
+
+"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not only at the
+thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a sense of outraged
+faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have observed, is strictly
+limited."
+
+Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith, whose eyes
+were red, informed them that they were _en route_ for California.
+
+"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."
+
+She held her head up straight.
+
+"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after a
+silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her nose,
+because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or Anna-Felicitas, to notice
+that her eyes had gone and got tears in them. She angrily wished she
+hadn't got such damp eyes. They were no better than swamps, she
+thought--undrained swamps; and directly fate's foot came down a little
+harder than usual, up oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the
+leader of an expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original
+Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle
+was able to leave off looking down her nose.
+
+But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle dignity
+that he was obviously tired of them.
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said gently, "I'm
+afraid your denial carries no weight."
+
+"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining it with
+care, "are that I'm coming with you."
+
+"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was here
+that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.
+
+"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning his
+teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that I--well, I
+happen to have some business to do in California, and I may as well do
+it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a different route or train,
+so you see your theory _is_ rather dished, isn't it?"
+
+"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if you
+really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere
+else so soon?"
+
+Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of
+his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said shortly, "but
+you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts.
+I'm going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
+That's all you know, and all you need to know."
+
+"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose
+
+"And if our friends have run away?" suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with
+a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in America?"
+
+"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the
+Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if
+they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves
+to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth,
+almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left
+alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the
+mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war
+began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
+Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
+retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the
+days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in
+Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine
+trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at the elusiveness
+of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be caught up with and at the
+trouble it was giving them.
+
+They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to
+have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already
+however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other
+that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their
+real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their
+plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't even know it existed. It was a
+side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped
+in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there
+some time, perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their
+stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how
+new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go
+to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of
+Clark at a moment's notice.
+
+"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the train and
+have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as the car moved
+away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the
+doorstep.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent her many
+messages.
+
+"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.
+
+But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he really
+began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day, and the next
+morning in New York where he took them to the bank their Ł200 was in and
+saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in
+the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California--Mr.
+Twist was taciturn.
+
+They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening with
+cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in their
+compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that their
+spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till breakfast next
+morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted a little; and as
+the day went on it lifted still more. They were going to be three days
+together in that train, and it would be impossible for Mr. Twist, they
+were sure, to go on being taciturn as long as that. It wasn't his
+nature. His nature was conversational. And besides, shut up like that in
+a train, the sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want
+to talk.
+
+So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
+observation car, though there was nothing to observe except limitless
+flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins suggested that he
+should now begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was
+bound to get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that
+his mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
+with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously long
+ago, when they landed in America.
+
+"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting another
+cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week yet."
+
+And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty serious
+havoc in America considering they had only been in it five days. He and
+his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at Clark sitting
+there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his return, with
+nothing at all that he could see to look forward to and live for except
+the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as duty; every plan upset;
+the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his sister and of himself
+completely altered,--it was a pretty big bag in the time, he thought,
+flinging the match back towards Chicago.
+
+Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad tumble, and
+is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that these great ruptures
+cannot take place without aches and doubts. He ached, and he doubted and
+he also knew through his aches and doubts that he was free at last from
+what of late years he had so grievously writhed under--the shame of
+pretence. And the immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely,
+the Annas.
+
+It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had happened; and
+who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark and the immediate
+effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn't have lapsed after all,
+in spite of the feelings and determinations he had brought back with
+him from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and
+gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when
+he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He might have
+trailed on like that for years--Mr. Twist didn't like the picture of his
+own weakness, but he was determined to look at himself as he
+was--trailed along languidly when he was at home, living another life
+when he was away, getting what he absolutely must have, the irreducible
+minimum of personal freedom necessary to sanity, by means of small and
+shabby deceits. My goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of
+the littleness of them!
+
+He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas sitting
+alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him. They had on the
+blue caps again which made them look so bald and cherubic, and their
+eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines of rails that went back
+and back to a point in the distance. The dear little things; the dear,
+dear little things,--so straightforward, so blessedly straight and
+simple, thought Mr. Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this.
+Fancy _anybody_, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
+opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.
+
+The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned and
+looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud had
+lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of welcome.
+
+"It's pleasant to see you back again," said Anna-Felicitas heartily, who
+was next to him.
+
+"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"It hasn't been like the same place, the world hasn't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been away."
+
+"Since you walked out of the dining-room that night at Clark," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course we know you can't always be with us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.
+
+"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas, "for these last few
+days, I would suggest that we should be happy. As happy as we used to be
+on the _St. Luke_ when we weren't being sea-sick." And she thought she
+might even go so far as to enjoy hearing the "Ode to Dooty," now.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three days we shall have
+disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let us be happy while we
+can. Who knows what their maw will be like? But whatever it's like," she
+added firmly, "we're going to stick in it."
+
+"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that you're a little restored
+to your normal condition, you'll tell us what has been the matter."
+
+"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that something _has_ been the
+matter."
+
+"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas, "and putting two and
+two together, and perhaps you'll tell us what it was, and then we shall
+know if we're right."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he continued
+benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see--" He hesitated, and pushed
+his hat off his forehead. "I wonder if you'd understand--"
+
+"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas assured him.
+
+"These caps make us look more stupid than we are," Anna-Rose assured
+him, deducing her own appearance from that of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Encouraged, but doubtful of their capabilities of comprehension on
+this particular point, Mr. Twist embarked rather gingerly on his
+explanations. He was going to be candid from now on for the rest of his
+days, but the preliminary plunges were, he found, after all a little
+difficult. Even with the pellucidly candid Annas, all ready with ears
+pricked up attentively and benevolently and minds impartial, he found it
+difficult. It was because, on the subject of mothers, he feared he was
+up against their one prejudice. He felt rather than knew that their
+attitude on this one point might be uncompromising,--mothers were
+mothers, and there was an end of it; that sort of attitude, coupled with
+extreme reprobation of himself for supposing anything else.
+
+He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly they got
+wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was very soon for
+they were giving their minds to it as they promised and Mr. Twist's
+hesitations were illuminating, they interrupted.
+
+"So we were right," they said to each other.
+
+"But you don't know yet what I'm going to say," said Mr. Twist. "I've
+only started on the preliminaries."
+
+"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding
+
+"We didn't think so at the time," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had
+happened."
+
+Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only say
+"Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly shocked, I suppose."
+
+"Oh no," they said airily and together.
+
+"No?"
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"You see, as a general principle," said Anna-Felicitas, "it's
+reprehensible to quarrel with one's mother."
+
+"But we've not been able to escape observing--" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"In the course of our brief and inglorious career," put in
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--that there are mothers and mothers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he presently added,
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily and together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+After this brief _éclaircissement_ the rest of the journey was happy.
+Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to California and not be
+happy.
+
+Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up or no
+break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant feeling of
+adventure. Every now and then the realization of this feeling gave his
+conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke. He was having the
+best of it in this business; he was the party in the quarrel who went
+away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its
+corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who
+had never heard of him. Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on
+to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there
+would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has
+burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side,
+naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was
+gone, and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel,
+thought Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the
+desert at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
+colours,--in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the best of
+it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who don't know
+him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are ready to be friendly.
+He must, of course, go far enough; not stay near at hand in some
+familiar place and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful. Well,
+he was going far enough. Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far
+as he could go. Certainly he was having the best of it in being the one
+in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself cynically
+thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then, take care to be
+the one who did go.
+
+But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in everywhere,
+and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper to one who has
+been cutting himself off for good and all from his early home. For the
+life of him he couldn't help feeling extraordinarily light and free.
+Edith--yes, there was Edith, but some day he would make up to Edith for
+everything. There was no helping her now: she was fast bound in misery
+and iron, and didn't even seem to know it. So would he have been, he
+supposed, if he had never left home at all. As it was, it was bound to
+come, this upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth would have
+burst the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of course, to have been
+any bands; or, there being bands, he ought long ago to have burst them.
+
+He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked determined.
+Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his own weak past.
+Well, it was done at last, and never again--never, never again, he said
+to himself, sniffing in through his open window the cold air of the
+desert at sunrise.
+
+By that route, the Santa Fé, it is not till two or three hours before
+you get to the end of the journey that summer meets you. It is waiting
+for you at a place called San Bernardino. There is no trace of it
+before. Up to then you are still in October; and then you get to the
+top of the pass, and with a burst it is June,--brilliant, windless,
+orange-scented.
+
+The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when the
+miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer, with a
+great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded by the scent
+of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and new and very
+aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the black waiters began
+to perspire, the passengers called for cold things to eat, and the twins
+pulled off their knitted caps and jerseys.
+
+From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the twins could
+only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light that did it, the
+extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there were orchards after
+orchards of orange trees covered with fruit, white houses smothered in
+flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall groups of eucalyptus trees
+giving an impression of elegant nakedness, long lines of pepper trees
+with frail fern-like branches, and these things continued for the rest
+of the way; but they would have been as nothing without that beautiful,
+great bland light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and
+their July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this.
+Here was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
+threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer as it
+might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm, and radiant.
+When the train stopped they could see how not a breath of wind stirred
+the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves of the magnolia trees
+glistened motionless in the sun. The train went slowly and stopped
+often, for there seemed to be one long succession of gardens and
+villages. After the empty, wind-driven plains they had come through,
+those vast cold expanses without a house or living creature in sight,
+what a laughing plenty, what a gracious fruitfulness, was here. And when
+they went back to their compartment it too was full of summer
+smells,--the smell of fruit, and roses, and honey.
+
+For the first time since the war began and with it their wanderings, the
+twins felt completely happy. It was as though the loveliness wrapped
+them round and they stretched themselves in it and forgot. No fear of
+the future, no doubt of it at all, they thought, gazing out of the
+window, the soft air patting their faces, could possibly bother them
+here. They never, for instance, could be cold here, or go hungry. A
+great confidence in life invaded them. The Delloggs, sun-soaked and
+orange-fed for years in this place, couldn't but be gentle too, and kind
+and calm. Impossible not to get a sort of refulgence oneself, they
+thought, living here, and absorb it and give it out again. They pictured
+the Delloggs as bland pillars of light coming forward effulgently to
+greet them, and bathing them in the beams of their hospitality. And the
+feeling of responsibility and anxiety that had never left Anna-Rose
+since she last saw Aunt Alice dropped off her in this place, and she
+felt that sun and oranges, backed by Ł200 in the bank, would be
+difficult things for misfortune to get at.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he was even more entranced than the twins as he gazed
+out of the window, for being older he had had time to see more ugly
+things, had got more used to them and to taking them as principally
+making up life. He stared at what he saw, and thought with wonder of his
+mother's drawing-room at Clark, of its gloomy, velvet-upholstered
+discomforts, of the cold mist creeping round the house, and of that
+last scene in it, with her black figure in the middle of it, tall and
+thin and shaking with bitterness. He had certainly been in that
+drawing-room and heard her so terribly denouncing him, but it was very
+difficult to believe; it seemed so exactly like a nightmare, and this
+the happy normal waking up in the morning.
+
+They all three were in the highest spirits when they got out at Los
+Angeles and drove across to the Southern Pacific station--the name alone
+made their hearts leap--to catch the afternoon train on to where the
+Delloggs lived, and their spirits were the kind one can imagine in
+released souls on their first arriving in paradise,--high, yet subdued;
+happy, but reverential; a sort of rollicking awe. They were subdued, in
+fact, by beauty. And the journey along the edge of the Pacific to
+Acapulco, where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this kind
+of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran for miles
+close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand between it and the
+surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It happened to be even in
+that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually wonderful one, and none of
+the three had ever seen anything in the least like it. They could but
+sit silent and stare. The great sea, that little line of lovely islands
+flung down on it like a chain of amethysts, that vast flame of sky, that
+heaving water passionately reflecting it, and on the other side, through
+the other windows, a sharp wall of black mountains,--it was
+fantastically beautiful, like something in a poem or a dream.
+
+By the time they got to Acapulco it was dark. Night followed upon the
+sunset with a suddenness that astonished the twins, used to the
+leisurely methods of twilight on the Baltic; and the only light in the
+country outside the town as they got near it was the light from myriads
+of great stars.
+
+No Delloggs were at the station, but the twins were used now to not
+being met and had not particularly expected them; besides, Mr. Twist was
+with them this time, and he would see that if the Delloggs didn't come
+to them they would get safely to the Delloggs.
+
+The usual telegram had been sent announcing their arrival, and the
+taxi-driver, who seemed to know the Dellogg house well when Mr. Twist
+told him where they wanted to go, apparently also thought it natural
+they should want to go exactly there. In him, indeed, there did seem to
+be a trace of expecting them,--almost as if he had been told to look out
+for them; for hardly had Mr. Twist begun to give him the address than
+glancing at the twins he said, "I guess you're wanting Mrs. Dellogg";
+and got down and actually opened the door for them, an attention so
+unusual in the taxi-drivers the twins had up to then met in America that
+they were more than ever convinced that nothing in the way of
+unfriendliness or unkindness could stand up against sun and oranges.
+
+"Relations?" he asked them through the window as he shut the door gently
+and carefully, while Mr. Twist went with a porter to see about the
+luggage.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Relations of Delloggses?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "Friends."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the driver, leaning with both his arms on the window-sill in
+the friendliest possible manner, and chewing gum and eyeing them with
+thoughtful interest.
+
+Then he said, after a pause during which his jaw rolled regularly from
+side to side and the twins watched the rolling with an interest equal to
+his interest in them, "From Los Angeles?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "From New York."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Well I call that a real compliment," said the driver slowly and
+deliberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that way,
+and without being relations--I call that a real compliment, and a
+friendship that's worth something. Anybody can come along from Los
+Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come from New York," and he eyed
+them now with admiration.
+
+The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
+fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them quaint.
+
+"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.
+
+"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.
+
+The twins thought this over.
+
+The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out very
+white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before getting to Los
+Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in what Anna-Felicitas
+called their favourable-impression-on-arrival garments,--those garments
+Aunt Alice had bought for them on their mother's death, expressing the
+wave of sympathy in which she found herself momentarily engulfed by
+going to a very good and expensive dressmaker; and in the black
+perfection of these clothes the twins looked like two well-got-up and
+very attractive young crows. These were the clothes they had put on on
+leaving the ship, and had been so obviously admired in, to the
+uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it was in these clothes that
+they had arrived within range of Mr. Sack's distracted but still
+appreciative vision, and in them that they later roused the suspicions
+and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was in these clothes that they were now
+about to start what they hoped would be a lasting friendship with the
+Delloggs, and remembering they had them on they decided that perhaps it
+wasn't only sun and oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but
+also the effect on him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.
+
+This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old friends,
+then," he remarked, after a period of reflective jaw-rolling. "Must be,
+to come all that way."
+
+"Well--not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her respect for
+truth and her gratification at being thought old enough to be somebody's
+old friend.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in her
+respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."
+
+The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
+observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said, "You'll
+miss Mr. Dellogg."
+
+"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up her ears, "Shall we?"
+
+"We don't mind missing Mr. Dellogg," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's Mrs.
+Dellogg we wouldn't like to miss."
+
+The driver looked puzzled.
+
+"Yes--that would be too awful," said Anna-Rose, who didn't want a
+repetition of the Sack dilemma. "You did say," she asked anxiously,
+"didn't you, that we were going to miss Mr. Dellogg?"
+
+The driver, looking first at one of them and then at the other, said,
+"Well, and who wouldn't?"
+
+And this answer seemed so odd to the twins that they could only as they
+stared at him suppose it was some recondite form of American slang,
+provided with its own particular repartee which, being unacquainted with
+the language, they were not in a position to supply. Perhaps, they
+thought, it was of the same order of mysterious idioms as in England
+such sentences as I don't think, and Not half,--forms of speech whose
+exact meaning and proper use had never been mastered by them.
+
+"There won't be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many a
+year," said the driver, shaking his head. "Ah no. And that's so."
+
+"Isn't he coming back?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+The driver's jaws ceased for a moment to roll. He stared at Anna-Rose
+with unblinking eyes. Then he turned his head away and spat along the
+station, and then, again fixing his eyes on Anna-Rose, he said, "Young
+gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a table-turner, and a
+psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and anything else you please, and
+get what comfort you can out of your coming backs and the rest of the
+blessed truck, but I know better. And what I know, being a Christian, is
+that once a man's dead he's either in heaven or he's in hell, and
+whichever it is he's in, in it he stops."
+
+Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak. "Are we to understand," she
+inquired, "that Mr. Dellogg--" She broke off.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg is--" Anna-Rose continued for her, but broke off
+too.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg isn't--" resumed Anna-Felicitas with determination,
+"well, that he isn't alive?"
+
+"Alive?" repeated the driver. He let his hand drop heavily on the
+window-sill. "If that don't beat all," he said, staring at her. "What do
+you come his funeral for, then?"
+
+"His funeral?"
+
+"Yes, if you don't know that he ain't?"
+
+"Ain't--isn't what?"
+
+"Alive, of course. No, I mean dead. You're getting me all tangled up."
+
+"But we haven't."
+
+"But we didn't."
+
+"We had a letter from him only last month."
+
+"At least, an uncle we've got had."
+
+"And he didn't say a word in it about being dead--I mean, there was no
+sign of his being going to be--I mean, he wasn't a bit ill or anything
+in his letter--"
+
+"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice, "it ain't
+exactly usual is it--I put it to you squarely, and say it ain't
+_exactly_ usual (there may be exceptions, but it ain't exactly _usual_)
+to come to a gentleman's funeral, and especially not all the way from
+New York, without some sort of an idea that he's dead. Some sort of a
+_general_ idea, anyhow," he added still more sarcastically; for his
+admiration for the twins had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a
+suspicion was growing on him that with incredible and horrible levity,
+seeing what the moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up
+the time waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
+wreaths, by making game of him.
+
+"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his voice
+aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got down from his
+seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired white faces and helped
+them into his taxi,--only for genuine mourners, real sorry ones, going
+to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg, would he, a
+free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls, well-cared for
+gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all this way, I guess
+sent by your parents to represent them properly, and properly fitted out
+in nice black clothes and all, and you start making fun. Pretending.
+Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me about the funeral. Messing me up
+in a lot of words. I don't like it. I'm a father myself, and I don't
+like it. I don't like to see daughters going on like this when their
+father ain't looking. It don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you
+Easterners--"
+
+The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at each other
+in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way Uncle Arthur's
+friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's mere approach.
+People who had been living with their husbands all their lives ran away
+just as the twins came on the scene; people who had been alive all their
+lives went and died, also at that very moment. It almost seemed as if
+directly anybody knew that they, the Twinklers, were coming to stay with
+them they became bent on escape. They could only look at each other in
+stricken astonishment at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of
+what the driver said. They could only sit and look at each other.
+
+And then Mr. Twist came hurrying across from the baggage office, wiping
+his forehead, for the night was hot. Behind him came the porter,
+ruefully balancing the piled-up grips on his truck.
+
+"I'm sorry to have been so--" began Mr. Twist, smiling cheerfully: but
+he stopped short in his sentence and left off smiling when he saw the
+expression in the four eyes fixed on him. "What has happened?" he asked
+quickly.
+
+"Only what we might have expected," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's dead," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You don't say," said Mr. Twist; and after a pause he said again, "You
+don't say."
+
+Then he recovered himself. "I'm very sorry to hear it, of course," he
+said briskly, picking himself up, as it were, from this sudden and
+unexpected tumble, "but I don't see that it matters to you so long as
+Mrs. Dellogg isn't dead too."
+
+"Yes, but--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg isn't _very_ dead, you see," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist looked from them to the driver, but finding no elucidation
+there and only disapproval, looked back again.
+
+"He isn't dead and settled _down_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not _that_ sort of being dead," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's _just_
+dead."
+
+"Just got to the stage when he has a funeral," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"His funeral, it seems, is imminent," said Anna-Felicitas. "Did you not
+give us to understand," she asked, turning to the driver, "that it was
+imminent?"
+
+"I don't know about imminent," said the driver, who wasn't going to
+waste valuable time with words like that, "but it's to-morrow."
+
+"And you see what that means for us," said Anna-Felicitas, turning to
+Mr. Twist.
+
+Mr. Twist did.
+
+He again wiped his forehead, but not this time because the night was
+hot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into a house where there
+is going to be a funeral next day, even if one has come all the way from
+New York and has nowhere else to go. Equally manifestly it is impossible
+to thrust oneself into it after the funeral till a decent interval has
+elapsed. But what the devil, Mr. Twist asked himself in language become
+regrettably natural to him since his sojourn at the front, is a decent
+interval?
+
+This Mr. Twist asked himself late that night, pacing up and down the
+sea-shore in the warm and tranquil darkness in front of the Cosmopolitan
+Hotel, while the twins, utterly tired out by their journey and the
+emotions at the end of it, crept silently into bed.
+
+How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover, that
+is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning is it
+legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations incurred
+before she was a widow,--with, in fact, the Twinklers? Delicacy itself
+would shrink from doing it under a week thought Mr. Twist, or even under
+a fortnight, or even if you came to that, under a month; and meanwhile
+what was he to do with the Twinklers?
+
+Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he wouldn't
+have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he so passionately
+did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on to the tablecloth--was
+sometimes swept by brief but tempestuous revulsions of feeling, and
+though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment describe them
+mentally and without knowing it in the very words of Uncle Arthur, as
+those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he knew. They couldn't help
+the death of the man Dellogg. They were the victims, from first to last,
+of a cruel and pursuing fate; but it is natural to turn on victims, and
+Mr. Twist was for an instant, out of the very depth of his helpless
+sympathy, impatient with the Twinklers.
+
+He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth together,
+while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet. Across the road
+the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced by a thousand lights.
+Very few people were about and no one at all was on the sands. There was
+an immense noise of what sounded like grasshoppers or crickets, and also
+at intervals distant choruses of frogs, but these sounds seemed
+altogether beneficent,--so warm, and southern, and far away from less
+happy places where in October cold winds perpetually torment the world.
+Even in the dark Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was
+beautiful. He could imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed
+over the twins safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this
+place and seeing them every day,--perhaps even, as he had pictured to
+himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs. Now all
+that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg couldn't help
+being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help resenting it. It was
+so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was so like what one of that
+creature Uncle Arthur's friends would do.
+
+Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frankly unreasonable, but then he was
+very much taken aback and annoyed. What was he to do with the Annas? He
+was obviously not a relation of theirs--and indeed no profiles could
+have been less alike--and he didn't suppose Acapulco was behind other
+parts of America in curiosity and gossip. If he stayed on at the
+Cosmopolitan with the twins till Mrs. Dellogg was approachable again,
+whenever that might be, every sort of question would be being asked in
+whispers about who they were and what was their relationship, and
+presently whenever they sat down anywhere the chairs all round them
+would empty. Mr. Twist had seen the kind of thing happening in hotels
+before to other people,--never to himself; never had he been in any
+situation till now that was not luminously regular. And quite soon after
+this with the chairs had begun to happen, the people who created these
+vacancies were told by the manager--firmly in America, politely in
+England, and sympathetically in France--that their rooms had been
+engaged a long time ago for the very next day, and no others were
+available.
+
+The Cosmopolitan was clearly an hotel frequented by the virtuous rich.
+Mr. Twist felt that he and the Annas wouldn't, in their eyes, come under
+this heading, not, that is, when the other guests became aware of the
+entire absence of any relationship between him and the twins. Well, for
+a day or two nothing could happen; for a day or two, before his party
+had had time to sink into the hotel consciousness and the manager
+appeared to tell him the rooms were engaged, he could think things out
+and talk them over with his companions. Perhaps he might even see Mrs.
+Dellogg. The funeral, he had heard on inquiring of the hall porter was
+next day. It was to be a brilliant affair, said the porter. Mr. Dellogg
+had been a prominent inhabitant, free with his money, a supporter of
+anything there was to support. The porter talked of him as the
+taxi-driver had done, regretfully and respectfully; and Mr. Twist went
+to bed angrier than ever with a man who, being so valuable and so
+necessary, should have neglected at such a moment to go on living.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't sleep very well that night. He lay in his rosy room,
+under a pink silk quilt, and most of the time stared out through the
+open French windows with their pink brocade curtains at the great starry
+night, thinking.
+
+In that soft bed, so rosy and so silken as to have been worthy of the
+relaxations of, at least, a prima donna, he looked like some lean and
+alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business to. He hadn't
+thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of his teapot put him in
+the right position for doing so, because his soul was too simple for him
+to desire or think of anything less candid to wear in bed than flannel,
+and he still wore the blue flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In
+that beautiful bed his pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head,
+so frugal of hair, didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow
+prepared for the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And
+finding he couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
+spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as nobody
+was there to see him,--which, Mr. Twist sometimes thought when he caught
+sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time, is one of the comforts of
+being virtuously unmarried,--nobody minded.
+
+His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with and
+contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a difficult
+position who have Mr. Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
+dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer emotions,
+Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a detached and
+concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do with it; faced by
+the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness got in the ways of any
+clear vision.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and strewn
+with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he suddenly had an
+idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real good one. He would
+place the Annas in a school.
+
+Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
+answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school would
+give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought never to have
+left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and overflowing natures
+like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing as a finishing school
+for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas should go, and once in it
+there they should stay put, thought Mr. Twist in vigorous American,
+gathering up his mouth defiantly.
+
+Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily. He would
+seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his position to the twins
+by turning himself into their guardian, and then get them at once into
+the best school there was. As their guardian he could then pay all their
+expenses, and faced by this legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon
+persuaded of the propriety of his paying whatever there was to pay.
+
+Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go to
+sleep after that. Even three months' school--the period he gave Mrs.
+Dellogg for her acutest grief--would do. Tide them over. Give them room
+to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his spectacles,
+snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with the
+instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.
+
+But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure. The
+twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to school.
+They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one of the
+trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in honour of the
+heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of heliotrope that was in the
+warm air, had put on white summer frocks.
+
+Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and more
+angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out on to the
+great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at breakfast. They
+instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr. Twist had thought this
+wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now perceived his mistake. Not
+a head that wasn't turned to look at them, not a newspaper that wasn't
+lowered. They were immediate objects of interest and curiosity, entirely
+benevolent interest and curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about
+them, and the wives of the rich husbands--those halves of the
+virtuous-rich unions which provided the virtuousness--smiled as they
+passed, and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.
+
+Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins' chairs
+for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so respectful,
+and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done it that night in
+New York at supper, and at all the meals in the train in spite of the
+train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes one
+have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this agreeable
+practice in private.
+
+They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the properly
+treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous politeness on
+a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept. They themselves had
+obviously slept well, for their faces were cherubic in their bland
+placidity, and already after one night wore what Mr. Twist later came to
+recognize as the Californian look, a look of complete unworriedness.
+
+Yet they ought to have been worried. Mr. Twist had been terribly worried
+up to the moment in the night when he got his great idea, and he was
+worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts. They didn't look as
+though they would easily be put to school. His idea still seemed to him
+magnificent, a great solution, but would the Annas be able to see it?
+They might turn out impervious to it; not rejecting it, but simply
+non-absorbent. As they slowly and contentedly ate their grape-fruit,
+gazing out between the spoonfuls at the sea shining across the road
+through palm trees, and looking unruffled itself, he felt it was going
+to be rather like suggesting to two cherubs to leave their serene
+occupation of adoring eternal beauty and learn lessons instead. Still,
+it was the one way out, as far as Mr. Twist could see, of the situation
+produced by the death of the man Dellogg. "When you've done breakfast,"
+he said, pulling himself together on their reaching the waffle stage,
+"we must have a talk."
+
+"When we've done breakfast," said Anna-Rose, "we must have a walk."
+
+"Down there," said Anna-Felicitas, pointing with her spoon. "On the
+sands. Round the curve to where the pink hills begin."
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's death," said Mr. Twist, deciding it was necessary at once
+to wake them up out of the kind of happy somnolescence they seemed to be
+falling into, "has of course completely changed--"
+
+"How unfortunate," interrupted Anna-Rose, her eyes on the palms and the
+sea and the exquisite distant mountains along the back of the bay, "to
+have to be dead on a day like this."
+
+"It's not only his missing the fine weather that makes it unfortunate,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You mean," said Anna-Rose, "it's our missing him."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Well, we know that," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"We knew it last night, and it worried us," said Anna-Rose. "Then we
+went to sleep and it didn't worry us. And this morning it still
+doesn't."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist dryly. "You don't look particularly worried, I must
+say."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're not. People who find they've got to
+heaven aren't usually worried, are they."
+
+"And having got to heaven," said Anna-Rose, "we've thought of a plan to
+enable us to stay in it."
+
+"Oh have you," said Mr. Twist, pricking up his ears.
+
+"The plan seemed to think of us rather than we of it," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "It came and inserted itself, as it were, into our minds
+while we were dressing."
+
+"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist firmly, feeling sure
+that the twins' plan would be the sort that ought to be instantly nipped
+in the bud.
+
+He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have you? Is
+it about schools?"
+
+He stared at her in silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was
+very much surprised. "It is."
+
+"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it will tide
+us over."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect harmony
+of ideas.
+
+"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is---" began Anna-Rose in her clear
+little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables round them.
+
+Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of doors,"
+he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the other tables,
+and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say next.
+
+"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.
+
+On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the harmony of
+ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed, something very
+like heated argument began almost as soon as they were seated on some
+rocks round the corner of the shore to the west of the hotel and they
+became aware, through conversation, of the vital difference in the two
+plans.
+
+The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with a
+profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a school in
+the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go to it for three
+months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs. Dellogg wanted to recover
+in.
+
+Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could only nod
+approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared that the twins
+didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity except as teachers.
+Professors, they said; professors of languages and literatures. They
+could speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most
+people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an
+extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English and
+German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot about Heine,
+for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by heart and whose sad
+life in Paris--
+
+"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist. "You're not
+old enough."
+
+Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked at each
+other in surprised indignation.
+
+"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I don't see
+how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't grown up. And
+there can be no doubt as to which we are."
+
+And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their chairs
+for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things like that
+for children.
+
+"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing his hand
+down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words. "Nobody would take
+you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the pair of you--"
+
+"Perambulator--?"
+
+"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the same
+thing, anyway?"
+
+And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation became so
+heated that for a time it was molten.
+
+The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were outraged. Go to
+school? To a place they had never been to even in their suitable years?
+They, two independent grown-ups with Ł200 in the bank and nobody with
+any right to stop their doing anything they wanted to? Go to school now,
+like a couple of little suck-a-thumbs?
+
+It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
+expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
+perambulator faces if he liked--they didn't care, but they did desire
+him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they would be now
+taking their proper place in society, that they had already done a
+course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not open to any but adults,
+and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not given them all that money to
+fritter away on paying for belated schooling.
+
+"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the
+discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how
+completely she had been stirred.
+
+"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose icily.
+
+"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and
+undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting chronologically
+confused as well?"
+
+Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the Twinklers
+when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his rock, his face
+supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while the twins watched
+him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he pushed his hat back
+and began slowly to rub his ear.
+
+"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said,
+continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.
+
+The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest against
+any necessity for such knowledge on his part, but he interrupted them.
+"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when
+you're both a little more composed."
+
+"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Less ruffled, then."
+
+"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as this is
+important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say, to-morrow. I
+suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood and steadying our
+minds--"
+
+"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."
+
+"--and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I haven't told
+you all my plan yet"--Mr. Twist hadn't had time to inform them of his
+wish to become their guardian, owing to the swiftness with which he had
+been engulfed in their indignation,--"but whether you approve of it or
+not, what is quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much
+longer."
+
+"Because it's so dear?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't so much _that_,--the proprietor is a friend of mine, or
+anyhow he very well might be--"
+
+"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid bedroom
+and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in silken beds, and
+the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be pure gold.
+
+"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending money,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find a salaried
+position in a school without loss of time."
+
+"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we ought to
+start looking for such a situation at once" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not to-day," said Mr. Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope
+of getting them, once they were used to it, to come round to his plan.
+"To-day, this one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us
+all good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And
+it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."
+
+He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off theirs.
+
+"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he added
+artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those hills."
+
+And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having spent the
+whole day exploring the charming environs of Acapulco,--having been seen
+at different periods going over the Old Mission in tow of a monk who
+wouldn't look at them but kept his eyes carefully fixed on the ground,
+sitting on high stools eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in
+the town that has the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at
+the foot of a cliff along the top of which a great hedge of
+rose-coloured geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove
+of ilexes on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from
+somewhere in the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through
+eucalyptus woods across the fields towards the foot of the
+mountains,--they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking of tea,
+to a delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round a restaurant
+and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one of the many
+American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people not living in the
+cottages can come and have meals at the restaurant, so we'll go right in
+and have tea."
+
+And it was just because they couldn't get tea--any other meal, the
+proprietress said, but no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help
+Eight Hours Bill which obliged her to do without domestics during the
+afternoon hours--that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+But she didn't come by it at once.
+
+They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the scented
+road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and they got
+into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for tea, and her
+brain was still unvisited by inspiration.
+
+They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being thwarted
+in their desire to sit at a little green table under whispering trees
+and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish to have it at the
+Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been corrupted by Europe, and
+the twins, who had the habits of their mother, couldn't imagine doing
+without it in the afternoon, and they would have it in the hotel sooner
+than not have it at all. It was brought to them after a long time of
+waiting. Nobody else was having any at that hour, and the waiter, when
+at last one was found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they
+were serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
+and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been breakfast.
+
+Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and distaste, as
+well as the place they were sitting in and its rocking-chairs and marble
+and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly smitten by her idea.
+
+It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were, between
+the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in the middle
+of a piece of toast and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
+eating and looked at her.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come off?"
+
+At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away, for
+experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came undone.
+
+"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said, mildly
+sarcastic.
+
+"_Ich gratuliere_," said Anna-Rose, also mildly sarcastic.
+
+"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous," she
+said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of course.
+That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering about schools."
+
+There was a new expression on her face that silenced the comments rising
+to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of whom had tired feet and
+were therefore disposed to sarcasm.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her face
+continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as if a
+curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in her
+usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight. She
+reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind, of Moses
+when he came down from receiving the Law on the mountain.
+
+"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking of
+Moses, "if it's only more commandments."
+
+Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding in her
+fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the rocks," she said
+getting up--"where we sat this morning." And she marched out, followed
+by the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any one
+who is thoroughly determined.
+
+It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
+Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock she
+had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and expounded her
+idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and listless, for once
+was shaken into burning activity. She threw off her hat directly she got
+on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if it were a pulpit, and with
+her hands clasped round her knees poured out her plan, the long shafts
+of the setting sun bathing her in bright flames and making her more like
+Moses than ever,--if, that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as
+Anna-F., thought Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and
+beard.
+
+It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration was. It
+reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of course, a far
+more complicated matter than that little device of his, and would have
+to be thought out very carefully and approached very judiciously, but
+the wealth of detail she was already ready with immensely impressed him.
+She even had a name for the thing; and it was when he heard this name,
+when it flashed into her talk with the unpremeditatedness of an
+inspiration, that Mr. Twist became definitely enthusiastic.
+
+He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in his
+blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the name. He saw
+what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it on hoarding-on
+signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching the public attention
+and sticking there.
+
+The idea, of course, was fantastic, unconventional, definitely outside
+what his mother and that man Uncle Arthur would consider proper, but it
+was outside the standards of such people that life and fruitfulness and
+interest and joy began. He had escaped from the death-like grip of his
+mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself forcibly expulsed the Annas from
+his, and now that they were all so far away, instead of still timorously
+trying to go on living up to those distant sterile ideas why shouldn't
+they boldly go out into the light and colour that was waiting everywhere
+for the free of spirit?
+
+Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to be said
+for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with no
+perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm, himself taking
+the very opposite view as to the proper thing for the twins to do from
+the one he had taken in the night and on the rocks that morning. School?
+Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright shoots of everlastingness--this is
+what they looked like to him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting
+sun--in such a place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of
+the Annas, were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by
+giving a big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He
+himself would hover beneficently in the background over the undertaking.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's idea was to use Uncle Arthur's Ł200 in renting one of
+the little wooden cottages that seemed to be plentiful, preferably one
+about five miles out in the country, make it look inside like an English
+cottage, all pewter and chintz and valances, make it look outside like
+the more innocent type of German wayside inn, with green tables and
+spreading trees, get a cook who would concentrate on cakes, real lovely
+ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and start an inn for tea alone
+that should become the fashion. It ought to be so arranged that it
+became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose would do the waiting. The prices
+would be very high, indeed exorbitant--this Mr. Twist regarded as
+another inspiration,--so that it should be a distinction, give people a
+_cachet_, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position
+in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see
+it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England
+always have, with its name on it.
+
+"If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial arms of
+Germany and England emblazoned on it," interrupted Mr. Twist, "just to
+show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality."
+
+"We might call it The Christopher and Columbus," interrupted Anna-Rose,
+who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on Anna-Felicitas's words.
+
+"Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer," said Mr. Twist, "and have a
+big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on it--"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "It is The Open Arms. That is its name."
+
+And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed his
+head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.
+
+He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it that not
+a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a name. The whole
+thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while Anna-Felicitas still
+talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay little assault on the
+purses of millionaires, in whom the district abounded judging from the
+beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day,--but a joke and a
+gay assault that would at the same time employ and support the Annas;
+solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day long had been regarding
+them much as one does a difficult mathematical problem.
+
+It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to Anna-Felicitas's
+many, when at last she paused for want of breath. The inn, he said,
+should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was over after the
+expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved by the Annas as
+interest on their invested capital--they listened with eager respect to
+these business-like expressions--would be handed over to the American
+Red Cross. "That," explained Mr. Twist, "would seal the inn as both
+respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to make
+it."
+
+And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or questioning
+in the general excitement, that he would have himself appointed their
+legal guardian.
+
+They didn't go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there was so
+much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had to suppress
+them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting through into
+their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the tables round them
+were obviously trying to hear, they went out once again on to the
+sea-front and walked up and down till late continuing the discussion,
+mostly simultaneously as regards the twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in
+with practical suggestions whenever they stopped to take breath.
+
+He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were going
+out one by one in the Cosmopolitan bedroom windows, where the virtuous
+rich, exhausted by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with
+boredom and respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he
+stayed alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the
+next day.
+
+There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be found, and
+the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed, must be secured
+at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan and preside over the
+twins until they all proceeded in due season to The Open Arms. She must
+be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled
+in managing a cook, business-like, intellectual, and obedient. Her
+feminine tact would enable her to appear to preside while she was in
+reality obeying. She must understand that she was there for the Annas,
+and that the Annas were not there for her. She must approach the
+situation in the spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country,
+who receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight
+of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr. Twist
+didn't want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those blessed little
+girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon in their hands of
+being able to give her notice, and it would considerably dim the
+reputation of The Open Arms if there were a too frequent departure from
+it of middle-aged ladies.
+
+Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as he
+paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself. That
+youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament, which leaped
+about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy lamb when the
+sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great fun; and the
+business side of him was feeling that it was not only great fun but
+probably an extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.
+
+The ignorant Annas--bless their little hearts, he thought, he who only
+the night before on that very spot had been calling them
+accursed--believed that their Ł200 was easily going to do everything.
+This was lucky, for otherwise there would have been some thorny paths of
+argument and convincing to be got through before they would have allowed
+him to help finance the undertaking; probably they never would have, in
+their scrupulous independence. Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on
+the usefulness of his teapot. At last he was going to be able to do
+something, thanks to it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to
+France--that was duty. His lavishness to his mother--that again was
+duty. But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
+always longed for,--a chance to help and make happy, and be with and
+watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet kind
+women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....
+
+It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by Nature to
+be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through him, forgot and
+turned him into a man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later
+they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted of course,
+for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is
+_exactly_, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and
+there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.
+
+It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its
+beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green
+fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards
+the sea. Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed
+of, were close up to a thick grove of eucalyptus which continued to the
+foot of the mountains. It had an overrun little garden in front,
+separated from the fields by a riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few
+orange, and lemon, and peach trees on its west side, the survivors of
+what had once been intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees
+on the other, between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge
+wistaria clambered over its dilapidated face. Somebody had once planted
+syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of
+pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable
+screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road.
+
+It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being
+made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms. Every
+motorist coming up that road would see the signboard outside the pepper
+trees, and would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and
+pass through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas,
+and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher
+class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the
+house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A
+farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of confining
+himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was the only
+appropriate drink for a farmer the agent maintained--he was the
+president of the local Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League--he put his
+money as he earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a
+bit was done for.
+
+The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in every way
+except situation; but situation being the first consideration, Mr. Twist
+agreed with the twins, who had fallen in love with the neglected little
+house whose shabbiness was being so industriously hidden by roses, that
+this was the place, and a week later it and its garden had been
+bought--Mr. Twist didn't tell the twins he had bought it, in order to
+avoid argument, but it was manifestly the simple thing to do--and over
+and round and through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many
+diligent and determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the
+middle-aged lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the
+matter of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide
+what it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.
+"And everything so cheap too!" exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose Ł200
+was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow's cruse.
+
+This belief, however, received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist,
+who was too busy now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy
+chintzes, and it was finally shattered when the various middle-aged
+ladies who responded to Mr. Twist's cry for help in the advertising
+columns of the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as
+salary more than the whole Twinkler capital.
+
+The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then once
+more were saved by an inspiration,--this time Anna-Rose's.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed, her face clearing. "We'll make it
+Co-operative."
+
+Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to think out a
+way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly with his money,
+for in spite of his going to be their guardian they remained difficult
+on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn't, of course, tell what in
+Anna-Rose's mind the word co-operative stood for, but felt confident
+that whatever it stood for he could manipulate it into covering his
+difficulties.
+
+"What is co-operative?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect for a
+sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that and seem to
+know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but it sat very
+loosely in her head, at no point touching anything else.
+
+"Haven't you heard of Co-operative Stores?" inquired Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes but--"
+
+"Well, then."
+
+"Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?" persisted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"One run on co-operative lines, of course," said Anna-Rose grandly.
+"Everybody pays for everything, so that nobody particular pays for
+anything."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I mean," said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be clearer,
+"it's when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes and things
+out of what you get."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas. "And will they wait quite quietly till we've
+got it?"
+
+"Of course, if we're all co-operative."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but knew of
+old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.
+
+"See here now," said Mr. Twist weightily, "if that isn't an idea. Only
+you've got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is profit-sharing.
+And as this undertaking is going to be a big success there will be big
+profits, and any amount of cakes and salaries will be paid for as glibly
+and easily as you can say your ABC."
+
+And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going to stay
+in California, and that he intended during this time to be book-keeper,
+secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides Advertiser-in-Chief,
+which was, he said, the most important post of all; and if they would be
+so good as to leave this side of it unquestioningly to him, who had had
+a business training, he would undertake that the Red Cross, American or
+British, whichever they decided to support, should profit handsomely.
+
+Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial backer of
+The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the twins admirable.
+It cleared away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought
+chintzes and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even
+ceased to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their
+background,--indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for it gave
+them confidence that she must at such a price be the right one, because
+nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the right one would have
+the face to demand so much.
+
+This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course,
+she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard--the Miss Twinklers blushed and
+felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn't, and indistinctly
+murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt,
+though, and wouldn't he do--had a great deal of very beautiful
+snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged. She
+firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist's spectacles dwelling on
+her hair, that she wasn't yet forty, and her one fear was that she
+mightn't be middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly
+mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and
+fingers and feet couldn't possibly be described as coming under that
+heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as
+having overshot the mark. But its turning white had nothing to do with
+age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over. No hair could have
+stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step. She had
+been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every
+aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn't want to make a
+mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she
+had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and
+the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute
+average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she
+wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too
+much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle--it was a real
+sacrifice--and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers. She
+was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.
+She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her
+own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right
+balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.
+Thus she attained poise,--she was one of the most poised women her
+friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both
+philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they were war ones.
+
+Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long
+time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause in which one could
+do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored
+the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady,
+that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been
+personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping. It seemed
+years. The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but
+Mrs. Bilton's spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way
+it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and
+without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have
+dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last,
+in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist
+politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after
+lunch, and they were dying for some food.
+
+The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he knew she
+was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that
+hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield
+through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of
+purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate. He would have
+settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to
+listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to listen; and when it became
+clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the
+end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as
+it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words
+and convey to her as quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life
+against the stream, that she was engaged. "Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,"--he
+called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton's rushing
+words, "engaged." She would be expected at the Cosmopolitan, swiftly
+continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly anxious to have her at the
+Cosmopolitan as the twins were particularly anxious not to,--for for the
+life of them they couldn't see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up
+before they started inhabiting the cottage,--within three days--
+
+"Mr. Twist, it can't be done," broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and
+mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist's head. "It
+absolutely--"
+
+"Within a week, then," he called out quickly, holding up the breaking of
+the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened the door. "And
+goodmorning Mrs. Bilton--my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we
+have to hurry away--"
+
+The cook was engaged that afternoon. Mr. Twist appeared to have mixed up
+the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying the
+luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room, he found
+them waiting for him in the passage outside the door looking excited.
+
+"The cook's come," whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards the
+shut door. "She's a man."
+
+"She's a Chinaman," whispered Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist was surprised. He thought he had an appointment with a
+woman,--a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a specialist in
+pastries and had immaculate references, but the Chinaman assured him
+that he hadn't, and that his appointment was with him alone, with him,
+Li Koo. In proof of it, he said, spreading out his hands, here he was.
+"We make cakies--li'l cakies--many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo,
+observing doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his
+person he whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit
+out of a hat, and offered them to the twins.
+
+They ate. He was engaged. It took five minutes.
+
+After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her appointment, an
+over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that she was the coloured
+lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman had written.
+
+Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been clever.
+Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his cakes. Besides,
+they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently out of flowers and
+honey and cream,--cakes which, combined with Mrs. Bilton's hair, would
+make the fortune of The Open Arms.
+
+The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in spite of
+the _douceur_ and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and she was so much
+disappointed that they could hear her being it out loud all the way
+along the passage and down the stairs, and the nature of her expression
+of her disappointment was such that Mr. Twist, as he tried by animated
+conversation to prevent it reaching the twins' ears, could only be
+thankful after all that Li Koo had been so clever. It did, however,
+reach the twins' ears, but they didn't turn a hair because of Uncle
+Arthur. They merely expressed surprise at its redness, seeing that it
+came out of somebody so black.
+
+Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to creep
+over the countryside. They crept along the roads where motorists were
+frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners and over hedges. They
+were taciturn advertisements, and just said three words in big,
+straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue ground:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+
+People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it must be
+the name of a book. They had better get it. Other people would have got
+it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat, and was probably a
+religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were usually religious. A few
+considered it sounded a little improper, and as though the book, far
+from being religious, would not be altogether nice; but only very proper
+people who distrusted everything, even arms took this view.
+
+After a week the same advertisements appeared with three lines added:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+    YES
+    BUT
+WHY? WHERE? WHAT?
+
+and then ten days after that came fresh ones:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+  WILL OPEN
+    WIDE
+
+On November 20th at Four P.M.
+
+N.B. WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.
+
+And while the countryside--an idle countryside, engaged almost wholly in
+holiday-making and glad of any new distraction--began to be interested
+and asked questions, Mr. Twist was working day and night at getting the
+thing ready.
+
+All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging, hurrying,
+criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing. His heart and soul
+and brain was in this, his business instincts and his soft domestic
+side. His brain, after working at top speed during the day with the
+architect, the painter and decorator, the furnisher, the garden expert,
+the plumbing expert, the electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate
+agent, and numberless other persons, during the night meditated and
+evolved advertisements. There was to be a continual stream week by week
+after the inn was opened of ingenious advertisements. Altogether Mr.
+Twist had his hands full.
+
+The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually being
+the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort. It was to be as like
+an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be got to be going on
+his own and the twins' recollections and the sensationally coloured
+Elizabethan pictures in the architect's portfolio. It didn't disturb Mr.
+Twist's unprejudiced American mind that an English inn embowered in
+heliotrope and arum lilies and eucalyptus trees would be odd and
+unnatural, and it wouldn't disturb anybody else there either. Were not
+Swiss mountain chalets to be found in the fertile plains along the
+Pacific, complete with fir trees specially imported and uprooted in
+their maturity and brought down with tons of their own earth attached to
+their roots and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss
+rocks, so that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves
+was the next a bit of frowning northern landscape? And were there not
+Italian villas dotted about also? But these looked happier and more at
+home than the chalets. And there were buildings too, like small Gothic
+cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a woman who has
+come to a party in the wrong clothes. But no matter. Nobody minded. So
+that an English inn added to this company, with a little German
+beer-garden--only there wasn't to be any beer--wouldn't cause the least
+surprise or discomfort to anybody.
+
+In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English inn was
+the signboard out in the road. With the best will in the world, and the
+liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist, the architect couldn't
+in three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient
+red-brick Elizabethan pothouse. He got a thatched roof on to it by a
+miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a real
+antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads in a San
+Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a basis for any
+wished-for hark-back later on when there was more time to the old girl's
+epoch--thus did he refer to Great Eliza and her spacious days--and
+meanwhile it gave the building, he alleged, a considerable air; but as
+this door in that fine climate was hooked open all day long it didn't
+disturb the gay, the almost jocose appearance of the place when
+everything was finished.
+
+Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very much as
+people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the opening, as he sat
+astride a green chair at the bottom of the little garden, where a hedge
+of sweetbriar beautifully separated the Twinkler domain from the rolling
+fields that lay between it and the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork;
+and the conclusion was forced upon him--reluctantly, for it was the last
+thing he had wanted The Open Arms to do--that the thing looked as if it
+were winking at him.
+
+Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head, staring,
+that was what it seemed to be doing. How was that? He studied it
+profoundly, his head on one side. Was it that it was so very gay? He
+hadn't meant it to be gay like that. He had intended a restrained and
+disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness, with those sweet
+maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest doves in and out among
+its tea-tables; but one small thing had been added to another small
+thing at their suggestion, each small thing taken separately apparently
+not mattering at all and here it was almost--he hoped it was only his
+imagination--winking at him. It looked a familiar little house; jocular;
+very open indeed about the arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Various things had happened, however, before this morning of the great
+day was reached, and Mr. Twist had had some harassing experiences.
+
+One of the first things he had done after the visit to Los Angeles was
+to take steps in the matter of the guardianship. He had written to Mrs.
+Bilton that he was the Miss Twinklers' guardian, though it was not at
+that moment true. It was clear, he thought, that it should be made true
+as quickly as possible, and he therefore sought out a lawyer in Acapulco
+the morning after the interview. This was not the same lawyer who did
+his estate business for him; Mr. Twist thought it best to have a
+separate one for more personal affairs.
+
+On hearing Mr. Twist's name announced, the lawyer greeted him as an old
+friend. He knew, of course, all about the teapot, for the Non-Trickler
+was as frequent in American families as the Bible and much more
+regularly used; but he also knew about the cottage at the foot of the
+hills, what it had cost--which was little--and what it would cost--which
+was enormous--before it was fit to live in. The only thing he didn't
+know was that it was to be used for anything except an ordinary
+_pied-ŕ-terre_. He had heard, too, of the presence at the Cosmopolitan
+of the twins, and on this point, like the rest of Acapulco, was a little
+curious.
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been able to give
+any accurate description of the relationship of the Twinklers to Mr.
+Twist. Its paragraph announcing his arrival had been obliged merely to
+say, while awaiting more detailed information, that Mr. Edward A. Twist,
+the well-known Breakfast Table Benefactor and gifted inventor of the
+famous Non-Trickler Teapot, had arrived from New York and was staying at
+the Cosmopolitan Hotel with _entourage_; and the day after this the
+lawyer, who got about a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging
+climate, happening to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a
+friend, had seen the _entourage_.
+
+It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way upstairs,
+followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even without the boy and
+the canary it was a conspicuous object. The lawyer asked his friend who
+the cute little girls were, and was interested to hear he was beholding
+Mr. Edward A. Twist's _entourage_. His friend told him that opinion in
+the hotel was divided about the precise nature of this _entourage_ and
+its relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally
+supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by
+parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put to
+one of the young ladies' finishing schools in that agreeable district.
+The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the Cosmopolitan
+mind with the Twinklers. Houses were always being taken in that paradise
+by wealthy persons from unkinder climates. He would live in it three
+months in the year, thought the Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep
+in this way an occasional eye on his charges. The hotel guests regarded
+the Twinklers at this stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill,
+for they had up to then only been seen and not heard; and as one of
+their leading characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if
+anybody looked a little surprised, which everybody usually did quite
+early in conversation with them, this was at that moment, the delicate
+moment before Mrs. Bilton's arrival, fortunate.
+
+The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much as other
+honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly congratulating
+him, when he heard what he had come for, on his taste in wards.
+
+Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a matter of
+taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans, and he had been
+asked--he cleared his throat--asked by their relatives, by, in fact,
+their uncle in England, to take over their guardianship and see that
+they came to no harm.
+
+The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had wards at all
+they might as well be cute wards.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he had had no
+choice.
+
+The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued to look at him
+intelligently.
+
+Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as might
+have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the purchase
+of the cottage because this was a private and personal matter--
+
+"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with really almost too
+much intelligence.
+
+Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified, but the
+lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness was natural to
+him when visited for the first time by a new client, and that there
+should be frankness between lawyers and clients he considered essential.
+If, he held, the client wouldn't be frank, then the lawyer must be; and
+he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.
+
+Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the lawyer
+cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that the
+_entourage_ must have some very weak spots about it somewhere.
+
+"There's another way out of it of course, Mr. Twist," he said, when he
+had done rapidly describing the different steps to be taken. There were
+not many steps. The process of turning oneself into a guardian was
+surprisingly simple and swift.
+
+"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking very big and
+astonished. "Out of what?"
+
+"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't occurred to you. Upon
+my word now, I do wonder."
+
+"But I'm not in any little diff--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"The elder of these two girls, now--"
+
+"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for him to be sensible.
+
+"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist, "They're twins."
+
+"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our twins better
+than that over here. But come now--hasn't it occurred to you you might
+marry one of them, and so become quite naturally related to them both?"
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.
+
+"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly opening.
+
+"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in free-and-easiness.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his mouth together, "cut
+that line of joke out. I'm here on serious business. I haven't come to
+be facetious. Least of all about those children--"
+
+"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer pleasantly. "Children, you
+call them. How old are they? Seventeen? My wife was sixteen when we
+married. Oh quite so, quite so. Certainly. By all means. Well then,
+they're to be your wards. And you don't want it known how recently
+they've become your wards--"
+
+"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it. The relationship is
+to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I shall be dumb of course, but
+most things get into the press here. Let me see--" He pulled a sheet
+of paper towards him and took up his fountain pen. "Just oblige me with
+particulars. Date of birth. Place of birth. Parentage--"
+
+He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.
+
+None came.
+
+"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist presently, his forehead
+puckered.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen. "Quite so. Not known your
+young friends long enough yet."
+
+"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr. Twist stiffly, "but we
+happen to have found more alive topics of conversation than dates and
+parents."
+
+"Ah. Parents not alive."
+
+"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor children wouldn't
+be knocking about in a strange country."
+
+"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his pen across his
+forefinger.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly he remembered his
+mother's peculiar horror when he told her the girls he was throwing away
+his home life for and breaking her heart over were Germans. It had acted
+upon her like the last straw. And since then he had felt everywhere,
+with every one he talked to, in every newspaper he read, the same strong
+hostility to Germans, so much stronger than when he left America the
+year before.
+
+Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this matter of
+the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He suddenly saw
+innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The Open Arms if it was
+known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the guardianship idea than
+that such difficulties should arise. He hadn't thought; he hadn't had
+time properly to think; he had been so hustled and busy the last few
+days....
+
+"They come from England," he said, looking at the lawyer very straight.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer.
+
+Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely, by evading,
+he hoped to put off the day when their nationality would be known.
+Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known later on when
+everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved them for themselves
+and accordingly wouldn't care.
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I asked because I overheard
+them talking the other day as they passed through the hall of your
+hotel. They were talking about a canary. The r in the word seemed a
+little rough. Not quite English, Mr. Twist? Not quite American?"
+
+"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been a good deal abroad."
+
+"Quite so. At school, no doubt."
+
+He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
+forefinger.
+
+"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at Mr. Twist,--"could
+you let me have them soon? I tell you what. You're in a hurry to fix
+this. I'll call round to-night at the hotel, and get them direct from
+your young friends. Save time. And make me acquainted with a pair of
+charming girls."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held out his hand. "Not
+to-night. We're engaged to-night. To-morrow will be soon enough. I'll
+send round. I'll let you know. I believe I'm going to think it over a
+bit. There isn't any such terrible hurry, anyhow."
+
+"There isn't? I understood--"
+
+"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in the long
+run."
+
+"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well, I'm always
+at your service, at any time." And he shook hands heartily with Mr.
+Twist and politely opened the door for him.
+
+Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever that
+there was something very weak somewhere about the _entourage_.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he gone to
+the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the world that he
+was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would have believed it
+if he had come in one day and said it was settled, and nobody outside
+would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After all, you couldn't see
+if a man was a guardian or not just by looking at him. Well, he would do
+no more about it, it was much too difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs. Bilton
+go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges. Anyway he had
+all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had been to go to the
+lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however distinctly and
+frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the Twinkler guardian, that
+he wasn't.
+
+It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with clearness,
+that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told them that evening
+that owing to technical difficulties, with the details of which he
+wouldn't trouble them, the guardianship was off, were pleased.
+
+"We want to be bound to you," said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very soft and
+her voice very gentle, "only by ties of affection and gratitude."
+
+And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were going to
+say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable after all to get
+it out, and only said, rather inaudibly, "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the end of
+that week.
+
+It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing should occur
+at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud; yet it did get under
+a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too, before Mrs. Bilton's
+arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her snowy-haired respectability
+would have spread over the twins like a white whig. They would have been
+safe. His party would have been unassailable. But no; those Twinklers,
+in spite of his exhortation whenever he had a minute left to exhort in,
+couldn't, it seemed, refrain from twinkling,--the word in Mr. Twist's
+mind covered the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of
+language, their affable desire to explain.
+
+He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the excited
+interest they took in the progress of the inn made them happy to hang
+about it most of the time of the delicate and dangerous week before Mrs.
+Bilton came; but they too had things to do,--shopping in Acapulco
+choosing the sea-blue linen frocks and muslin caps and aprons in which
+they were to wait at tea, and buying the cushions and flower-pots and
+canary that came under the general heading, in Anna-Rose's speech, of
+feminine touches. So they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go
+without a qualm.
+
+"Mind and not say anything to anybody about this, won't you," he would
+say hastily, making a comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they
+went.
+
+"Of course we won't."
+
+"I meant, nobody is to know what it's really going to be. They're to
+think it's just a _pied-ŕ-terre._ It would most ruin my advertisement
+scheme if they--"
+
+"But of _course_ we won't. Have we ever?" the twins would answer,
+looking very smug and sure of themselves.
+
+"No. Not yet. But--"
+
+And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with
+whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as he
+needs must, to God and their own discretion.
+
+Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic.
+But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton's arrival grew near, and nothing had
+happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr. Twist, from the pleasant
+looks of the other guests when the twins went in and out of the
+restaurant to meals, that nothing had happened. His heart grew lighter.
+On the last afternoon, when Mrs. Bilton was actually due next day, his
+heart was quite light, and he saw them leave him to go back and rest at
+the hotel, because they were tired by the accumulated standing about of
+the week, altogether unconcernedly.
+
+The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was, indeed,
+one of complete benevolence. They didn't even mind the canary. Who would
+not be indulgent towards two such sweet little girls and their pet bird,
+even if it did sing all day and most of the night without stopping? The
+Twinkler girls were like two little bits of snapped-off sunlight, or
+bits of white blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their shining
+youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently. But if the
+guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive. Everybody knew who
+Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers? Were they relations of
+his? _Protégées_? Charges?
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which information as
+to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in its embarrassment
+at being ignorant to take refuge in French, because French may so easily
+be supposed to mean something. The paper had little knowledge of, but
+much confidence in, French. _Entourage_ had seemed to it as good a word
+as any other, as indeed did _clientčle_. It had hesitated between the
+two, but finally chose _entourage_ because there happened to be no
+accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were amused at the
+word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable; and, until the
+last afternoon, only the manager didn't like the Twinklers. He didn't
+like them because of the canary. His sympathies had been alienated from
+the Miss Twinklers the moment he heard through the chambermaid that they
+had tied the heavy canary cage on to the hanging electric light in their
+bedroom. He said nothing, of course. One doesn't say anything if one is
+an hotel manager, until the unique and final moment when one says
+everything.
+
+On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton's advent the twins, tired of
+standing about for days at the cottage and in shops, appeared in the
+hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn't go to their room to
+rest because they didn't feel inclined for the canary, and they sat down
+very happily in the comfortable rocking-chairs with which the big hall
+abounded, and, propping their dusty feet on the lower bar of a small
+table, with friendly and interested eyes they observed the other guests.
+
+The other guests also observed them.
+
+It was the first time the _entourage_ had appeared without its
+companion, and the other guests were dying to know details about it. It
+hadn't been sitting in the hall five minutes before a genial old
+gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas's friendly eye and instantly drew up his
+chair.
+
+"Uncle gone off by himself to-day?" he asked; for he was of the party in
+the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked difference in profiles,
+to the relationship theory, and he made a shot at the relationship being
+that of uncle.
+
+"We haven't got an uncle nearer than England," said Anna-Felicitas
+affably.
+
+"And we only got him by accident," said Anna-Rose, equally affably.
+
+"It was an unfortunate accident," said Anna-Felicitas, considering her
+memories.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed. How was that?"
+
+"By the usual method, if an uncle isn't a blood uncle," said Anna-Rose.
+"We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married her. So we have
+to have him."
+
+"It was sheer bad luck," said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on that
+distant image.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Just bad luck. He might so easily have married
+some one else's aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs go and fall
+on ours."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated on this,
+with an affectionate eye--he was affectionate--resting in turn on each
+Anna.
+
+"Then Mr. Twist," he went on presently--"we all know him of course--a
+public benefactor--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose radiantly.
+
+"A boon to the breakfast-table--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. "He _is_ so
+pleasant at breakfast."
+
+"Then he--Mr. Twist--Teapot Twist we call him where I live--"
+
+"Teapot Twist?" said Anna-Rose. "I think that's irreverent."
+
+"Not at all. It's a pet name. A sign of our affection and gratitude.
+Then he isn't your uncle?"
+
+"We haven't got a real uncle nearer than heaven," said Anna-Felicitas,
+her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the image of Onkel Col.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated, on this
+too, his thirsty heart--he had a thirsty heart, and found difficulty in
+slaking it because of his wife--very indulgent toward the twins.
+
+Then he said: "That's a long way off."
+
+"What is?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The place your uncle's in."
+
+"Not too far really," said Anna-Felicitas softly. "He's safe there. He
+was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he got there at last
+through his own carelessness."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Sheer carelessness," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "How was that?"
+
+"Well, you see where we lived they didn't have electric light," began
+Anna-Rose, "and one night--the the night he went to heaven--he put the
+petroleum lamp--"
+
+And she was about to relate that dreadful story of Onkle Col's end
+which has already been described in these pages as unfit for anywhere
+but an appendix for time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas
+put out a beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't bear to remember Onkle Col's end. It had haunted
+her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping tongues of
+flame. And it wasn't only tongues of flame. There were circumstances
+connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the war had damped down
+lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She could at least now talk of
+him calmly, and also speculate with pleasure on the probable aspect of
+Onkle Col in glory, but she still couldn't bear to hear the details of
+his end.
+
+At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very upright
+and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce, came down
+the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old gentleman, crossed
+straight over and sat down briskly next to them smiling benevolently.
+
+"Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I," she said,
+pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and smiling at
+the group.
+
+She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next winter,
+but it being warm just then in California they were cotton socks because
+wool made her hands too hot.
+
+The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.
+
+"I'm just crazy to hear about you," said the brisk lady, knitting with
+incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over everybody. "You're
+fresh from Europe, aren't you? What say? Quite fresh? My, aren't you
+cute little things. Thinking of making a long stay in the States? What
+say? For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid.
+Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I guess
+they won't let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist looking after you
+meanwhile? What say? There isn't any meanwhile? Well, I don't quite--Mr.
+Twist your uncle, or cousin? What say? No relation at all? H'm, h'm. No
+relation at all, is he. Well, I guess he's an old friend of your
+parents, then. What say? They didn't know him? H'm, h'm. They didn't
+know him, didn't they. Well, I don't quite--What say? But you know him?
+Yes, yes, so I see. H'm, h'm. I don't quite--" Her needles flew in and
+out, and her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.
+
+Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old gentleman, who
+was gazing with thirsty appreciation at Anna-Felicitas, could struggle
+out of his chair.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the silence
+that had fallen on the lady, "Mr. Twist, regarded as a man, is old, but
+regarded as a friend he is new."
+
+"Brand new," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"H'm, h'm," said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and looking first
+at one twin and then at the other. "H'm, h'm, h'm. Brand new, is he.
+Well, I don't quite--" Her smiles had now to struggle with the
+uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening visibly.
+
+"Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?" asked the old gentleman, who
+was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent owing to his
+affectionate heart and his not being a lady.
+
+"We met Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of alluding
+to him, "on the steamer."
+
+"Not before? You didn't meet Mr. Twist before the steamer?" exclaimed
+the lady, the last of her smiles flickering out. "Not before the
+steamer, didn't you. Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen
+him. H'm, h'm, h'm."
+
+"We would have met him before if we could," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.
+
+"I should think so," said Anna-Rose. "It has been the great
+retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them."
+
+"Why now," said the old gentleman smiling, "I shouldn't call it so
+particularly late in them."
+
+But the knitting lady didn't smile at all, and sat up very straight and
+said "H'm, h'm, h'm" to her flashing needles as they flew in and out;
+for not only was she in doubt now about the cute little things, but she
+also regretted, on behalf of the old gentleman's wife who was a friend
+of hers, the alert interest of his manner. He sat there so very much
+awake. With his wife he never seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not
+seen him except with his wife.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that we're younger than we really
+are," Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.
+
+"Why no, I won't," he answered with a liveliness that deepened the
+knitting lady's regret on behalf of his wife. "When I run away you bet
+it won't be with an idea."
+
+And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he whom
+she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And wasn't what he
+had just said very like what the French call a _double entendre?_ She
+hadn't a husband herself, but if she had she would wish him to be at
+least as quiet when away from her as when with her, and at least as free
+from _double entendres_. At least. Really more. "H'm, h'm, h'm," she
+said, clicking her needles and looking first at the twins and then at
+the old gentleman.
+
+"Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you two?" she
+asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these remarkable and
+unusual lines of _badinage_.
+
+"Quite," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Once we had got him," amended Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the knitting lady, "so you say. H'm, h'm, h'm. Once you
+had got him. I don't quite--"
+
+"Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the old
+gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can say is I
+wish I had been on that boat."
+
+"Here's Mrs. Ridding," said the knitting lady quickly, relief in her
+voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. "My, Mrs. Ridding," she added
+when the lady drew within speaking distance, "you do look as though you
+needed a rest."
+
+Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had been
+approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out on the
+verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was the one
+drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so much recovering
+from; and the nicer they were the longer it took. The meals at the
+Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really all one's time was taken
+up getting over them.
+
+She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman
+had married her in her youth, when she hadn't had time to have had so
+many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone
+on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of
+his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife,
+and the older he got in years--his heart very awkwardly retained its
+early freshness--the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he
+got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman
+felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why should he have to be
+married to this old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old
+ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most
+appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious
+years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his
+heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and
+inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a
+chance pretty girl.
+
+He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
+impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.
+
+"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back again,"
+said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself down carefully
+and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair that didn't rock,
+and fanning herself with a small fan she carried on the end of a massive
+gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the twins while she spoke.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as young
+as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but with her eyes
+continuing to explore the twins.
+
+They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and Anna-Felicitas said
+politely, "Really?" and Anna-Rose, feeling she too ought to make some
+comment, said, "Isn't that very unusual?"
+
+Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she didn't know
+what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because then the other
+person launched into affirmations or denials with the reasons for them,
+and was quite happy.
+
+But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in silence.
+
+"Because," explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn't quite
+follow, "nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to remember
+it."
+
+Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It was
+quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was constantly
+reminding him. "Old stranger," he thought resentfully, as he carefully
+arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn't like her back. Why should
+he have to pay bills for putting expensive clothes on it? He didn't want
+to. It was all a dreadful mistake.
+
+"You're the Twinkler girls," said the old lady abruptly.
+
+They made polite gestures of agreement.
+
+The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight and
+saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every
+responsibility.
+
+"Where does your family come from?" was the next question.
+
+This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of Pomerania. They
+hadn't wanted to talk about Pomerania once since the war began; and they
+felt very distinctly in their bones that America, though she was a
+neutral, didn't like Germany any more than the belligerents did. It had
+been their intention to arrange together the line they would take if
+asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and so exciting
+since their arrival that they had forgotten to.
+
+Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all. Anna-Felicitas,
+therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved, plunged in.
+
+"Our family," she said gently, "can hardly be said to come so much as to
+have been."
+
+The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on Anna-Felicitas's
+face.
+
+The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the
+management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.
+
+"How's that?" asked the old lady, finally deciding that she hadn't
+understood.
+
+"It's extinct," said Anna-Felicitas. "Except us. That is, in the direct
+line."
+
+The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not being so
+numerous or so clear in America as in some other countries.
+
+"You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?" she asked.
+
+"The only ones left that matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "There are
+branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they're so
+unimportant that we don't know them."
+
+"Mere twigs," said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing
+Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose
+unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.
+
+"Haven't you got any parents?" asked the old lady.
+
+"We used to have," said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her darling
+mother was going to be asked about.
+
+The old gentleman gave a sudden chuckle. "Why yes," he said, forgetting
+his wife's presence for an instant, "I guess you had them once, or I
+don't see how--"
+
+"Albert," said his wife.
+
+"We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of Twinklers,"
+said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give Columbus a hand.
+"There's just us. And we--" she paused a moment, and then plunged--"we
+come from England."
+
+"Do you?" said the old lady. "Now I shouldn't have said that. I can't
+say just why, but I shouldn't. Should you, Miss Heap?"
+
+"I shouldn't say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap
+enigmatically, her needles flying.
+
+"It's because we've been abroad a great deal with our parents, I
+expect," said Anna-Rose rather quickly. "I daresay it has left its mark
+on us."
+
+"Everything leaves its mark on one," observed Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Ah," said the old lady. "I know what it is now. It's the foreign r.
+You've picked it up. Haven't they, Miss Heap."
+
+"I shouldn't like to say what they haven't picked up, Mrs. Ridding,"
+said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.
+
+"I'm afraid we have," said Anna-Rose, turning red. "We've been told that
+before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it up."
+
+And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one had picked
+it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.
+
+She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a moment.
+
+"Albert, if you talk so much you won't be able to sleep to-night," she
+said. "I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember we've got to be careful at
+our age," she added to the knitting lady.
+
+"You seem to be bothered by your memory," said Anna-Rose politely,
+addressing the old gentleman "Have you ever tried making notes on little
+bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I think you would
+probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do that. Or rather he
+made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them where he would see them."
+
+"Uncle Arthur," explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, "is an uncle
+of ours. The one," she said turning to the old gentleman, "we were just
+telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on marrying our aunt.
+Uncle, that is, by courtesy," she added, turning to the old lady, "not
+by blood."
+
+The old lady's eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one spoke,
+but she said nothing.
+
+"But Aunt Alice," said Anna-Rose, "is our genuine aunt. Well, I was
+going to tell you," she continued briskly, addressing the old gentleman.
+"There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every day and every
+week, but still he had to be reminded of them each time, and Aunt Alice
+had a whole set of the regular ones written out on bits of cardboard,
+and brought them out in turn. The Monday morning one was: Wind the
+Clock, and the Sunday morning one was: Take your Hot Bath, and the
+Saturday evening one was: Remember your Pill. And there was one brought
+in regularly every morning with his shaving water and stuck in his
+looking-glass: Put on your Abdominable Belt."
+
+The knitting needles paused an instant.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these recollections, her
+long limbs sunk in her chair in a position of great ease and comfort,
+"and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put on
+what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we wrote a
+slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table: Don't forget
+your Trousers."
+
+The knitting needles paused again.
+
+"But the results of that were dreadful," added Anna-Felicitas, her face
+sobering at the thought of them.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done it, in
+a fit of high spirits, though she never had high spirits--"
+
+"And wouldn't have been allowed to if she had," explained
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And he thought she was laughing at him," said Anna-Rose, "though we
+have never seen her laugh--"
+
+"And I don't believe he has either," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"So there was trouble, because he couldn't bear the idea of her laughing
+at him, and we had to confess."
+
+"But that didn't make it any better for Aunt Alice."
+
+"No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not keeping us
+stricter."
+
+"So," said Anna-Felicitas, "after the house had been steeped in a
+sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we were
+being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by writing a
+final one--a nice one--and leaving it on his plate at breakfast: Kiss
+your Wife. But instead of kissing her he--" She broke off, and then
+finished a little vaguely: "Oh well, he didn't."
+
+"Still," remarked Anna-Rose, "it must be pleasant not to be kissed by a
+husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to say, which is why
+we reminded him of it. He used to forget that more regularly than
+almost anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were
+just the opposite--the husband was for ever trying to kiss the person
+who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Like the people on Keats's Grecian Urn."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "And that sort of husband, must be even worse.
+
+"Oh, much worse," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the chairs. "I
+shall refrain altogether from husbands," she said placidly. "I shall
+take something that doesn't kiss."
+
+And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek resting on
+her hand, what he, or it, would look like.
+
+There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a creature
+Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it would have; and
+the other three were, as before, silent.
+
+Then the old lady said, "Albert," and put out her hand to be helped on
+to her feet.
+
+The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up. His
+face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty keeping back
+things he wanted to say.
+
+Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into her
+brocaded bag.
+
+"Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert," said the old lady.
+"It's time we went and had our nap."
+
+"I ain't going to," said the old gentleman suddenly.
+
+"What say? What ain't you going to, Albert?" said the old lady, turning
+her slow eyes round to him.
+
+"Nap," said the old gentleman, his face very red.
+
+It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay where he was
+and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap because somebody else
+wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an old lady, anyway? Never in
+his life had he wanted to nap with old ladies. It was all a dreadful
+mistake.
+
+"Albert," said his wife looking at him.
+
+He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.
+
+"You're quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap,
+walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit hers. "I should say
+it was essential that he should be kept quiet in the afternoons. You
+should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than he does. _Much_ more," she
+added significantly.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us--"
+
+This was the last the twins heard.
+
+They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady began to
+heave into activity, and they stood watching the three departing
+figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had all been in the
+middle of an interesting conversation?
+
+"Perhaps it's American to go away in the middle," remarked Anna-Rose,
+following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the lift.
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.
+
+The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two ladies had
+their backs to him while preceding him into the lift, turned quickly
+round on his heels and waved his hand before he himself went in.
+
+The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such goodwill
+that the old gentleman couldn't resist giving one more wave. He was
+seen doing it by the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as
+she let herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he
+mustn't exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his
+drops again.
+
+That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she had got
+her breath again, she said, "Albert, there's just one thing in the world
+I hate worse than a fool, and that's an old fool."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up from
+the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss Twinklers'
+canary wouldn't sing.
+
+"But it can't help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of door
+she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't either if
+you were a canary," she added, reasoning with the messenger.
+
+"It's just got to help it," said he.
+
+"But why shouldn't it sing?"
+
+"Complaints."
+
+"But it always has sung."
+
+"That is so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in this
+hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while. Take it
+easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think."
+
+"But it won't sit quiet and think."
+
+"Well, I've told you," he said, going away.
+
+This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the Cosmopolitan about
+a week before by the lawyer, and it had piercingly sung ever since. It
+sang, that is, as long as there was any light, real or artificial, to
+sing by. The boy who carried it from the shop for the twins said its
+cage was to be hung in a window in the sun, or it couldn't do itself
+justice. But electric light also enabled it to do itself justice, the
+twins discovered, and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too,
+singing as loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn't been a real
+canary at all, but something clever and American with a machine inside
+it.
+
+Secretly the twins didn't like it. Shocked at its loud behaviour, they
+had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but Anna-Rose was determined
+to have it at The Open Arms because of her conviction that no house
+showing the trail of a woman's hand was without a canary. That, and a
+workbag. She bought them both the same day. The workbag didn't matter,
+because it kept quiet; but the canary was a very big, very yellow bird,
+much bigger and yellower than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted
+civilization, and quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping
+quiet for a minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great
+many lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and
+similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they
+were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the
+principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the
+canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the
+biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.
+
+The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive from the
+first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent toward its owners,
+those cute little relations or charges or whatever they were of Teapot
+Twist's, that they bore its singing without complaint. But on the
+evening of the day the Annas had the interesting conversation with Mr.
+and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap, two definite complaints were lodged in
+the office, and one was from Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss
+Heap.
+
+The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the canary.
+Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its food,
+assiduously administered in quantities exceeding its capacity, littered
+the expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent
+up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss Heap,
+who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing the Twist
+and Twinkler party.
+
+She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one of the
+questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he could
+answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew about Mr.
+Twist, and it wasn't likely he would choose an hotel of so high a class
+to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers were anything but
+regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was joining the party
+shortly; and besides, there was the house being got ready, a permanent
+place of residence he gathered, in which the party would settle down,
+and experience had taught him that genuine illicitness was never
+permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn't really cared about the
+Twinklers since the canary came. He could fill the hotel very easily,
+and there was no need to accommodate people who spoilt carpets. Also,
+the moment the least doubt or question arose among his guests, all of
+whom he knew and most of whom came back regularly every year, as to the
+social or moral status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go.
+Miss Heap evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost
+impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs.
+Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in an
+hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like measles. The
+time had come for him to act.
+
+Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist's room as he
+was pulling on his boots, and cheerfully hoped he was bearing in mind
+what he had been told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged
+for the date of the month now arrived at.
+
+Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. "I'm not bearing it in mind," he
+said, "because you didn't tell me."
+
+"Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist," said the manager briskly. "It isn't likely
+I'd make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every year for this
+date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this one, and Mr. and
+Mrs.--"
+
+Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in silence. What
+he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and the twins had got
+under a cloud.
+
+The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they had made
+some friends. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned them. But it
+appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle Arthur. Well, damnable
+as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe enough as a topic of
+conversation. He was English. He was known to people in America like the
+Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now clear they must have said things
+besides that. Probably they had expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some
+point of view undesirable to American ears. The American ear was very
+susceptible. He hadn't been born in New England without becoming aware
+of that.
+
+Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got them into
+knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a big hotel. Yet
+lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn't that white-haired gasbag,
+Mrs. Bilton--Mr. Twist's thoughts were sometimes unjust--joined them
+sooner? Why had that shirker Dellogg died? He got his bootlaces
+hopelessly into knots.
+
+"I'd like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr. Twist," said
+the manager pleasantly. "Mrs. Hart of Boston is very--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning the full
+light of his big spectacles on to him, "I don't care a curse for Mrs.
+Hart of Boston."
+
+The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a curse with
+a lady. It wasn't American to do that. Mrs. Hart--
+
+"Damn Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of speech
+while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.
+
+The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist and the
+twins.
+
+"I don't know what you've been saying," he said in an extremely
+exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their grips,
+considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was singing, piled
+up round him.
+
+"Saying?" echoed the twins, their eyes very round.
+
+"But whatever it was you'd have done better to say something else.
+Confound that bird. Doesn't it ever stop screeching?"
+
+It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much confounded by
+what they considered his unjust severity that they didn't attempt to
+defend themselves, but sat looking at him with proud hurt eyes.
+
+By this time they both had become very fond of Mr. Twist, and
+accordingly he was able to hurt them. Anna-Rose, indeed, was so fond of
+him that she actually thought him handsome. She had boldly said so to
+the astonished Anna-Felicitas about a week before; and when
+Anna-Felicitas was silent, being unable to agree, Anna-Rose had heatedly
+explained that there was handsomeness, and there was the higher
+handsomeness, and that that was the one Mr. Twist had. It was infinitely
+better than mere handsomeness, said Anna-Rose--curly hair and a straight
+nose and the rest of the silly stuff--because it was real and lasting;
+and it was real and lasting because it lay in the play of the features
+and not in their exact position and shape.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't see that Mr. Twist's features played. She looked
+at him now in the taxi while he angrily stared out of the window, and
+even though he was evidently greatly stirred his features weren't
+playing. She didn't particularly want them to play. She was fond of and
+trusted Mr. Twist, and would never even have thought whether he had
+features or not ii Anna-Rose hadn't taken lately to talking so much
+about them. And she couldn't help remembering how this very Christopher,
+so voluble now on the higher handsomeness, had said on board the _St.
+Luke_ when first commenting on Mr. Twist that God must have got tired of
+making him by the time his head was reached. Well, Christopher had
+always been an idealist. When she was eleven she had violently loved the
+coachman. Anna-Felicitas hadn't ever violently loved anybody yet, and
+seeing Anna-Rose like this now about Mr. Twist made her wonder when she
+too was going to begin. Surely it was time. She hoped her inability to
+begin wasn't perhaps because she had no heart. Still, she couldn't begin
+if she didn't see anybody to begin on.
+
+She sat silent in the taxi, with Christopher equally silent beside her,
+both of them observing Mr. Twist through lowered eyelashes. Anna-Rose
+watched him with hurt and anxious eyes like a devoted dog who has been
+kicked without cause. Anna-Felicitas watched him in a more detached
+spirit. She had a real affection for him, but it was not, she was sure
+and rather regretted, an affection that would ever be likely to get the
+better of her reason. It wasn't because he was so old, of course, she
+thought, for one could love the oldest people, beginning with that
+standard example of age, the _liebe Gott_; it was because she liked him
+so much.
+
+How could one get sentimental over and love somebody one so thoroughly
+liked? The two things on reflection didn't seem to combine well. She was
+sure, for instance, that Aunt Alice had loved Uncle Arthur, amazing as
+it seemed, but she was equally sure she hadn't liked him. And look at
+the _liebe Gott_. One loves the _liebe Gott_, but it would be going too
+far, she thought, to say that one likes him.
+
+These were the reflections of Anna-Felicitas in the taxi, as she
+observed through her eyelashes the object of Anna-Rose's idealization.
+She envied Anna-Rose; for here she had been steadily expanding every day
+more and more like a flower under the influence of her own power of
+idealization. She used to sparkle and grow rosy like that for the
+coachman. Perhaps after all it didn't much matter what you loved, so
+long as you loved immensely. It was, perhaps, thought Anna-Felicitas
+approaching this subject with some caution and diffidence, the quantity
+of one's love that mattered rather than the quality of its object. Not
+that Mr. Twist wasn't of the very first quality, except to look at; but
+what after all were faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing
+else but face, so handsome was he and so without any other
+recommendation. He couldn't even drive; and her father had very soon
+kicked him out with the vigour and absence of hesitation peculiar to
+Junkers when it comes to kicking and Anna-Rose had wept all over her
+bread and butter at tea that day, and was understood to say that she
+knew at last what it must be like to be a widow.
+
+Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window with an
+angry and worried face, his attention irritably concentrated, so it
+seemed, on the objects passing in the road, very well knew he was being
+observed. He wouldn't, however, allow his eye to be caught. He wasn't
+going to become entangled at this juncture in argument with the Annas.
+He was hastily making up his mind, and there wasn't much time to do it
+in. He had had no explanation with the twins since the manager's visit
+to his room, and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders
+to them, told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got
+them safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
+were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train from
+Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind. The
+station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage in till
+she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the parcel-room as
+easily as he could their grips--neatly labelled, put away safely on a
+shelf till called for.
+
+Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at decisions. He
+would leave the twins in the waiting room at the station till Mrs.
+Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find lodgings for them and her.
+He himself would get a room in another and less critical hotel, and stay
+in it till the cottage was habitable. So would unassailable
+respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and
+cover it up.
+
+But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the _contretemps_ that had
+occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there;
+nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the twins to be happy,
+to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was
+their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything to make it
+difficult. And, jerkily, his angry thoughts pounced, as they so often
+did, on Uncle Arthur. Fancy kicking two little things like that out into
+the world, two little breakable things like that, made to be cherished
+and watched over. Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard
+the female as an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a
+charming setting and kept brightly free from dust. If Uncle Arthur had
+had a shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would
+have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling was
+against aliens. Never would a decent man have chucked them out.
+
+He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins. Their
+eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face. With the quick
+change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose hearts are warm,
+a flood of love for them gushed up within him and put out his anger.
+After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he, Edward A. Twist, never
+would have met these blessed children. He would now have been at Clark;
+leading lightless days; hopelessly involved with his mother.
+
+His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile. Instantly the two
+faces opposite cleared into something shining.
+
+"Oh dear," said Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, "it _is_
+refreshing when you leave off being cross."
+
+"We're fearfully sorry if we've said anything we oughtn't to have," said
+Anna-Rose, "and if you tell us what it is we won't say it again."
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know what it was," said Mr. Twist, in
+his usual kind voice. "I only see the results. And the results are that
+the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we've got to find lodgings."
+
+"Lodgings?"
+
+"Till we can move into the cottage. I'm going to put you and Mrs. Bilton
+in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some hotel."
+
+The twins stared at him a moment in silence. Then Anna-Rose said with
+sudden passion, "You're not."
+
+"How's that?" asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering by the
+arrival of the taxi at the station.
+
+There followed ten minutes' tangle and confusion, at the end of which
+the twins found themselves free of their grips and being piloted into
+the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.
+
+"There," he said. "You sit here quiet and good. I'll come back about one
+o'clock with sandwiches and candy for your dinner, and maybe a
+story-book or two. You mustn't leave this, do you hear? I'm going to
+hunt for those lodgings."
+
+And he was in the act of taking off his hat valedictorily when Anna-Rose
+again said with the same passion, "You're not."
+
+"Not what?" inquired Mr. Twist, pausing with his hat in mid-air.
+
+"Going to hunt for lodgings. We won't go to them."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas, with no passion but with an
+infinitely rock-like determination.
+
+"And pray--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"Go into lodgings alone with Mrs. Bilton?" interrupted Anna-Rose her
+face scarlet, her whole small body giving the impression of indignant
+feathers standing up on end. "While you're somewhere else? Away from us?
+We won't."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost placid
+quality in her determination, it was so final and so unshakable. "Would
+you?"
+
+"See here--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We won't see anywhere," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Would you," inquired Anna-Felicitas, again reasoning with him, "like
+being alone in lodgings with Mrs. Bilton?"
+
+"This is no time for conversation," said Mr. Twist, making for the door.
+"You've got to do what I think best on this occasion. And that's all
+about it."
+
+"We won't," repeated Anna-Rose, on the verge of those tears which always
+with her so quickly followed any sort of emotion.
+
+Mr. Twist paused on his way to the door. "Well now what the devil's the
+matter with lodgings?" he asked angrily.
+
+"It isn't the devil, it's Mrs. Bilton," said Anna-Felicitas. "Would you
+yourself like--"
+
+'But you've got to have Mrs. Bilton with you anyhow from to-day on."
+
+"But not unadulterated Mrs. Bilton. You were to have been with us too.
+We can't be drowned all by ourselves in Mrs. Bilton. _You_ wouldn't like
+it."
+
+"Of course I wouldn't. But it's only for a few days anyhow," said Mr.
+Twist, who had been quite unprepared for opposition to his very
+sensible arrangement.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if it's only a few days now before we can all
+squeeze into some part of the cottage. If you don't mind dust and noise
+and workmen about all day long."
+
+A light pierced the gloom that had gathered round Anna-Felicitas's soul.
+
+"We'll go into it to-day," she said firmly, "Why not? We can camp out.
+We can live in those little rooms at the back over the kitchen,--the
+ones you got ready for Li Koo. We'd be on the spot. We wouldn't mind
+anything. It would just be a picnic."
+
+"And we--we wouldn't be--sep--separated," said Anna-Rose, getting it out
+with a gasp.
+
+Mr. Twist stood looking at them.
+
+"Well, of all the--" he began, pushing his hat back. "Are you aware,"
+he went on more calmly, "that there are only two rooms over that
+kitchen, and that you and Mrs. Bilton will have to be all together in
+one of them?"
+
+"We don't mind that as long as you're in the other one," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course," suggested Anna-Felicitas, "if you were to happen to marry
+Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division."
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles stared enormously at her.
+
+"No, no," said Anna-Rose quickly. "Marriage is a sacred thing, and you
+can't just marry so as to be more comfortable."
+
+"I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I'd be more uncomfortable," remarked
+Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.
+
+He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he fixed his
+hat properly on his head and said, sobriety in his voice and manner,
+"Come along, then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at
+the rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've done
+with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits."
+
+"Oh, _don't_ say that," said the twins together, with all and more of
+their usual urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the rooms Li
+Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by the time Mrs.
+Bilton arrived. They were in an outbuilding at the back of the house,
+and consisted of a living-room with a cooking-stove in it, a bedroom
+behind it, and up a narrow and curly staircase a larger room running the
+whole length and width of the shanty. This sounds spacious, but it
+wasn't. The amount of length and width was small, and it was only just
+possible to get three camp-beds into it and a washstand. The beds nearly
+touched each other. Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going
+to be regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr.
+Twist's consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the room
+by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that there was
+lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the camp life so
+extensively practised in America, would thoroughly enjoy herself.
+
+They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making the
+little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains intended for the
+other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in great bunches of the
+pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled about everywhere in the
+garden and hiding the worst places in the rooms with them. Mr. Twist was
+in Acapulco most of the time, getting together the necessary temporary
+furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't miss him, for they
+were helped with zeal by the architect, the electrical expert, the
+garden expert and the chief plumber.
+
+These young men--they were all young, and very go-ahead--abandoned the
+main building that day to the undirected labours of the workmen they
+were supposed to control, and turned to on the shanty as soon as they
+realized what it was to be used for with a joyous energy that delighted
+the twins. They swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the
+windows and the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with
+the curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
+packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted various
+other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,--a rug or two, an easy
+chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They screwed in hooks behind the
+doors for clothes to be hung on, and they tied the canary to a
+neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it could be seen and hardly heard.
+The chief plumber found buckets and filled them with water, and the
+electrical expert rigged up a series of lanterns inside the shanty, even
+illuminating its tortuous staircase. There was much _badinage_, but as
+it was all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able
+to apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant smiles.
+But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so engaging that
+the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed when Mr. Twist came
+back.
+
+He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins, whom he
+had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with nothing at all to
+eat; and he found them looking particularly comfortable and
+well-nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they refused his
+sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.
+
+They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived, resting
+from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted with the four
+experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and the experts who were
+smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they were saying. It wouldn't
+have added to his comfort if he had heard, for they were giving the
+experts an account of their attempt to go and live with the Sacks, and
+interweaving with it some general reflections of a philosophical nature
+suggested by the Sack _ménage_. The experts were keenly interested, and
+everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly if
+the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't directing the
+workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist perceived a drawback to the
+twins living on the spot while the place was being finished; another
+drawback. He had perceived several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs.
+Bilton would soon be there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He
+positively longed for her.
+
+When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the boss,"
+they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up quickly and
+departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the Twinkler family,
+but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of the country to wink,
+and they wondered whether they ought to have winked back. The young men
+were certainly deserving of every friendliness in return for all they
+had done. They decided they would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could
+wink at them if necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.
+
+Mr. Twist took them with him when he went down to the station to meet
+the Los Angeles train. It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home
+by then, but the experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished
+at the amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
+they explained to him how very active the experts had been, whereupon he
+said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them they would go
+with him to the station.
+
+"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
+finishing touches if we stayed here."
+
+"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She supposed she
+was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she originally was, and
+all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was trying to tell her she
+wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say about her journey, and her
+last days among her friends, and all the pleasant new acquaintances she
+had made on the train, and her speech was so very close-knit, that he
+felt he was like a rabbit on the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running
+desperately up and down searching for a gap to get through. It was
+nothing short of amazing how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there
+wasn't at any moment the smallest pause in the flow.
+
+"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she wanted
+to say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.
+
+"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas, also a
+little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.
+
+"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought Mr. Twist,
+consoling himself.
+
+"This hotel we're going to seems to be located at some distance from
+the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages
+of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely--" and off she went
+again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
+explain at last.
+
+She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change in her
+fate.
+
+Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who has been
+deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a husband. She
+had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the Cosmopolitan, its bath,
+its soft bed and good food, with frank satisfaction. She thought it
+admirable that before embarking on active duties she should for a space
+rest luxuriously in an excellent hotel, with no care in regard to
+expense, and exchange ideas while she rested with the interesting people
+she would be sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles,
+Mr. Twist had explained to her by letter and under the seal of
+confidence the philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss
+Twinklers were engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the
+very considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
+unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days in
+Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular pleasure
+to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots for which she
+had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of grit; and she
+possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a redoubtable psyche,
+a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so that when, talking
+ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each other as they streamed
+through her brain to get first to the exit of her tongue, she caught her
+foot in some builder's débris carelessly left on the path up to the
+cottage and received in this way positively her first intimation that
+this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as a more timid female
+soul well might have, become alarmed and suppose that Mr. Twist, whom
+after all she didn't know, had brought her to this solitary place for
+purposes of assassination, but stopped firmly just where she was, and
+turning her head in the darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll
+stand right here till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to
+what's at my feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm
+not going any further with this promenade till I can say. And when
+you've thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
+information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming to."
+
+"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give it you
+ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your getting out of
+the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been trying to offer you
+my arm along the path--"
+
+"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.
+
+At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking up and
+down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the electrical
+expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be about.
+
+Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him first
+examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave it back to
+him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to whatever it is
+has been substituted without my knowledge for that hotel," she said; and
+while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal with her grips, she walked
+carefully toward the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
+immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's not
+having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from her
+itinerary.
+
+The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without further
+struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without answering to
+the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept her in the dark,
+raised her voice at last and called out, "But he wanted to--he wanted to
+all the time--you wouldn't listen--you wouldn't stop--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her tongue
+and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert had lit all
+the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its lighted windows
+gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no amount of light and
+bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its discomforts, its dreadful
+smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which the twins were accustomed to
+regard as precious, as things brought up lovingly in pots, were nothing
+but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's experienced Californian eye.
+
+She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet fell on the twins with
+a great sense of refreshment. Standing in the doorway--for Mrs. Bilton
+and the electrical expert between them filled up most of the
+kitchen--they heaved a deep sigh. "And see how beautiful the stars are,"
+whispered Anna-Felicitas in Anna-Rose's ear; she hadn't been able to see
+them before somehow, Mrs. Bilton's voice had so much ruffled the night.
+
+"Do you think she talks in her sleep?" Anna-Rose anxiously whispered
+back.
+
+But Mr. Twist, arriving with his hands full, was staggered to find Mrs.
+Bilton not talking. An icy fear seized his heart. She was going to
+refuse to stay with them. And she would be within her rights if she did,
+for certainly what she called her itinerary had promised her a
+first-rate hotel, in which she was to continue till a finished and
+comfortable house was stepped into.
+
+"I wish you'd say something," he said, plumping down the bags he was
+carrying on the kitchen floor.
+
+The twins from the doorway looked at him and then at each other in great
+surprise. Fancy _asking_ Mrs. Bilton to say something.
+
+"They would come," said Mr. Twist, resentfully, jerking his head toward
+the Annas in the doorway.
+
+"It's worse upstairs," he went on desperately as Mrs. Bilton still was
+dumb.
+
+"Worse upstairs?" cried the twins, as one woman.
+
+"It's perfect upstairs," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"It's like camping out without _being_ out," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"The only drawback is that there are rather a lot of beds in our room,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "but that of course"--she turned to Mr.
+Twist--"might easily be arranged--"
+
+"I wish you'd _say_ something, Mrs. Bilton," he interrupted quickly and
+loud.
+
+Mrs. Bilton drew a deep breath and looked round her. She looked round
+the room, and she looked up at the ceiling, which the upright feather in
+her hat was tickling, and she looked at the faces of the twins, lit
+flickeringly by the uncertain light of the lanterns. Then, woman of
+grit, wife who had never failed him of Bruce D. Bilton, widow who had
+remained poised and indomitable on a small income in a circle of
+well-off friends, she spoke; and she said:
+
+"Mr. Twist, I can't say what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt
+with information, but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to
+a plough and then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been
+good enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had
+to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good enough
+for me. You've conducted me to a shack instead of the hotel I was
+promised, and I await your explanation. Meanwhile, is there any supper?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was only a fortnight after this that the inn was ready to be opened,
+and it was only during the first days of this fortnight that the party
+in the shanty had to endure any serious discomfort. The twins didn't
+mind the physical discomfort at all; what they minded, and began to mind
+almost immediately, was the spiritual discomfort of being at such close
+quarters with Mrs. Bilton. They hardly noticed the physical side of that
+close association in such a lovely climate, where the whole of
+out-of-doors can be used as one's living-room; and their morning
+dressing, a difficult business in the shanty for anybody less young and
+more needing to be careful, was rather like the getting up of a dog
+after its night's sleep--they seemed just to shake themselves, and there
+they were.
+
+They got up before Mrs. Bilton, who was, however, always awake and
+talking to them while they dressed, and they went to bed before she did,
+though she came up with them after the first night and read aloud to
+them while they undressed; so that as regarded the mysteries of Mrs.
+Bilton's toilette they were not, after all, much in her way. It was like
+caravaning or camping out: you managed your movements and moments
+skilfully, and if you were Mrs. Bilton you had a curtain slung across
+your part of the room, in case your younger charges shouldn't always be
+asleep when they looked as if they were.
+
+Gradually one alleviation was added to another, and Mrs. Bilton forgot
+the rigours of the beginning. Li Koo arrived, for instance, fetched by a
+telegram, and under a tent in the eucalyptus grove at the back of the
+house set up an old iron stove and produced, with no apparent exertion,
+extraordinarily interesting and amusing food. He went into Acapulco at
+daylight every morning and did the marketing. He began almost
+immediately to do everything else in the way of housekeeping. He was
+exquisitely clean, and saw to it that the shanty matched him in
+cleanliness. To the surprise and gratification of the twins, who had
+supposed it would be their lot to go on doing the housework of the
+shanty, he took it over as a matter of course, dusting, sweeping, and
+tidying like a practised and very excellent housemaid. The only thing he
+refused to do was to touch the three beds in the upper chamber. "Me no
+make lady-beds," he said briefly.
+
+Li Koo's salary was enormous, but Mr. Twist, with a sound instinct,
+cared nothing what he paid so long as he got the right man. He was,
+indeed, much satisfied with his two employees, and congratulated himself
+on his luck. It is true in regard to Mrs. Bilton his satisfaction was
+rather of the sorrowful sort that a fresh ache in a different part of
+one's body from the first ache gives: it relieved him from one by
+substituting another. Mrs. Bilton overwhelmed him; but so had the Annas
+begun to. Her overwhelming, however, was different, and freed him from
+that other worse one. He felt safe now about the Annas, and after all
+there were parts of the building in which Mrs. Bilton wasn't. There was
+his bedroom, for instance. Thank God for bedrooms, thought Mr. Twist. He
+grew to love his. What a haven that poky and silent place was; what a
+blessing the conventions were, and the proprieties. Supposing
+civilization were so far advanced that people could no longer see the
+harm there is in a bedroom, what would have become of him? Mr. Twist
+could perfectly account for Bruce D. Bilton's death. It wasn't diabetes,
+as Mrs. Bilton said; it was just bedroom.
+
+Still, Mrs. Bilton was an undoubted find, and did immediately in those
+rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them with her in
+the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did to Mrs. Bilton
+they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the peculiar ease of the
+Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans approach with care. Never
+would they be able to tell her things about Uncle Arthur, the kind of
+things that had caused the Cosmopolitan to grow so suddenly cool. There
+was, most happily for this particular case, no arguing with Mrs. Bilton.
+The twins couldn't draw her out because she was already, as it were, so
+completely out. This was a great thing, Mr. Twist felt, and made up for
+any personal suffocation he had to bear; and when on the afternoon of
+Mrs. Bilton's first day the twins appeared without her in the main
+building in search of him, having obviously given her the slip, and said
+they were sorry to disturb him but they wanted his advice, for though
+they had been trying hard all day, remembering they were ladies and
+practically hostesses, they hadn't yet succeeded in saying anything at
+all to Mrs. Bilton and doubted whether they ever would, he merely smiled
+happily at them and said to Anna-Rose, "See how good comes out of
+evil"--a remark that they didn't like when they had had time to think
+over it.
+
+But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all alone all
+day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never left their
+side, regarding it as proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
+bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for ladies
+to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at apparently
+producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly acquainted with her
+young charges. This she did by imparting to them intimate and meticulous
+information about her own life, with the whole of the various uplifts,
+as she put it, her psyche had during its unfolding experienced. There
+was so much to tell about herself that she never got to inquiring about
+the twins. She knew they were orphans, and that this was a good work,
+and for the moment had no time for more.
+
+The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they
+didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she
+didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete
+experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr.
+Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and
+find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her
+details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton's thoughts
+remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins that he must have thought
+a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said
+for death.
+
+The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the Clouston-Sacks,
+and had never been separated for a single day during the whole of their
+married life. This seemed to the twins very strange, and needing a great
+deal of explanation. In order to get light thrown on it the first thing
+they wanted to find out was how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs.
+Bilton was deaf to their inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's
+last moments and obsequies--obsequies scheduled by her, she said, with
+so tender a regard for his memory that she insisted on a horse-drawn
+hearse instead of the more fashionable automobile conveyance, on the
+ground that a motor hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first
+speed--she washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the
+dreadfulness of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps
+on catching in everything--chairs, overhanging branches, and passers-by,
+including it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She inquired of the
+twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow in a wind. Chicago,
+she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton passed in its windiest
+month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down the streets on the daily
+constitutional she considered it her duty toward the living to take, for
+one owes it to one's friends to keep oneself fit and not give way, was
+blown hither and thither in the buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy
+climate, and her walk in the busier streets was a series of
+entanglements. Embarrassing entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately
+the persons she got caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often,
+indeed, seeming quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the
+situation, covered with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the
+wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above
+her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
+moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any
+one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once about the
+body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose side she had
+paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before it could be
+unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the track of a sensation,
+had caused her friends much painful if only short-lived amazement by
+coming out with huge equivocal headlines:
+
+WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER
+
+and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing her name
+in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends were a prey
+to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on discovering there
+was nothing in it after all.
+
+The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped round
+their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet, occasionally
+felt as they followed her narrative that they were somehow out of their
+depth and didn't quite understand. It was extraordinarily exasperating
+to them to be so completely muzzled. They were accustomed to elucidate
+points they didn't understand by immediate inquiry; they had a habit of
+asking for information, and then delivering comments on it.
+
+This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The ilex tree
+in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton shepherded them each
+morning and afternoon for the first three days, became to them, in spite
+of its beauty with the view from under its dark shade across the sunny
+fields to the sea and the delicate distant islands, a painful spot. The
+beauty all round them was under these conditions exasperating. Only once
+did Mrs. Bilton leave them, and that was the first afternoon, when they
+instantly fled to seek out Mr. Twist; and she only left them then--for
+it wasn't just her sense of duty that was strong, but also her dislike
+of being alone--because something unexpectedly gave way in the upper
+part of her dress, she being of a tight well-held-in figure, depending
+much on its buttons; and she had very hastily to go in search of a
+needle.
+
+After that they didn't see Mr. Twist alone for several days. They hardly
+indeed saw him at all. The only meal he shared with them was supper, and
+on finding the first evening that Mrs. Bilton read aloud to people after
+supper, he made the excuse of accounts to go through and went into his
+bedroom, repeating this each night.
+
+The twins watched him go with agonized eyes. They considered themselves
+deserted; shamefully abandoned to a miserable fate.
+
+"And it isn't as if he didn't _like_ reading aloud," whispered
+Anna-Rose, bewildered and indignant as she remembered the "Ode to
+Dooty."
+
+"Perhaps he's one of those people who only like it if they do it
+themselves," Anna-Felicitas whispered back, trying to explain his base
+behaviour.
+
+And while they whispered, Mrs. Bilton with great enjoyment
+declaimed--she had had a course of elocution lessons during Mr. Bilton's
+life so as to be able to place the best literature advantageously before
+him--the diary of a young girl written in prison. The young girl had
+been wrongfully incarcerated, Mrs. Bilton explained, and her pure soul
+only found release by the demise of her body. The twins hated the young
+girl from the first paragraph. She wrote her diary every day till her
+demise stopped her. As nothing happens in prisons that hasn't happened
+the day before, she could only write her reflections; and the twins
+hated her reflections, because they were so very like what in their
+secret moments of slush they were apt to reflect themselves. Their
+mother had had a horror of slush. There had been none anywhere about
+her; but it is in the air in Germany, in people's blood, everywhere; and
+though the twins, owing to the English part of them, had a horror of it
+too, there it was in them, and they knew it,--genuine German slush.
+
+They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they would
+write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings they had to
+listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why didn't he come out and
+save them? What happy, what glorious evenings they used to have at the
+Cosmopolitan, spent in intelligent conversation, in a decent give and
+take--not this button-holing business, this being got into a corner and
+held down; and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to
+get sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
+now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled with
+impatience in their seats beneath the _épanchements_ of the young girl,
+the strangely and distressingly familiar _épanchements_. The diary was
+published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs. Bilton
+on laying it down announced she would go on with it while they were
+dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs. Bilton was
+awake and crept out and hid it.
+
+But Li Koo found it and restored it.
+
+Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes the third
+morning, although the twins had hidden them most carefully. Their idea
+was that while she, rendered immobile, waited indoors, they would
+zealously look for them in all the places where they well knew that they
+weren't, and perhaps get some conversation with Mr. Twist.
+
+But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the fourth
+morning, when, unable any longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran
+into the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
+at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled ditch.
+
+In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out that they
+were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though the ditch had
+nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no comment. He never
+did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made
+the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the
+opposite reason. They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather
+like the _liebe Gott_,--he saw everything, knew everything, and said
+nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to
+pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo--again, they silently
+reflected, like the _liebe Gott_--had a different sense of geniality
+from theirs; he couldn't apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever
+wanted to. Their genialities faltered and froze on their lips.
+
+Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found hiding, and
+were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in this manner to
+conciliate Li Koo. Their dignity on the walk back to the shanty seemed
+painfully shrunk. They ought never to have condescended to do the
+childish things they had been doing during the last three days. If they
+hadn't been found out it would, of course, have remained a private
+matter between them and their Maker, and then one doesn't mind so much;
+but they had been found out, and by Li Koo, their own servant. It was
+intolerable. All the blood of all the Twinklers, Junkers from time
+immemorial and properly sensitive to humiliation, surged within them.
+They hadn't felt so naughty and so young for years. They were sure Li
+Koo didn't believe them about the ditch. They had a dreadful sensation
+of being led back to Mrs. Bilton by the ear.
+
+If only they could sack Mrs. Bilton!
+
+This thought, immense and startling, came to Anna-Rose, who far more
+than Anna-Felicitas resented being cut off from Mr. Twist, besides being
+more naturally impetuous; and as they walked in silence side by side,
+with Li Koo a little ahead of them, she turned her head and looked at
+Anna-Felicitas. "Let's give her notice," she murmured, under her breath.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was so much taken aback that she stopped in her walk and
+stared at Anna-Rose's flushed face.
+
+She too hardly breathed it. The suggestion seemed fantastic in its
+monstrousness. How could they give anybody so old, so sure of herself,
+so determined as Mrs. Bilton, notice?
+
+"Give her notice?" she repeated.
+
+A chill ran down Anna-Felicitas's spine. Give Mrs. Bilton notice! It was
+a great, a breath-taking idea, magnificent in its assertion of
+independence, of rights; but it needed, she felt, to be approached with
+caution. They had never given anybody notice in their lives, and they
+had always thought it must be a most painful thing to do--far, far worse
+than tipping. Uncle Arthur usedn't to mind it a bit; did it, indeed,
+with gusto. But Aunt Alice hadn't liked it at all, and came out in a
+cold perspiration and bewailed her lot to them and wished that people
+would behave and not place her in such a painful position.
+
+Mrs. Bilton couldn't be said not to have behaved. Quite the contrary.
+She had behaved too persistently; and they had to endure it the whole
+twenty-four hours. For Mrs. Bilton had no turn, it appeared, in spite
+of what she had said at Los Angeles, for solitary contemplation, and
+after the confusion of the first night, when once she had had time to
+envisage the situation thoroughly, as she said, she had found that to
+sit alone downstairs in the uncertain light of the lanterns while the
+twins went to bed and Mr. Twist wouldn't come out of his room, was not
+good for her psyche; so she had followed the twins upstairs, and
+continued to read the young girl's diary to them during their undressing
+and till the noises coming from their beds convinced her that it was
+useless to go on any longer. And that morning, the morning they hid in
+the ditch, she had even done this while they were getting up.
+
+"It isn't to be borne," said Anna-Rose under her breath, one eye on Li
+Koo's ear which, a little in front of her, seemed slightly slanted
+backward and sideways in the direction of her voice. "And why should it
+be? We're not in her power."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, also under her breath and also watching Li
+Koo's ear, "but it feels extraordinarily as if we were."
+
+"Yes. And that's intolerable. And it forces us to do silly baby things,
+wholly unsuited either to our age or our position. Who would have
+thought we'd ever hide from somebody in a ditch again!" Anna-Rose's
+voice was almost a sob at the humiliation.
+
+"It all comes from sleeping in the same room," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"Nobody can stand a thing that doesn't end at night either."
+
+"Of course they can't," said Anna-Rose. "It isn't fair. If you have to
+have a person all day you oughtn't to have to have the same person all
+night. Some one else should step in and relieve you then. Just as they
+do in hospitals."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Mr. Twist ought to. He ought to remove her
+forcibly from our room by marriage.
+
+"No he oughtn't," said Anna-Rose hastily, "because we can remove her
+ourselves by the simple process of giving her notice."
+
+"I don't believe it's simple," said Anna-Felicia again feeling a chill
+trickling down her spine.
+
+"Of course it is. We just go to her very politely and inform her that
+the engagement is terminated on a basis of mutual esteem but inflexible
+determination."
+
+"And suppose she doesn't stop talking enough to hear?"
+
+"Then we'll hand it to her in writing."
+
+The rest of the way they walked in silence, Anna-Rose with her chin
+thrust out in defiance, Anna-Felicitas dragging her feet along with a
+certain reluctance and doubt.
+
+Mrs. Bilton had finished her breakfast when they got back, having seen
+no sense in letting good food get cold, and was ready to sit and chat to
+them while they had theirs. She was so busy telling them what she had
+supposed they were probably doing, that she was unable to listen to
+their attempted account of what they had done. Thus they were saved from
+telling humiliating and youthful fibs; but they were also prevented, as
+by a wall of rock, from getting the speech through to her ear that
+Anna-Rose, trembling in spite of her defiance, had ready to launch at
+her. It was impossible to shout at Mrs. Bilton in the way Mr. Twist,
+when in extremity of necessity, had done. Ladies didn't shout;
+especially not when they were giving other ladies notice. Anna-Rose,
+who was quite cold and clammy at the prospect of her speech, couldn't
+help feeling relieved when breakfast was over and no opportunity for it
+had been given.
+
+"We'll write it," she whispered to Anna-Felicitas beneath the cover of a
+lively account Mrs. Bilton was giving them, _ŕ propos_ of their being
+late for breakfast, of the time it took her, after Mr. Bilton's passing,
+to get used to his unpunctuality at meals.
+
+That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily for
+years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly astonished her
+every day, she said. The clock struck, yet Mr. Bilton continued late. It
+was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way of being reminded of her loss.
+Each day she would instinctively expect; each day would come the stab of
+recollection. The vacancy these non-appearances had made in her life was
+beyond any words of hers. In fact she didn't possess such words, and
+doubted if the completest dictionary did either. Everything went just
+vacant, she said. No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as
+to be behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr.
+Bilton simultaneously appeared. No need any more to think of him when
+ordering meals. No need any more to eat the dish he had been so fond of
+and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked beans and bacon;
+yet she found herself ordering it continually after his departure, and
+choking memorially over the mouthfuls--"And people in Europe," cried Mrs
+Bilton, herself struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, "say that
+American women are incapable of passion!"
+
+"We'll write it," whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Write what?" asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, who as usual when Mrs.
+Bilton narrated her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and
+trying to get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.
+
+But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to the
+recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth pulled out.
+The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being free from it charmed
+and thrilled her, but how painful, how alarming was the prospect of
+pulling it out!
+
+There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton's talk, and that was
+that under its voluminous cover they could themselves whisper
+occasionally to each other. Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs. Bilton didn't
+notice that they whispered neither probably would she notice if she
+wrote. She therefore under Mrs. Bilton's very nose got a pencil and a
+piece of paper, and with many pauses and an unsteady hand wrote the
+following:
+
+DEAR MRS. BILTON--For some time past my sister and I have felt that we
+aren't suited to you, and if you don't mind would you mind regarding the
+engagement as terminated? We hope you won't think this abrupt, because
+it isn't really, for we seem to have lived ages since you came, and
+we've been thinking this over ripely ever since. And we hope you won't
+take it as anything personal either, because it isn't really. It's only
+that we feel we're unsuitable, and we're sure we'll go on getting more
+and more unsuitable. Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we're
+fearfully sorry. But on the other hand we're inflexible.--Yours
+affectionately,
+
+ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER
+
+With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the table
+under cover of the breakfast _débris_ to Anna-Felicitas, who read it
+with a beating heart and cautiously pushed it back.
+
+Anna-Felicitas felt sure Christopher was being terribly impetuous, and
+she felt sure she ought to stop her. But what a joy to be without Mrs.
+Bilton! The thought of going to bed in the placid sluggishness dear to
+her heart, without having to listen, to be attentive, to remember to be
+tidy because if she weren't there would be no room for Mrs. Bilton's
+things, was too much for her. Authority pursuing her into her bedroom
+was what she had found most difficult to bear. There must be respite.
+There must be intervals in every activity or endurance. Even the _liebe
+Gott_, otherwise so indefatigable, had felt this and arranged for the
+relaxation of Sundays.
+
+She pushed the letter back with a beating heart, and told herself that
+she couldn't and never had been able to stop Christopher when she was in
+this mood of her chin sticking out. What could she do in face of such a
+chin? And besides, Mrs. Bilton's friends must be missing her very much
+and ought to have her back. One should always live only with one's own
+sort of people. Every other way of living, Anna-Felicitas was sure even
+at this early stage of her existence, was bound to come to a bad end.
+One could be fond of almost anybody, she held, if they were somewhere
+else. Even of Uncle Arthur. Even he somehow seemed softened by distance.
+But for living-together purposes there was only one kind of people
+possible, and that was one's own kind. Unexpected and various were the
+exteriors of one's own kind and the places one found them in, but one
+always knew them. One felt comfortable with them at once; comfortable
+and placid. Whatever else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't
+feeling placid. That was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with
+her own kind. With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was
+talking on happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above
+manner as she pushed back the letter, instead of, as at the back of her
+mind she felt she ought to have done, tearing it up.
+
+Anna-Rose folded it and addressed it to Mrs. Bilton. Then she got up and
+held it out to her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas got up too, her inside feeling strangely unsteady and
+stirred round and round.
+
+"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs. Bilton,
+who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand without
+apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she was saying.
+
+"We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then said,
+making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who still stood
+hesitating.
+
+She slipped out; and Anna-Felicitas, suddenly panic-stricken lest she
+should be buttonholed all by herself fled after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was to be the
+tea-room. It was full of scattered fittings and the noise of hammering,
+but even so anybody could see what a delightful place it would presently
+turn into.
+
+The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days. Those were the days,
+those consecutive days of downpour that came in the winter and lasted
+without interruption for a fortnight at a time, when visitors in the
+hotels were bored beyond expression and ready to welcome anything that
+could distract them for an hour from the dripping of the rain on the
+windows. Bridge was their one solace, and they played it from after
+breakfast till bedtime; but on the fourth or fifth day of doing this,
+just the mere steady sitting became grievous to them. They ached with
+weariness. They wilted with boredom. All their natural kindness got
+damped out of them, and they were cross. Even when they won they were
+cross, and when they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of
+course, have been in California at all at such a time if it were
+possible to know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never
+did know, and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond
+Christmas. And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and
+warmth to be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
+blizzards.
+
+Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon for
+these victims of the rain. He would come to their rescue. He made up
+his mind, clear and firm on such matters, that it should become the
+habit of these unhappy people during the bad weather to motor out to The
+Open Arms for tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way
+made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without
+being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
+made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a
+welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes, at all
+times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful. Li Koo had a
+secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite
+peculiar and original charm, and these were to be reserved for the rainy
+season only, and be made its specialty. They were to become known and
+endeared to the public under the brief designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr.
+Twist felt there was something thoroughly American about this
+name--plain and business-like, and attractively in contrast to the
+subtle, the almost immoral exquisiteness of the article itself. This
+cake had been one of those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his
+garments the day in Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the
+one of his party who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he
+decided to call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.
+
+The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace so as to
+be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in their shirt
+sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs. There was such a
+hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the latticed windows, and
+such a crackling being made by the logs Mr. Twist and the architect kept
+on throwing on the fire, that only from the sudden broad smile on the
+architect's face as he turned to pick up another log did Mr. Twist
+realize that something that hadn't to do with work was happening behind
+his back.
+
+He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him. They
+seemed in a hurry.
+
+"Hello," he called out.
+
+They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick their way
+among the obstacles in their path. They appeared to be much perturbed.
+What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton? He soon knew.
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," panted Anna-Rose as soon as she got
+near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the prevailing noise.
+
+Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet, her eyes
+looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.
+
+"We simply can't stand it any longer," she went on as Mr. Twist only
+stared at her.
+
+"And you wouldn't either if you were us," she continued, the more
+passionately as he still didn't say anything.
+
+"Of course," said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her heart
+was full of doubt, "it's your fault really. We could have borne it if we
+hadn't had to have her at night."
+
+"Come outside," said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led on to
+the verandah.
+
+They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement, Anna-Felicitas
+trying to persuade herself that they had acted in the only way
+consistent with real wisdom.
+
+The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them and
+smiling all by himself. There was something about the Twinklers that
+lightened his heart whenever he caught sight of them. He and his fellow
+experts had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came
+of developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them on
+their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and respectful
+familiarity as The Cutes.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and led the
+twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced them,
+"perhaps you'll tell me exactly what you've done."
+
+"You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done," said
+Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she would go.
+She couldn't but perceive that the excess of Christopher's emotion was
+putting her at a disadvantage in the matter of dignity.
+
+"I can guess pretty much what she has done," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You can't--you can't," burst out Anna-Rose. "Nobody could--nobody ever
+could--who hadn't been with her day and night."
+
+"She's just been Mrs. Bilton," said Mr. Twist, lighting a cigarette to
+give himself an appearance of calm.
+
+"Exactly," said Anna-Felicitas. "So you won't be surprised at our having
+just been Twinklers."
+
+"Oh Lord," groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, "oh, Lord."
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," continued Anna-Felicitas, making a
+gesture of great dignity with her hand, "because we find with regret
+that she and we are incompatible."
+
+"Was she aware that you were giving it her?" asked Mr. Twist,
+endeavouring to keep calm.
+
+"We wrote it."
+
+"Has she read it?"
+
+"We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should have an
+opportunity of quietly considering it."
+
+"You shouldn't have left us alone with her like this," burst out
+Anna-Rose again, "you shouldn't really. It was cruel, it was wrong,
+leaving us high and dry--never seeing you--leaving us to be talked to
+day and night--to be read to--would _you_ like to be read to while
+you're undressing by somebody still in all their clothes? We've never
+been able to open our mouths. We've been taken into the field for our
+airing and brought in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams,
+or flocks and herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape. We
+haven't had a minute to ourselves day or night. There hasn't been a
+single exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we're grown
+up. We've been followed, watched, talked to--oh, oh, how awful it has
+been! Oh, oh, how awful! Forced to be dumb for days--losing our power of
+speech--"
+
+"Anna-Rose Twinkler," interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, "you haven't lost
+it. And you not only haven't, but that power of yours has increased
+tenfold during its days of rest."
+
+He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had already heard
+several times since they landed in America. Each time it took them
+aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds as the kindest and
+gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings of his each time
+astonished them.
+
+On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished. Anna-Felicitas
+all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the depth of her heart
+that Mr. Twist wouldn't like what they had done. He would be upset, she
+felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search of him. He
+would be, she was afraid very much upset. And so he was. He was appalled
+by what had happened. Lose Mrs. Bilton? Lose the very foundation of the
+party's respectability? And how could he find somebody else at the
+eleventh hour and where and how could the twins and he live,
+unchaperoned as they would be, till he had? What a peculiar talent these
+Annas had for getting themselves and him into impossible situations! Of
+course at their age they ought to be safe under the wing of a wise and
+unusually determined mother. Well, poor little wretches, they couldn't
+help not being under it; but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to
+them--faced up to her husband, and stuck to them.
+
+"I suppose," he said angrily, "being you and not being able to see
+farther than the ends of your noses, you haven't got any sort of an idea
+of what you've done."
+
+"We--"
+
+"She--"
+
+"And I don't suppose it's much use my trying to explain, either. Hasn't
+it ever occurred to you, though I'd be real grateful if you'd give me
+information on this point--that maybe you don't know everything?"
+
+"She--"
+
+"We--"
+
+"And that till you do know everything, which I take it won't be for some
+time yet, judging from the samples I've had of your perspicacity, you'd
+do well not to act without first asking some one's advice? Mine, for
+instance?"
+
+"She--" began Anna-Rose again; but her voice was trembling, for she
+couldn't bear Mr. Twist's anger. She was too fond of him. When he looked
+at her like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and
+she could only look back at him piteously.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in
+adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher's feelings put
+her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist's attention from her by saying
+with gentleness, "But why add to the general discomfort by being
+bitter?"
+
+"Bitter!" cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do you dispute that God made us?" inquired Anna-Felicitas, placing
+herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist's wrathful
+concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young person's
+emotion.
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist turning on her, "I'm not going to argue with
+you--not about _anything_. Least of all about God."
+
+"I only wanted to point out to you," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, "that
+that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little use in
+being bitter with us because we're not different. In regard to anything
+fundamental about us that you deplore I'm afraid we must refer you to
+Providence."
+
+"Say," said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this reasoning but,
+as Anna-Felicitas couldn't but notice, quite the contrary, "used you to
+talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of yours? Because if you did, upon
+my word I don't wonder--"
+
+But what Mr. Twist didn't wonder was fortunately concealed from the
+twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who, emerging
+from the shades of the verandah and looking about her, caught sight of
+them and came rapidly down the garden.
+
+There was no escape.
+
+They watched her bearing down on them without a word. It was a most
+unpleasant moment. Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give himself a
+countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton would probably say
+was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn't help shaking a little.
+Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink behind him. Anna-Felicitas
+stood motionless, awaiting the deluge. All Mr. Twist's sympathies were
+with Mrs. Bilton, and he was ashamed that she should have been treated
+so. He felt that nothing she could say would be severe enough, and he
+was extraordinarily angry with the Annas. Yet when he saw the injured
+lady bearing down on them, if he only could he would have picked up an
+Anna under each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did
+he prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this
+moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn't.
+
+There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching figure, and
+the letter in Mrs. Bilton's hand bobbed up and down as she walked, white
+and conspicuous in the sun against her black dress. What was their
+amazement to see as she drew nearer that she was looking just as
+pleasant as ever. They stared at her with mouths falling open. Was it
+possible, thought the twins, that she was longing to leave but hadn't
+liked to say so, and the letter had come as a release? Was it possible,
+thought Mr. Twist with a leap of hope in his heart, that she was taking
+the letter from a non-serious point of view?
+
+And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right. For Mrs. Bilton, woman
+of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of allowing herself to be
+dislodged or even discouraged. This was the opening sentence of her
+remarks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst. Had she not
+explained the first night that she was one who, having put her hand to
+the plough, held on to it however lively the movements of the plough
+might be? She would not conceal from them, she said, that even Mr. Bilton
+had not, especially, at first, been entirely without such movements. He
+had settled down, however on finding he could trust her to know better
+than he did what he wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And
+the result had been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he
+was alive, or a more devoted widow after he wasn't. She had told him one
+day, when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was
+conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills, and he
+said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could see she
+would be left a widow and that was about all she would be left--she had
+told him that if it was any comfort to him to know it, he might rely on
+it that he would have the most devoted widow any man had ever had, and
+he said--Mr. Bilton had odd fancies, especially toward the end--that a
+widow was the one thing a man never could have because he wasn't there
+by the time he had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies. And if she
+had managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he
+being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that encountering
+odd fancies in two very young and unformed girls--oh, it wasn't their
+fault that they were unformed, it was merely because they hadn't had
+time enough yet--she would be unable, experienced as she was, to steer
+among them too? Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb
+animals always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist,"
+Mrs. Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on Anna-Rose's
+shoulder as a more convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young
+charges aren't going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I
+don't undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting
+affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days in
+intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh young
+chatter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening day.
+
+Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear Mrs.
+Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how near his
+shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his meals with
+the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He was immensely
+grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He esteemed and
+respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then and there at the end
+of her speech, and told her he did, and the least he could do after that
+was to come to dinner. But this very genuine appreciation didn't prevent
+his finding her at close quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now
+only called temperately "a little much," and the result was a really
+frantic hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four
+days of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to
+finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense of
+having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had considerably
+slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs. Bilton they hurried up
+again, and after forty-eight of her the speed was headlong. At the end
+of forty-eight hours it seemed to Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he
+had ever known that he should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere
+with space in it, and sound-proof walls--lots of walls--and long
+passages between people's doors; and before the rooms in the inn were
+anything like finished he insisted on moving in.
+
+"You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he said to the
+twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you must just take
+off your coats to it and not mind."
+
+Mind? Turn to? It was what they were languishing for. It was what, in
+the arid hours under the ilex tree, collected so ignominiously round
+Mrs. Bilton's knee they had been panting for, like thirsty dogs with
+their tongues out. And such is the peculiar blessedness of work that
+instantly, the moment there was any to be done, everything that was
+tangled and irritating fell quite naturally into its proper place.
+Magically life straightened itself out smooth, and left off being
+difficult. _Arbeit und Liebe_, as their mother used to say, dropping
+into German whenever a sentence seemed to her to sound better that
+way--_Arbeit und Liebe_: these were the two great things of life; the
+two great angels, as she assured them, under whose spread-out wings lay
+happiness.
+
+With a hungry zeal, with the violent energy of reaction, the Annas fell
+upon work. They started unpacking. All the things they had bought in
+Acapulco, the linen, the china, the teaspoons, the feminine touches that
+had been piled up waiting in the barn, were pulled out and undone and
+carried indoors. They sorted, and they counted, and they arranged on
+shelves. Anna-Rose flew in and out with her arms full. Anna-Felicitas
+slouched zealously after her, her arms full too when she started, but
+not nearly so full when she got there owing to the way things had of
+slipping through them and dropping on to the floor. They were in a
+blissful, busy confusion. Their faces shone with heat and happiness.
+Here was liberty; here was freedom; here was true dignity--_Arbeit und
+Liebe_....
+
+When Mr. Twist, as he did whenever he could, came and looked on for a
+moment in his shirt sleeves, with his hat on the back of his head and
+his big, benevolent spectacles so kind, Anna-Rose's cup seemed full. Her
+dimple never disappeared for a moment. It was there all day long now;
+and even when she was asleep it still lurked in the corner of her mouth.
+_Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Immense was the reaction of self-respect that took hold of the twins.
+They couldn't believe they were the people who had been so crude and
+ill-conditioned as to hide Mrs. Bilton's belongings, and actually
+finally to hide themselves. How absurd. How like children. How
+unpardonably undignified. Anna-Rose held forth volubly to this effect
+while she arranged the china, and Anna-Felicitas listened assentingly,
+with a kind of grave, ashamed sheepishness.
+
+The result of this reaction was that Mrs. Bilton, whose pressure on them
+was relieved by the necessity of her too being in several places at
+once, and who was displaying her customary grit, now became the definite
+object of their courtesy. They were the mistresses of a house, they
+began to realize, and as such owed her every consideration. This bland
+attitude was greatly helped by their not having to sleep with her any
+more, and they found that the mere coming fresh to her each morning made
+them feel polite and well-disposed. Besides, they were thoroughly and
+finally grown-up now, Anna-Rose declared--never, never to lapse again.
+They had had their lesson, she said, gone through a crisis, and done
+that which Aunt Alice used to say people did after severe trials, aged
+considerably.
+
+Anna-Felicitas wasn't quite so sure. Her own recent behaviour had
+shaken and shocked her too much. Who would have thought she would have
+gone like that? Gone all to pieces, back to sheer naughtiness, on the
+first provocation? It was quite easy, she reflected while she worked,
+and cups kept on detaching themselves mysteriously from her fingers, and
+tables tumbling over at her approach, to be polite and considerate to
+somebody you saw very little of, and even, as she found herself doing,
+to get fond of the person; but suppose circumstances threw one again
+into the person's continual society, made one again have to sleep in the
+same room? Anna-Felicitas doubted whether it would be possible for her
+to stand such a test, in spite of her earnest desire to behave; she
+doubted, indeed, whether anybody ever did stand that test successfully.
+Look at husbands.
+
+Meanwhile there seemed no likelihood of its being applied again. Each of
+them had now a separate bedroom, and Mrs. Bilton had, in the lavish
+American fashion, her own bathroom, so that even at that point there was
+no collision. The twins' rooms were connected by a bathroom all to
+themselves, with no other door into it except the doors from their
+bedrooms, and Mr. Twist, who dwelt discreetly at the other end of the
+house, also had a bathroom of his own. It seemed as natural for American
+architects to drop bathrooms about, thought Anna-Rose, as for the little
+clouds in the psalms to drop fatness. They shed them just as easily, and
+the results were just as refreshing. To persons hailing from Pomerania,
+a place arid of bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to
+have one's own. Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from
+childhood to these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out
+to him, he hadn't lived in Pomerania, where nothing stood between you
+and being dirty except the pump.
+
+But it wasn't only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by Mr.
+Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the most
+wonderful magic little house in the world: the intelligent American
+spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever, simple devices
+for saving labour--so full that it almost seemed to the Annas as if it
+would get up quite unaided at six every morning and do itself; and they
+were sure that if the smallest encouragement were given to the
+kitchen-stove it would cook and dish up a dinner all alone. Everything
+in the house was on these lines. The arrangements for serving
+innumerable teas with ease were admirable. They were marvels of economy
+and clever thinking-out. The architect was surprised at the attention
+and thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the future
+housekeeping. "You seem sheer crazy on teas," he remarked; to which Mr.
+Twist merely replied that he was.
+
+The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy and
+promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a happy
+betrothal. They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in April, those
+enchanting days she had always loved the best, when the bees get busy
+for the first time, and suddenly there are wallflowers and a flowering
+currant bush and the sound of the lawn being mown and the smell of cut
+grass. How one's heart leaps up to greet them, she thought. What a
+thrill of delight rushes through one's body, of new hope, of delicious
+expectation.
+
+Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech seemed to
+feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be heard in the
+evenings singing strange songs among his pots. And what he was singing,
+only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of the two
+white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose eyes were
+deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the shores of his
+father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive and inarticulate, in
+secret seethed with passion. Which was why his cakes were so wonderful.
+He had to express himself somehow.
+
+But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr. Twist and
+his party--he always thought of them as his party--were innocently and
+happily busy full of hopefulness and mutual goodwill, down in the town
+and in the houses scattered over the lovely country round the town,
+people were talking. Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was
+doing up, for the daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had
+bought the long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt's,
+and was converting it into a little _ventre-ŕ-terre_ for his widowed
+mother--launching once more into French, as though there were something
+about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language. Everybody knew this, and it
+was perfectly natural for a well-off Easterner to have a little place
+out West, even if the choice of the little place was whimsical. But what
+about the Miss Twinklers? Who and what were they? And also, Why?
+
+There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party from the
+Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time much had been
+done in the way of conjecture. The first waves of it flowed out from the
+Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by waves flowing in from the
+town. Good-natured curiosity gave place to excited curiosity when the
+rumour got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to ask Mr.
+Twist to take his _entourage_ somewhere else. Was it possible the cute
+little girls, so well known by sight on Main Street going from shop to
+shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed almost unbelievable, but
+luckily nothing was really unbelievable.
+
+The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest after
+the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen from the
+local press, was not to be drawn. His reserve was most interesting. Miss
+Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently enigmatic. Her silence was
+most exciting. On the other hand, Mrs. Ridding's attitude was merely one
+of contempt, dismissing the Twinklers with a heavy gesture. Why think or
+trouble about a pair of chits like that? They had gone; Albert was quiet
+again; and wasn't that the gong for dinner?
+
+But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist _entourage_ presently
+were superseded by much graver and more perturbing doubts. Nobody knew
+when exactly this development took place. Acapulco had been enjoying the
+first set of doubts. There was no denying that doubts about somebody
+else's morals were not unpleasant. They did give one, if one examined
+one's sensations carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add
+the kick to lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time
+like the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the
+life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat. But from the doubts that
+presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got nothing
+but genuine discomfort and uneasiness. Nobody knew how or when they
+started. Quite suddenly they were there.
+
+This was in the November before America's coming into the war. The
+feeling in Acapulco was violently anti-German. The great majority of the
+inhabitants, permanent and temporary, were deeply concerned at the
+conduct of their country in not having, immediately after the torpedoing
+of the _Lusitania_, joined the Allies. They found it difficult to
+understand, and were puzzled and suspicious, as well as humiliated in
+their national pride. Germans who lived in the neighbourhood, or who
+came across from the East for the winter, were politely tolerated, but
+the attitude toward them was one of growing watchfulness and distrust;
+and week by week the whispered stories of spies and gun-emplacements and
+secret stores of arms in these people's cellars or back gardens, grew
+more insistent and detailed. There certainly had been at least one spy,
+a real authentic one, afterward shot in England, who had stayed near-by,
+and the nerves of the inhabitants had that jumpiness on this subject
+with which the inhabitants of other countries have long been familiar.
+All the customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary
+mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered speeds
+along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the customary signalling
+out to sea was observed and passionately sworn to by otherwise calm
+people. It was possible, the inhabitants found, to believe with ease
+things about Germans--those who were having difficulty with religion
+wished it were equally easy to believe things about God. There was
+nothing Germans wouldn't think of in the way of plotting, and nothing
+they wouldn't, having thought of it, carry out with deadly thoroughness
+and patience.
+
+And into this uneasy hotbed of readiness to believe the worst, arrived
+the Twinkler twins, rolling their r's about.
+
+It needed but a few inquiries to discover that none of the young
+ladies' schools in the neighbourhood had been approached on their
+behalf; hardly inquiries,--mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary
+chatting with the principals of these establishments when one met them
+at the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of the
+community organized and supported. Not many of the winter visitors went
+to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap had a restless soul. It
+was restless because it was worried by perpetual thirst,--she couldn't
+herself tell after what; it wasn't righteousness, for she knew she was
+still worldly, so perhaps it was culture. Anyhow she would give culture
+a chance, and accordingly she went to the instructive evenings. Here she
+met that other side of Acapulco which doesn't play bridge and is proud
+to know nothing of polo, which believes in education, and goes in for
+mind training and welfare work; which isn't, that is, well off.
+
+Nobody here had been asked to educate the Twinklers. No classes had been
+joined by them.
+
+Miss Heap was so enigmatic, she who was naturally of an unquiet and
+exercise-loving tongue, that this graver, more occupied section of the
+inhabitants was instantly as much pervaded by suspicions as the idlest
+of the visitors in the hotels and country houses. It waved aside the
+innocent appearance and obvious extreme youth of the suspects. Useless
+to look like cherubs if it were German cherubs you looked like. Useless
+being very nearly children if it were German children you very nearly
+were. Why, precisely these qualities would be selected by those terribly
+clever Germans for the furtherance of their nefarious schemes. It would
+be quite in keeping with the German national character, that character
+of bottomless artfulness, to pick out two such young girls with just
+that type of empty, baby face, and send them over to help weave the
+gigantic invisible web with which America was presently to be choked
+dead.
+
+The serious section of Acapulco, the section that thought, hit on this
+explanation of the Twinklers with no difficulty whatever once its
+suspicions were roused because it was used to being able to explain
+everything instantly. It was proud of its explanation, and presented it
+to the town with much the same air of deprecating but conscious
+achievement with which one presents drinking-fountains.
+
+Then there was the lawyer to whom Mr. Twist had gone about the
+guardianship. He said nothing, but he was clear in his mind that the
+girls were German and that Mr. Twist wanted to hide it. He had thought
+more highly of Mr. Twist's intelligence than this. Why hide it? America
+was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and Germans could
+come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set tongues wagging? He
+did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness himself, a continuous
+wide-awakeness and minute consideration of consequences, realize, and if
+he had he wouldn't have believed, the affectionate simplicity and
+unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had been pointed out to him he would
+have dismissed it as a pose; for a man who makes money in any quantity
+worth handling isn't affectionately simple and unworldly--he is
+calculating and steely.
+
+The lawyer was puzzled. How did Mr. Twist manage to have a forehead and
+a fortune like that, and yet be a fool? True, he had a funny sort of
+face on him once you got down to the nose part and what came after,--a
+family sort of face, thought the lawyer; a sort of rice pudding,
+wet-nurse face. The lawyer listened intently to all the talk and
+rumours, while himself saying nothing. In spite of being a married man,
+his scruples about honour hadn't been blunted by the urge to personal
+freedom and the necessity for daily self-defence that sometimes afflicts
+those who have wives. He remained honourably silent, as he had said he
+would, but he listened; and he came to the conclusion that either there
+was a quite incredible amount of stupidity about the Twist party, or
+that there was something queer.
+
+What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house being got
+ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest of the world,
+took the newspapers _ventre-ŕ-terre_ theory of the house for granted,
+and it was only the expectation of the arrival of that respectable lady,
+the widowed Mrs. Twist, which kept the suspicions a little damped down.
+They smouldered, hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot
+Twist's family life had been voluminously described in the entire
+American press when first his invention caught on, and it was known to
+be pure. There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
+born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would die--Mr. Twist
+read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish was to die in the old
+home--of the corner in the Clark churchyard where he would probably be
+entombed, with an inset showing his father's gravestone on which would
+clearly be read the announcement that he was the Resurrection and the
+Life. And there was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols
+of ungluttable grief,--a most creditable mother. And there were accounts
+of the activities of another near relative, that Uncle Charles who
+presided over the Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a
+snapshot of his macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,--a most
+creditable uncle.
+
+These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the impression
+survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents were
+unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his mother and she
+was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd and unintelligible,
+it was probable that his being there now with the two Germans was after
+all capable of explanation. Not much of an explanation, though. Even the
+moderates who took this view felt this. One wasn't with Germans these
+days if one could help it. There was no getting away from that simple
+fact. The inevitable deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why
+couldn't he help it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a
+passion cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which
+was known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
+with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
+exactly informed of their movements? He had met the Twinklers, so it was
+reported, on a steamer coming over from England. Of course. All arranged
+by the German Government. That was the peculiar evil greatness of this
+dangerous people, announced the serious section of Acapulco, again with
+the drinking-fountain-presentation air, that nothing was too private or
+too petty to escape their attention, to be turned to their own wicked
+uses. They were as economical of the smallest scraps of possible
+usefulness as a French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food.
+Everything was turned to account. Nothing was wasted. Even the
+mosquitoes in Germany were not wasted. They contained juices, Germans
+had discovered, especially after having been in contact with human
+beings, and with these juices the talented but unscrupulous Germans made
+explosives. Could one sufficiently distrust a nation that did things
+like that? asked the serious section of Acapulco.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that they were
+less interested than they otherwise would have been in the sea-blue
+advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing that The Open Arms
+would open wide on the 29th of the month and exhorting the public to
+watch the signposts, they merely remarked that it wasn't, then, the
+title of a book after all. Mr. Twist would have been surprised and
+nettled if he had known how little curiosity his advertisements were
+exciting; he would have been horrified if he had known the reason. As it
+was, he didn't know anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to
+be vulnerable to rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe
+from it inside their magic circle of _Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco through
+which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning, looking as
+though he had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in; and
+once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also apparently very busy,
+but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton, the lady from Los
+Angeles--Acapulco knew all about her and admitted she was a lady of
+strictest integrity and unimpeachable character, but this only made the
+Twinkler problem more obscure--came too, and seemed, judging from the
+animation of her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.
+
+But once an idea has got into people's heads, remarked the lawyer, who
+was nudged by the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were
+seen approaching,--Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair
+setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean
+white frocks and shining youth,--once an idea has got into people's
+heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out. Yet on
+the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton--
+
+"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up with the
+water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"
+
+And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using
+the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.
+
+The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the
+East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with
+some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon after the
+departure--she didn't see why she shouldn't call it by its proper name
+and say right out expulsion--of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan,
+but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long
+time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered
+if the other person doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous
+interests that are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest,
+and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
+morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
+machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
+uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
+sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that his
+mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt unable to
+believe it. "Do tell your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how
+_delighted_ we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us
+in our sunny refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her.
+Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
+indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."
+
+She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got
+it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the
+exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German
+secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of
+America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found
+she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.
+
+It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till Miss
+Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two girls
+mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very morning
+after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe. That was all his
+mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the top of all her other
+sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a fearful, perhaps a finishing
+blow, but she was such a good woman that she still prayed for him. Clark
+was horrified. His mother had decided at first she would try to shield
+him and say nothing, but when she found that nobody had the least idea
+of what he had done she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and
+have no secrets from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and
+humiliation she would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up
+false appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
+a splendid woman. The girls--poor Mrs. Twist--were Germans.
+
+On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her worst suspicions
+hadn't been half bad enough. Here was everything just about as black as
+it could be; and Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected
+American citizen, had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon
+weaknesses she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe,
+from books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
+part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the German
+Government.
+
+What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go? Which
+was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to her that
+the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a real menace to
+its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of them? And if they
+were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some other part of America,
+less watchful, less perhaps able to take care of itself, to the ripening
+and furtherance of their schemes, whatever their schemes might be? Even
+at that moment Miss Heap unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go
+would be to lose thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with
+excitement and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years.
+She wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
+thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone in
+her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair,
+her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft carpet,
+hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding her knowledge
+meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether to herself, her very
+own, shared as yet by no one,--it was while she sat there, that people
+out of doors in Acapulco itself, along the main roads, out in the
+country towards Zamora on the north and San Blas on the south, became
+suddenly aware of new signposts.
+
+They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards the spot
+at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They all pointed,
+with a long white finger, in that direction. And on them all was written
+in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the distance in miles or
+fractions of a mile was clearly marked, _To The Open Arms_.
+
+Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main Street
+stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what they were, and
+decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in their cars and track
+them down. They made up parties to go and track together. It would be a
+relief to have something a little different to do. What on earth could
+The Open Arms be? Hopes were expressed that they weren't something
+religious. Awful to follow signposts out into the country only to find
+they landed you in a meeting-house.
+
+At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were together, the
+signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being discussed from her
+solitary table, but was so much taken up with her own exciting thoughts
+that she hardly noticed. After lunch, however, as she was passing out of
+the restaurant, still full of her unshared news and still uncertain as
+to whom she should tell it first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table
+and said he supposed she was going too.
+
+They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon of the
+conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called out to any one
+at that moment. He was sitting waiting while Mrs. Ridding finished her
+lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and was in the condition of
+muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of Mrs.
+Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this happened, that Mr.
+Ridding got through his meal first by at least twenty minutes and then
+sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She wasn't aware of these efforts.
+They would greatly have shocked her; for to try not to mind one's wife
+surely isn't what decent, loving husbands ever have to do.
+
+"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon Mr.
+Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.
+
+Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.
+
+"Following these new signposts that are all over the place," said Mr.
+Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."
+
+"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs. Ridding?"
+
+"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take you. Car
+at four o'clock, Albert."
+
+She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well knew
+that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals and as she
+had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her thanks and
+pleasure, and temporarily left them.
+
+This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big limousine--symbol of
+Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding couldn't for the life of him see
+why he should have to provide a strange old lady with cars, and yet did
+so on an increasing scale of splendour--arrived at the turn on the main
+road to San Blas which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the
+final signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
+Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's mind in company. So too
+did they enter Mr. Ridding's mind; and they only remained outside Mrs.
+Ridding's because of her profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged
+in aspic. That was the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at
+the Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
+and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it afterwards.
+
+The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was in Pepper
+Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should happen to be
+there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very straight and alert, her
+eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said nothing either. Not for
+worlds would he have mentioned the word Twist, which so instantly and
+inevitably suggested that other and highly controversial word Twinkler.
+But he too sat all eyes; for anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of
+the place containing those cunning little bits of youngness, the
+Twinkler sisters, and even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.
+
+Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in front of
+it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was lovely, there was no
+polo, and nobody happened to be giving a party. All the way out from
+Acapulco they had only had to follow other cars. Cars were going, and
+cars were coming back. The cars going were full of solemn people,
+pathetically anxious to be interested. The cars coming back were full of
+animated people who evidently had achieved interest.
+
+Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend in the
+lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been there
+before, making a point of getting a friend to motor her past it in
+order to see what she could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of
+his desire to go and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to,
+found Mrs. Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where
+it was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
+putting his head out--he was sitting backwards--- he saw a great,
+old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in pictures of
+ancient English village greens, with
+
+     The Open Arms
+
+in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've run it
+to earth."
+
+Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind
+blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy
+eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All
+stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless
+fatigue she dimly wondered at them.
+
+"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his
+Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on
+which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of
+brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't see one, though."
+
+He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he said.
+
+Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.
+
+A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said quickly.
+"Don't, Mr. Ridding."
+
+There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that grew behind the
+pepper trees, and some people he knew, who had been in the car in front,
+were walking up to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it,
+and were standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in
+their hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on
+to one of the gate-posts, with the words _Won't you take one_? painted
+on it.
+
+Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was Miss Heap
+laying hold of him and saying "Don't."
+
+"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the door.
+
+"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good getting
+out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in to-day.
+Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."
+
+And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and came
+over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.
+
+"Say--" he said,--"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs. Ridding, your
+humble servant--say, look at this. Teapot Twist wasn't born yesterday
+when it comes to keeping things dark. No mention of his name on this
+book of words, but it's the house he was doing up all right, and it is
+to be used as an inn. Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American
+Red Cross. Price per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea.
+Wonder where those Twinkler girls come in. Here--you have this, Ridding,
+and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a second time to
+the ladies he went back to his friends.
+
+In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
+galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly heaving
+itself free of aspic. "Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs
+Ridding," said Miss Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish
+particularly to tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly
+I knew, but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at
+the signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.
+
+"Albert--hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.
+
+And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
+suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
+speaking-tube to the chauffeur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+"It's _perfect_," said the twins, looking round the tea-room.
+
+This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking round
+saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each time they
+finished getting another of the little tables ready, each time they
+brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they stood back and
+gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one voice, "It's
+_perfect_."
+
+Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as sober,
+quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was obliged to
+admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the Annas. Especially the
+Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue frocks and little Dutch
+caps and big muslin aprons that he took off his spectacles and cleaned
+them carefully so as to have a thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as
+they stood at a quarter to four gazing round the room, he stood gazing
+at them, and when they said "It's _perfect_," he said, indicating them
+with his thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all
+very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had pictured
+her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair beautifully
+brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave each of them a
+hearty kiss--for luck, she said--which Mr. Twist watched with an odd
+feeling of jealousy.
+
+"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden desire to hug.
+Then he said it out loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And
+added, "As it's the opening day."
+
+"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction," said
+Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained, we think,
+by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs. Bilton, "we like it
+very much as an expression of esteem."
+
+"Then why not in that spirit--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning very red.
+Intolerable to be kissed _en famille_. If it had to be done at all,
+kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But she and Anna-Felicitas
+didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To her amazement she found
+tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid idiots.... It must be that
+she was so happy. She had never been so happy. Where on earth had her
+handkerchief got to....
+
+"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.
+
+"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her beautiful new
+muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We are, you know,"
+she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist, so that the corner of
+her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at Christopher's perfectly
+tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily happy, and all through you.
+Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued, addressing her with firmness while
+she finished her eyes and began her nose, "You may like to be reminded
+that there's only ten minutes left now before all those cars that were
+here yesterday come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your
+career as a waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"
+
+But half an hour later no cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty.
+The long shadows lay across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in
+the grass chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something
+was coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts--Li Koo to the
+boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the room,
+and the twins to the door--but the sounds passed on along the road and
+died away round the next corner.
+
+At half-past four the _personnel_ of The Open Arms was sitting about
+silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when Mr. Ridding walked
+in.
+
+There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked in
+mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to the
+nearest point and had done the last mile on his own out-of-condition
+feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters in the smoking-room.
+She herself was in a big chair on the verandah, and with Miss Heap and
+most of the other guests was discussing The Open Arms in all its
+probable significance. He hadn't been able to get away sooner because of
+the nap. He had gone through with the nap from start to finish so as not
+to rouse suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of
+dare-devil running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew
+that he would cool down again presently and that then the consequences
+of his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile his
+blood was up.
+
+He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,--most gratifying
+sensation. The _personnel_, after a moment's open-mouthed surprise,
+rushed to greet him. Never was a man more welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding
+been so warmly welcomed anywhere in his life.
+
+"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at Anna-Rose who took his
+stick. "Wish I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had
+something to look forward to."
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to look very
+solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering with eagerness.
+"Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate? Each of these beverages
+can be provided either hot or iced--"
+
+"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in spite of
+also trying to look like a family butler. "_I'd_ have ice-cream if I
+were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious body. And you look so
+hot. Hot things should always as soon as possible be united to cold
+things, so as to restore the proper balance--"
+
+"And there's some heavenly stuff called cinnamon-toast--hot, you know,
+but if you have ice-cream at the same time it won't matter," said
+Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his hat for him. "I don't know whether you've
+studied the leaflets," she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I
+oughtn't to conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you
+have."
+
+"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to save, for
+you can't."
+
+"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said Mr.
+Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him and
+beaming up at her.
+
+She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the corner of
+her apron to convey to him that she knew her business, and hurried away
+to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away to give the order.
+
+"Say--" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna would have been
+enough for this and he was pining to talk to them; but the twins weren't
+to be stopped from both giving the very first order, and they
+disappeared together into the pantry.
+
+Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently absorbed
+in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep accounts and to
+enter the number of teas, and from this high seat she was to preside
+over the activities of the _personnel_. She had retired hastily to it on
+the unexpected entrance of Mr. Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring
+to look as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this
+was a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She
+wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had
+quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and
+talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till the room
+was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests entirely to the
+Annas.
+
+He himself was going to keep much in the background at all times, but
+through the half-open door of his office he could see and hear; and he
+couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching and observed the
+effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just arrived turned on the
+twins, that the first guest appeared to be extraordinarily and
+undesirably affectionate. He thought he had seen him at the
+Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that the Annas, after
+their conversation with him there, felt towards him as old friends, and
+he considered their manner was a little unduly familiar. Perhaps, after
+all, he thought uneasily, Mrs. Bilton had better do the waiting and the
+Annas sit with him in the office. The ledger could be written up at the
+end of the day. Or he could hire somebody....
+
+Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there only
+one guest? It was twenty minutes to five; and this time yesterday the
+road had been choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every
+minute this absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he
+had better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary
+one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn
+for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had heard to those
+others who so unaccountably hadn't come.
+
+He got up and went into the other room; and just as Anna-Felicitas was
+reappearing with the teapot followed by Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes,
+Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up expectantly and giving his tie a little
+pat of adjustment, perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot
+Twist.
+
+This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon heat to
+sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and amiable old man,
+and at any other time would have talked to him with pleasure; but he had
+made up his mind for the Twinklers as one makes up one's mind for a
+certain dish and is ravaged by strange fury if it isn't produced.
+Besides, hang it all, he was going to pay five dollars for his tea, and
+for that sum he ought to least to have it under the conditions he
+preferred.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist
+introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering
+Annas,--a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.
+
+It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't mind,
+Mr.--"
+
+"Ridding is my name."
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects to
+you."
+
+But he couldn't help wondering what he would do if there were several
+tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there
+wouldn't be enough of him in such a case to go round.
+
+Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil Teapot
+Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now. For that a
+man had a right to a table to himself.
+
+But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that moment a
+car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were heard coming
+up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his ears, for from the
+things he had heard being said all the evening before and all that
+morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night from the lips of that
+strange old lady with whom by some dreadful mistake he was obliged to
+sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be exactly a rush.
+
+Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class, he
+thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of sulky
+vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm the
+Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding crossly,
+as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.
+
+"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the long
+things he was saying.
+
+"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place," said Mr.
+Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears in
+expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was disappointed.
+
+He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young people,
+called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
+abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The young
+men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking round the
+Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter
+and exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all
+their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as pleased,
+Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost he could hear
+them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where Mrs. Bilton sat, as
+he had told her, bent pen in hand over the ledger. She didn't move. It
+was true he had told her to sit like that, but hadn't the woman any
+imagination? What she ought to do now was to bustle forward and take
+that laughing group in charge.
+
+"As I was telling you--" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with an effort to
+Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young people and catch
+an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.
+
+In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,--it was solely to
+see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at the
+Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that. "Unprincipled
+old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his ears flaming. Aloud
+he said, "As I was telling you--" and went on distractedly with his
+rigmarole.
+
+Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise the
+experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr. Ridding
+and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in the middle of
+the room, were made aware of their presence by Anna-Felicitas suddenly
+dropping the pencil and tablets she had been provided with for writing
+down orders and taking an uncertain and obviously timid step forward.
+
+They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant step, and saw
+a man and two women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course,
+didn't know them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding
+did. That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided
+knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.
+
+Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a man who
+liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his daily paper
+was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who disliked Germans and yet
+at the same time had a thirstily affectionate disposition, he declined
+to believe the prevailing theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't
+believe it anyhow. At that age people were truthful, and he had heard
+them explain they had come from England and had acquired their rolling
+r's during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from
+declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular nationality,
+owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he couldn't call his
+but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as ours. Except, however,
+for the Twinklers, for all other persons of whom it was said that they
+were Germans, naturalized or not, immediate or remote, he had,
+instructed by his newspaper, what his called a healthy instinctive
+abhorrence.
+
+"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond between
+them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant advance to
+meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are wrong."
+
+But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were the
+first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any shop or
+hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the experts friends.
+This was trade coming in,--real business being done. Anna-Felicitas
+hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and prepared-for
+moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the guests seemed so
+disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the threshold the whole
+three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't been prepared for that,
+and it unnerved her.
+
+"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her and
+embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense inclusive
+smile of appreciation.
+
+"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's
+explanations.
+
+"No," said he.
+
+"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced
+harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous--"
+
+"But this is delicious--this is a conception of genius," said Mr.
+Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up Anna-Felicitas's
+tablets and restored them to her with a low bow.
+
+"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.
+
+"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And she
+laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual understanding.
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously. "Or
+perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these beverages can
+be--"
+
+"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping
+Anna-Felicitas in her smile.
+
+"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas with a
+kind of grave nervousness.
+
+"Ah--charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately
+appreciative.
+
+"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes on her
+tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile. "And--and a great
+many kinds of cakes--"
+
+"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker genially,
+"or are all the tables engaged?"
+
+"Oh I _beg_ your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and moving
+hastily towards a table laid for three.
+
+"Ah--that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following closely on her
+heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of ordering what we
+shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow me to present myself.
+My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German name. And this is my wife. She
+too had an honest German name before she honoured mine by accepting
+it--she was a Niedermayer. And this is my daughter, with whom I trust
+you will soon be friends."
+
+And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and Anna-Felicitas shook
+them.
+
+"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.
+
+"As I was telling you--" said Mr. Twist irritably, for really why should
+Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers? Her business was to wait,
+not to get shaking hands. He must point out to her very plainly.
+
+"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker; and at
+this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped her tablets a
+second time.
+
+"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that air of
+mutual comprehension.
+
+"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her tablets from
+the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting to thank him.
+
+"What?" said Mrs. Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for
+once the phrase must be sincere?"
+
+"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her title," said
+Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps--perhaps. Wiser perhaps from the point
+of view of convenience. Is that where you will sit, Güstchen? Still, we
+Germans when we are together can allow ourselves the refreshment of
+being ourselves, and I hope to be frequently the means of giving you the
+relief, you and your charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed
+correctly. It is a great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In
+these sad days we Germans must hang together--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from one
+Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.
+
+"But--" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or coffee?" she
+ended by asking again.
+
+"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down
+comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it, Güstchen. To
+see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."
+
+"Charming, charming," said his wife.
+
+"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at Anna-Felicitas,
+again with comprehension,--with, almost, a wink. "You must let me come
+and help. I'd look nice in that costume, wouldn't I mother."
+
+"There is also frothed choc--"
+
+"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely sympathy--"
+interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially, leaning forward and
+lowering his voice a little.
+
+Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were coming in at
+the door, and behind them she could see on the path yet more, and
+Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.
+
+"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked. "Because
+I'm afraid--"
+
+Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was looking.
+
+"Ah--" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent Güstchen, here are
+Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister--why, and there come the Diederichs--but
+splendid, splendid--"
+
+"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested face,
+"ever been to Berlin?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton irrelevance
+flung into the middle of his sentence.
+
+"Well, it's just like this."
+
+"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot there--see
+'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other of their confounded
+towns."
+
+"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.
+
+"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans," said Ridding.
+
+"All Germans?"
+
+"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you know?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"So are the ones who've just come in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans."
+
+There was a pause, during which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was
+presenting quite a populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm
+damned."
+
+And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr. Twist. He
+considered that at last he was talking sense.
+
+"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're damned. It
+was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would be. Shake hands,
+sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.
+
+Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that was
+obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed abruptly,
+after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had never seen so
+many Germans at once before, that her psyche was disharmonious to
+Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just as cats in a room made
+Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when he had flesh to go it with,
+that she hadn't been aware the inn was to be a popular resort and
+rendezvous for Germans, and that she wished to speak alone with Mr.
+Twist in the morning; while the twins, feeling the ominousness of this
+last sentence,--as did Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,--and
+overcome by the lassitude that had succeeded the shocks of the
+afternoon, a lassitude much increased by their having tried to finish up
+the pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly
+soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the
+moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars. There
+they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense distance and
+indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how infinitely
+insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and how they would
+both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And this last reflection
+afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and draughty comfort.
+
+Thus the first evening, that was to have been so happy, was spent by
+everybody in silence and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression
+even in his kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing
+with it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
+wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the opening
+day--"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange
+essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the
+meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone
+wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member
+of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with
+peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
+down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people
+of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that
+sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?
+
+Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must
+think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those
+Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the
+Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so
+exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as
+though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him
+in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable
+impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.
+Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It
+looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his
+mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between
+the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he
+hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her
+they weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
+came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
+exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their
+nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done
+so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas,
+and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened
+to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had
+kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that
+nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in
+the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?
+What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would
+happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain
+simply couldn't conceive.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door on to
+the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge,
+their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the
+moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien
+children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was
+their mother.
+
+Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal
+side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms
+round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to
+go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told
+him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms
+round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left
+them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second
+occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested
+itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely
+went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of
+Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he
+felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was
+difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas
+continued to consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that
+feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
+mattered.
+
+Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his
+office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her
+resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of
+straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards
+herself--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.
+
+She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she
+feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to
+resist the encroachments of foreigners--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up
+with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a
+soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be,
+of that nationality--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem
+to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and respected American
+name should be mixed up--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say it did
+seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian of two girls
+who, it was clear from what she had overheard that afternoon, were
+German--
+
+Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he shouted,
+so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee to keep quiet
+for just five minutes--sit down right here at this table and not say one
+single thing, not one single thing for just five minutes," he said,
+banging the table, "I'll tell you all about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your
+resignation at the end of that time if you're still set on leaving, but
+just for this once it's me that's going to do the talking."
+
+And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital letters
+would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.
+
+Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of how good
+her intentions had been when she took the post, and how deceitful--she
+was forced to think it--Mr. Twist's were when he offered it. She was
+prepared, however, to give him a hearing. It was only fair. But Mr.
+Twist had to burst into capitals several times before he had done, so
+difficult was it for Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed, even when
+she herself wished, not to say anything.
+
+It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of the
+office again. She went straight into the garden, where the Annas, aware
+of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been lingering anxiously,
+unable at so crucial a moment to settle to anything, and with solemnity
+kissed them. Her eyes were very bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless
+as parchment, was red. Positively she kissed them without saying a
+single word; and they kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a
+relief that made them hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that
+the brightness in her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her
+handkerchief and wipe it away.
+
+"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm through
+with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll weld."
+
+And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the situation.
+
+She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that happened
+nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through what she called
+thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton had occupied the
+position of the guns; now it would be these poor orphans. No Germans
+could frighten her away, once she knew their story; no harsh judgments
+and misconceptions of her patriotic friends. Mr. Twist had told her
+everything, from the beginning on the _St. Luke_, harking back to Uncle
+Arthur and the attitude of England, describing what he knew of their
+mother and her death, not even concealing the part his own mother had
+played or that he wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs.
+Bilton's silence; and as she listened her heart melted within her, and
+the immense store of grit which was her peculiar pride came to the top
+and once and for all overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think,
+and at last she burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he
+hadn't imparted all this to her long ago.
+
+"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind before
+the outburst of her released volubility.
+
+Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked forward
+to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just happened so the
+first day, that only Germans came. It was just accident. Mr. Twist, with
+the very large part of him that wasn't his head, found himself feeling
+like this too and declining to take any notice of his intelligence,
+which continued to try to worry him.
+
+Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second afternoon
+was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and clustered round the
+Annas, and made friendly though cautious advances to Mr. Twist. The ones
+who had been there the first day came again and brought others with them
+worse than themselves, and they seemed more at home than ever, and the
+air was full of rolling r's--among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny,
+being the r's of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he
+told himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
+While as for these other people--confound it all, the place might really
+have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a _Conditorei_ Unter
+den Linden.
+
+All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed and no
+Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and straight,
+and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered, thought they
+weren't. What an aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered,
+impatient with them when first he came back from France. What folly.
+Americans. The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a
+thirsty day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
+seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient--like some
+blessed unction dropped from above.
+
+But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.
+
+At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go on
+hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down, and
+close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly shaded
+lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching from the
+partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the guests to
+begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice of the signals
+of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside growing bright in
+the surrounding blackness.
+
+Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by the
+disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr. Wangelbecker, and
+had sat there watching in growing exasperation ever since. When six
+struck and nobody showed the least sign of going away he could bear it
+no longer, and touched the little muffled electric bell that connected
+him to Mrs. Bilton in what Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union--Anna
+II. was really excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in
+his presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
+an embarrassing abundance of imagery--by buzzing gently against her knee
+from the leg of the desk.
+
+She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up a
+column, and went to him.
+
+"Now don't talk," said Mr. Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly
+she came in.
+
+Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?" she
+repeated. "Why now, as though--"
+
+"Don't _talk_ I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I can't stand
+seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge rise. I want you
+to fetch them in here--now don't talk--you and me'll do the confounded
+waiting--no, no, don't talk--they're to stay quiet in here till the last
+of those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs. Bilton.
+No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they come." And he
+urged her out into the tea-room again.
+
+The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on, for they
+were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly enjoying
+themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more manifestly at
+home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices and fruit-salads.
+Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was after all a great deal
+to pay for afternoon tea, however good the cause might be and however
+important one's own ulterior motives; and since one had in any case to
+pay, one should eat what one could. So they kept the Annas very busy.
+There seemed to be no end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and
+thither, to what a German will hold.
+
+Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was carrying
+a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying ices to
+innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap clung damply
+to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed. What with having
+to carry so many trays, and remember so many orders, and try at the same
+time to escape from the orderers and their questions and admiration,
+she was in a condition not very far from tears.
+
+Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr. Twist
+wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general bewilderment
+that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be going to scold her.
+She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr. Twist were to be severe,
+she was sure she wouldn't be able not to cry. She made her way very
+slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton looked round the room for the
+other one. There was no sign of her. Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she
+was fetching something in the kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and
+seeing a group over by the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was
+evidently destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep
+them quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new duties. Never
+would she have dreamed it possible that she should have to carry trays
+to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he would certainly turn in
+his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit, of adhesiveness to her guns;
+if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn in his grave, let him; he would,
+she dared say, be more comfortable on his other side after all these
+years.
+
+For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and waited
+single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No wonder that
+child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist didn't come and help,
+as he had promised, and nowhere was there any sign of Anna-Felicitas;
+and the guests not only wanted things to eat, they wanted to talk,--talk
+and ask questions. Well, she would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk.
+She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational
+blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful
+are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs.
+Bilton was grumbled at for not talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.
+
+"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about tired
+of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there. You're
+through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and the day after
+as well."
+
+He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for his
+business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he said
+severely, "and stay put."
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather unsteadily
+to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if you're angry or being
+kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever it is I--I wish you
+wouldn't. I--I wish you'd manage to be something that isn't either."
+And, as she had feared, she began to cry.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern mixed with
+irritation--out there all those Germans, in here the weeping child; what
+a day he was having--"for heaven's sake don't do that."
+
+"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being so
+natu--natu--naturally liquid."
+
+"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his pockets. If
+he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking her, and she
+seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
+would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great girl
+now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist could
+imagine....
+
+"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."
+
+"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"And the Germans have been too much for you."
+
+"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion that
+anybody could ever be that.
+
+"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist, setting
+his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to his natural
+kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he
+remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she come?" he asked.
+
+"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."
+
+"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been much upset
+by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had suspected her,
+though she couldn't understand it after last night's finishings up, of
+secret unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.
+
+Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't see her
+either," he said. "Confound them--what have they done to her? Worn her
+out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd crawled off somewhere
+and were crying too."
+
+"Anna-F.--doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and she--doesn't cry but--I
+wish you'd find--her."
+
+"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he said,
+looking at her from the door uncertainly.
+
+And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair, and
+somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a
+promise not to move, that he found himself unable to resist going back
+to her for a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr.
+Twist, very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
+yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and
+also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.
+
+"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he knew what
+he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than ever,--grew, indeed,
+almost into small howls, so long was it since anybody had said things
+like that to her. It was her mother who used to say things like that;
+things almost exactly like that.
+
+"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious eye on the
+half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to outdo the noise
+of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush, hush--here's a clean
+handkerchief--you just wipe up your eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll
+worry, you know, if she sees you like this,--hush now, hush--there,
+there--and I expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in
+some corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would you--"
+
+And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and feeling much
+flurried went away to search for the other one who was somewhere, he was
+sure, in a state of equal distress.
+
+He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he came out of
+the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her come into the
+tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed across it towards
+the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist. He hurried to
+intercept her. Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over
+having done it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would
+seem, in any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
+particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,--why smug?
+wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete satisfaction on
+her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the
+tables, of the guests who tried in vain to attract her attention and
+detain her with orders. She wasn't at all hot, as Anna-Rose had been,
+nor rattled, nor in any way discomposed; she was just smug. And also she
+was unusually, extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at
+her like that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to
+her. And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand--no, his paw; in his
+annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of Mr.
+Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw--on her wrist to get her to
+listen to some confounded order or other. She took no notice of that
+either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly. Steadily. Obvious.
+Smug.
+
+"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached her.
+
+She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes. Then she
+appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said amiably.
+
+"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the office."
+
+"I can't. I'm busy."
+
+"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the pantry
+since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way, "that's
+trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw you come in.
+Perhaps you'll tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged
+in."
+
+"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's nobody to
+wait on?"
+
+They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to Li Koo
+through the serving window before answering; the order was tea and hot
+cinnamon toast for one.
+
+"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the most
+delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready, and
+carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all there.
+There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't come in."
+
+"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"Because he doesn't like Germans."
+
+"And who pray is he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course. His name
+is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now listen: I won't
+have--"
+
+But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared into two
+funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.
+
+Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers. That one
+in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with what she would
+no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction became suddenly final
+that the office was the place for both the Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton
+would do the waiting.
+
+"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of cakes. "I'll send
+Mrs. Bilton for the tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister
+is there and wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed
+the tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
+laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
+something."
+
+"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with gentle
+firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it on the tray.
+"I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man out there is Mr.
+Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps of people he isn't, and
+one of the principal ones is Mr. Ridding."
+
+"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.
+
+"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it too.
+
+"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.
+
+"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas mildly; and
+her eyes began to screw up again.
+
+"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having got the
+tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs. Bilton and me
+will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."
+
+He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His appearance
+in this new rôle was greeted by the Germans with subdued
+applause--subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't quite as cordial
+to them as they had supposed he would be, and they were accordingly
+being a little more cautious in their methods with him than they had
+been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took no notice of them,
+except that his ears turned red when he knocked against a chair and the
+tray nearly fell out of his hands and they all cried out _Houp lŕ_.
+Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. _Houp lŕ_ indeed.
+
+In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly verandah,
+sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He was a young
+man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin brown face and
+very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the window behind him
+shone on him as he turned his head when he heard the swing doors open,
+and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and at once. He also saw how
+the young man's face fell on his, Mr. Twist's, appearance with the tray,
+and he also saw with some surprise how before he had reached him it
+suddenly cleared again. And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist
+arrived at the table--got up with some little difficulty, for he had to
+lean hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with _empressement._
+
+"You've forgotten the sugar," said Anna-Felicitas's gentle voice behind
+Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she was, sure
+enough, looking smugger than ever.
+
+"This is Mr. Twist," said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable gesture. "That
+I was telling you about," she explained to the young man.
+
+"When?" asked Mr. Twist, surprised.
+
+"Before," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were talking for some time before I
+went in to order the tea, weren't we?" she said to the young man,
+angelically smiling at him.
+
+"Rather," he said; and since he didn't on this introduction remark to
+Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain he couldn't be
+an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless, suddenly suspected
+Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves that day and was ready to
+suspect anything, he was German cleverly got up for evil purposes to
+appear English. But the young man dispersed these suspicions by saying
+that he was over from England on six months' leave, and that his name
+was Elliott.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater interest
+than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it wasn't.
+
+"What, are you an Elliott too?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Anna-Felicitas shook her head. "On the contrary," she said, "I'm a
+Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you're like us about
+coming from England. We've done that. Only our leave is for ever and
+ever. Or the duration of the war."
+
+Mr. Twist waved her aside. "Anna-Felicitas," he said, "your sister is
+waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I'll see to Mr.
+Elliott."
+
+"Why not bring your sister here?" said the young man, who, being in the
+navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at Anna-Felicitas,
+who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile at each other.
+
+"I think that's a brilliant idea," she said; and turned to Mr. Twist.
+"You go," she said gently, thereby proving herself, the young man
+considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. "It's much more
+likely," she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without moving, "that
+she'll come for you than for me. My sister," she explained to the young
+man, "is older than I am."
+
+"Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more likely--"
+
+"But only about twenty minutes older."
+
+"What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of you?"
+
+"Anna-Felicitas," interrupted Mr. Twist, "you will go to your sister
+immediately. She needs you. She's upset. I don't wish to draw Mr.
+Elliott behind the scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get
+you into the office you force me to tell you that she is very, much
+upset indeed, and is crying."
+
+"Crying?" echoed Anna-Felicitas. "Christopher?" And she turned and
+departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was alert as well
+as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and grab at a chair in
+her way and pull it aside, and so avert a deplorable catastrophe.
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious?" he inquired of Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh no. Children will cry."
+
+"Children?"
+
+Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. "Tell me about
+England," he said. "You've been wounded, I see."
+
+"Leg," said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick and
+looking after Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But that didn't get you six months' leave."
+
+"Lungs," said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr. Twist.
+
+Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out his tea.
+
+He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after hours in the
+water. For months he was struggling to recover, but finally tuberculosis
+had developed and he was sent to California, to his sister who had
+married an American and lived in the neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr.
+Twist extracted out of him by diligent questioning. He had to question
+very diligently. What the young man wanted to talk about was
+Anna-Felicitas; but every time he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.
+
+And she didn't come back. He waited and waited, and drank and drank.
+When the teapot was empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all
+the cakes, more and more deliberately, eking them out at last with
+slowly smoked cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist's
+activities there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the
+ambulance from start to finish; and still she didn't come back. In vain
+he tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer
+home--to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr. Twist
+wouldn't budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained shut. And
+the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at last but to
+go.
+
+So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get up, still
+spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing doors. It was both
+late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li Koo had lit the usual
+evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It blazed most beautifully, and
+the young man looked at it through the window and hesitated.
+
+"How jolly," he said.
+
+"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up too.
+
+"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man with a
+little shiver.
+
+"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before leaving."
+
+"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your sister and
+have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot coffee
+first."
+
+"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, looking at his
+watch. "We close at half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."
+
+"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go," said the
+young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what couldn't be
+helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."
+
+"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr. Twist, "for
+surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick leg. You can pay
+me right here."
+
+And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as far as
+the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting car, seeing
+his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after all, humane, but
+the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just watched from the gate
+till the car had actually started, and then went back to the house.
+
+He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the ground. This
+second day had been worse than the first. And besides the continued and
+remarkable absence of Americans and the continued and remarkable
+presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness suddenly developed in the
+Annas. He felt insecure; as though he didn't understand, and hadn't got
+hold. They seemed to him very like eels. And this Elliott--what did he
+think _he_ was after, anyway?
+
+For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He defied
+Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing successful, this
+Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And he stuck out his
+jaw--or would have stuck it out if he hadn't been prevented by the
+amiable weakness of that feature. But spiritually and morally, when he
+got back into the house he was all jaw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning and drop
+in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and see if he could
+pick up anything that would explain why Americans wouldn't come and have
+tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he might look up old Ridding. He
+didn't sleep. He lay all night thinking.
+
+The evening had been spent _tęte-ŕ-tęte_ with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose
+was in bed, sleeping off her tears; Mrs. Bilton had another headache,
+and disappeared early; so he was left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched
+about abstractedly eating up the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk,
+except once to remark a little pensively that her inside was dreadfully
+full of cold stuff, and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a
+mausoleum; but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist
+could see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had
+nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a useful
+purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any counter-observations
+she might make. Watchfulness was what was required. Silent watchfulness.
+And wariness. And firmness. In fact all the things that were most
+foreign to his nature, thought Mr. Twist, resentful and fatigued.
+
+Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li Koo, and
+then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without seeing the others.
+It was another of the perfect days which he was now beginning to take
+as a matter of course, so many had there been since his arrival. People
+talked of the wet days and of their desolate abundance once they
+started, but there had been as yet no sign of them. The mornings
+succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November was merging into
+December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr. Twist to himself
+sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked lane in the gracious
+light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm scents drifted across his
+face, and the flowers in the grass, standing so bright and unruffled
+that they seemed almost as profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded
+at him, and everything was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh
+yes--I daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked
+round him,--he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful. These things
+hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be calm and bright.
+So could he, if--
+
+He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two figures, a
+man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside. Lovers, of course.
+"Oh yes--I daresay," said Mr. Twist again, grimly. They hadn't to deal
+with Twinklers either. No wonder they could sit happily in the grass. So
+could he, if--
+
+At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last thing
+they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned their heads,
+and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard that the
+Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.
+
+"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.
+
+"Hello," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach
+with complacent interest.
+
+She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton just as
+she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr. Twist felt;
+sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect of natural and
+comfortable arrival at the place where she was.
+
+"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her when the
+car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had torrents of things
+he wanted to say, and this was all that came out.
+
+Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to the
+conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.
+
+"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.
+
+"Yes. I'll give you a lift."
+
+"No thanks. I've just come from there."
+
+"I see. Then _you'd_ better come with me," said Mr. Twist to
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."
+
+"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had
+no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with
+perfect goodwill.
+
+He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see,
+before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt
+a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just
+waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of
+his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her
+future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before
+everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.
+
+He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the
+car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded
+by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of
+sight.
+
+"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.
+
+"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "One has to
+sit somewhere."
+
+And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at
+everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was
+the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to
+listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready
+ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began
+to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to
+fall in love.
+
+In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at
+him, and he told her tumultuously--for being a sailor-man he went
+straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making--that her eyes
+were as if pansies had married stars.
+
+She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded lovely it
+made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer; and then he
+said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most perfect thing ever
+stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind turning her face to him so
+that he might see if she had another just like it on the other side.
+
+She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she had
+washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's ears; there were so
+many different things to wash--and he told her that when she blushed it
+was like the first wild rose of the first summer morning of the world.
+
+At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a
+condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come next.
+Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it
+every day for years and years in the looking-glass, and not noticed
+anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face.
+Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else
+you didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and
+couldn't be hidden,--an object remote indeed from pansies, and stars,
+and beautiful things like that.
+
+She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point out
+that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that perhaps
+when his leg was well again he would see things more as they were, but
+to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him this she found she
+was obliged to look away at once again. She couldn't look at him. Fancy
+that now, thought Anna-Felicitas, attentively gazing at her toes. And he
+had such dear eyes; and such a dear, eager sort of face. All the more,
+then, she reasoned, should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him.
+But they couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as
+carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.
+
+"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff.
+I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught
+myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly
+blood and muck of the war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to
+things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God
+now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to
+mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I
+write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now being
+seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and my mother
+came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle of the street.
+Do you realize what a tremendous change that means, you little girl
+who's never had brothers? You extraordinary adorable little lovely
+thing?"
+
+And off he was again.
+
+"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still watching
+her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider, before I said
+anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would like to say in the
+hearing of my parents. Would you like to say what you're saying to me in
+the hearing of your parents?"
+
+"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.
+
+"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She rather
+wished now she hadn't mentioned it.
+
+"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.
+
+She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps be
+regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give herself
+up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might have to say.
+
+And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the most highly
+gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all round and taking one
+thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the conclusion that this was
+the most agreeable and profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat
+there for hours, and they all flew. People passed in cars and saw her,
+and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she
+ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the
+tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished
+and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was
+hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had
+motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.
+Once a great car passed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished
+when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out
+and wave to her.
+
+"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each other."
+
+"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of
+continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she
+hadn't got a husband.
+
+"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate people to
+die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when they're not in
+the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor old Dellogg was such
+a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea
+this afternoon. But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."
+
+"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg. The name
+swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy enjoying
+herself to remark it and its coincidences now.
+
+"Of course. It's the first thing one does."
+
+"What first thing?"
+
+"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has found her.
+Once one has had"--his voice fell to a whisper--"the God-given luck to
+find her." And he laid his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped
+together in her lap.
+
+This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed, and she
+didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand lying on
+hers, and considered it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now,
+and she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
+Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly judicious
+went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still,
+it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar
+situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one
+was rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the condition
+of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn't like his hand on hers.
+And she did like it.
+
+She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it. But would
+Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly clear about that.
+Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it up, and shake it, and
+say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like a lady. Well, perhaps she
+ought to do that. Christopher would probably think so too. But what a
+pity.... Still, behaviour was behaviour; ladies were ladies.
+
+She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
+instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing of
+the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top of his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful
+indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple
+of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track
+back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to
+proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or
+shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger
+cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The
+Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that
+Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he
+couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
+this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
+served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up
+his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.
+
+There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.
+
+At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since
+his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went
+into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after
+difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he
+couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he
+had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main
+Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the
+other way.
+
+From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of
+the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its
+mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the
+inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The
+solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the
+clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about
+it.
+
+By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask
+the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find
+anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and
+frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere
+else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
+Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent
+undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of
+this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush
+falling upon it, a holding of the breath.
+
+In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw
+that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great
+parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black
+heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and
+naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.
+Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass
+in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter,
+probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher
+mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that
+part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the
+heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of
+some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall
+in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair
+that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only
+the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two
+smouldering coals.
+
+He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he
+tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right,
+and went out quickly by the side door.
+
+There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to
+the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the
+guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was
+chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried
+away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a
+last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main
+Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of
+agitation and restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.
+
+The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his morning's
+experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being
+admitted at once. He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with
+unmistakable interest.
+
+"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.
+
+The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult him,
+but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their
+preference in conversation for the self-evident.
+
+"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr. Twist, his
+great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.
+
+"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.
+
+"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the hell--"
+
+The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said. "Sorry to
+interrupt--"
+
+And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition between his
+office and his clerks' room.
+
+"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.
+
+He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were inquiring what
+the hell--?"
+
+"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but you're so
+calm--"
+
+"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
+
+"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one. Yours is
+another."
+
+"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I want to
+know is why--"
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you. It's
+because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the
+German Government."
+
+A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a
+detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared at the
+lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left him. This
+blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank astonishment.
+
+"You know about my teapot?" he said at last.
+
+"Try me again, Mr. Twist."
+
+"It's on every American breakfast table."
+
+"Including my own."
+
+"They wouldn't use it if they thought--"
+
+"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
+proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment
+to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on an unofficial
+black list. It is to be banished from the hotels."
+
+Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The teapot his
+mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his
+happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging over America in
+great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used
+for Germany. He saw--but what didn't he see in that moment of submerged
+horror? Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason
+with a gasp. "Why?" he asked.
+
+"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"
+
+"No. Why do they think the inn--"
+
+"The Miss Twinklers are German."
+
+"Half."
+
+"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all
+about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward
+notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So
+transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk
+has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's
+women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others
+caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
+fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are
+certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw
+he had made a little joke in that last remark.
+
+Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do
+you mean to say those children--" he began.
+
+"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
+
+"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the
+wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd
+best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen
+them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
+boat."
+
+"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty
+considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being
+believed?"
+
+"Of course. It's what I've come for."
+
+"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by
+this time the whole coast--is that you threw over your widowed mother,
+of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who
+got hold of you on the boat--now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the
+boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as
+undesirable aliens--quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're
+in the pay of the German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and
+that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has
+been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't
+say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so
+familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
+complete secret understanding."
+
+For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he
+took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was
+startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort
+of lips. "You're not--" he began.
+
+Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.
+
+"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.
+
+"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his
+features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny.
+Cat's-paw. Yes--rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit
+of a bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly refused
+to compose.
+
+The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these
+beliefs may be awkward."
+
+"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.
+
+And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would
+mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless
+Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his
+conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it
+had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative
+enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side
+properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted
+on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the
+twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted.
+Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get
+them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just
+couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and
+terrible situation.
+
+"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.
+
+"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life
+of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions--"
+
+"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two
+courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You
+shut down the inn--at once, to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on
+Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open--now pray let me
+finish--close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private
+residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."
+
+"Marry what girls?"
+
+"The Miss von Twinklers."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them
+who to?"
+
+"You for one."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to
+me before."
+
+"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."
+
+"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way
+out--"
+
+But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by
+events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.
+
+"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls," said the lawyer, at each
+word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American.
+Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same
+time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you
+didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would
+want to--I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them--it's your
+plain duty, having got them into this mess."
+
+"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet
+a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.
+
+For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either or both," he
+said. "For God's sake don't be such a--"
+
+He pulled up short.
+
+"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that
+sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will
+substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"
+
+No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might
+choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out
+his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his
+mouth.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.
+
+Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard
+them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to
+them--to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he
+proposed to and the one he didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He
+hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this
+whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a
+movement of his shoulder.
+
+"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My
+wife was--"
+
+"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all _that_" said Mr.
+Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're
+_children_--"
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
+negligibleness.
+
+Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said.
+"You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing
+more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the
+sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's
+the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and
+prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"
+
+Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table
+crooked. His ears flamed.
+
+"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like
+that about my wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him all up.
+His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home
+matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets
+before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was
+on the wrong side of the road. During this period, deep as he was in
+confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely notice the anger on the faces
+of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations,
+and it roused a dim wonder in him.
+
+Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the
+affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark.
+They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always disapproving.
+Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of
+not going to do or be enough.
+
+His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,--somebody kind
+and soft, who would let herself be adored. She needn't even love
+him,--he knew he wasn't the sort of man to set passion alight; she need
+only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his
+very own.
+
+His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes. But the
+Annas....
+
+When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
+propose--indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to--but
+wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to
+think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
+course,--one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny man,
+thought Mr. Twist; funny man,--yet otherwise so sagacious. It is true he
+need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could
+imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to
+be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred
+not to imagine.
+
+Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard. It
+was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and
+Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on
+which side he had been driving.
+
+The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence.
+Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when
+he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed
+flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She
+said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone
+home, and that little Christopher too might for a bit be somewhere else,
+so that when he arrived he wouldn't immediately have to face everybody
+at once. He wanted to think; he wanted to have time to think; time
+before four o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to
+any conclusion about shutting up the inn--and how could he if nobody
+gave him time to think?--those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they
+who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and their
+blasted war....
+
+At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the green
+shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the
+lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
+very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's time
+given him to think.
+
+"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had waved to
+him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to the stable, "she
+isn't with you?"
+
+"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she said.
+
+"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.
+
+"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken eyes;
+for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of her mind,
+half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any moment of panic, an
+impression that the chief activities and recreations of all those
+Americans who weren't really good were two: they lynched, and they
+kidnapped. They lynched you if they didn't like you enough, and if they
+liked you too much they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and
+unsuspecting, had been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had
+alighted on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other
+explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one
+so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
+that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there was any
+shirking to be done they had always done it together. As the hours
+passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to persuade herself
+that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and
+unnatural and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
+been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she
+was convinced the worst had happened--her beautiful, her precious
+Columbus had been kidnapped.
+
+"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.
+
+Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was announcing the
+kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think of Anna-Felicitas; he
+had seen her too recently. But that Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped
+seemed to him to touch the lowest depths of American criminal enterprise
+and depravity. At the same time though he recoiled before this fresh
+blow a thought did fan through his mind with a wonderful effect of
+coolness and silence,--"Then they'll gag her," he said.
+
+"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag her?" And
+pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried
+again, "Gag Columbus?"
+
+"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
+disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you--"
+
+He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the
+lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely
+as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a distracted
+household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an
+extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality. Still
+smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one could imagine a lily
+turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down
+the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
+thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god would
+be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be worrying much
+about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd just be coming
+along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and
+his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a
+sober and abstracted radiance.
+
+"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his
+thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly, leaning
+over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found
+himself faced by both twins together, "that when next your imagination
+gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till
+it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your
+constitution going pale."
+
+And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into
+the yard.
+
+Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only living
+thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of
+one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home.
+The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave
+the twins much unacknowledged relief. It was, they thought secretly,
+quite a good plan to have one's pets inside each other,--it kept them so
+quiet. She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning
+her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order
+to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.
+
+Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.
+
+He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre
+about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it
+kept him longer away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of
+him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel
+was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
+The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he
+wouldn't hurt a fly.
+
+Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the stable,
+all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and having got it
+in he still lingered fiddling about with it, examining its engine and
+wiping its bonnet; and then when he couldn't do that any longer he went
+out and lingered in the yard, looking down at the cat with his hands in
+his pockets. "I must think," he kept on saying to himself.
+
+"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen window.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who didn't
+like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got out of it by
+lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful white stomach. She
+was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful white stomach, and she
+had discovered that nobody could see it without wanting to stroke it.
+Whenever she found herself in a situation that threatened to become
+disagreeable she just lay down and showed her stomach. Human beings in
+similar predicaments can only show their tact.
+
+"Nice pussy--nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud, stroking this
+irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as she had intended
+he should.
+
+"Lunchee get cold," said Li Koo, again putting his head out of the
+kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton say, Come in."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that should
+have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening
+tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up
+carefully again.
+
+Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.
+
+"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard door.
+
+"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right away and
+have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I guess you'll be
+sorry."
+
+"All right--coming," he called back very loud and cheerfully, striding
+towards her as one strides who knows there is nothing for it now but
+courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton--sorry if I've kept you waiting. You
+shouldn't have bothered about me--"
+
+And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself being
+loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house, through the
+house, and out on to the verandah.
+
+They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning was
+down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it blazed the
+garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as usual ready for
+four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding the Annas at the
+table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her back to the garden, her
+little fair head outlined against the glowing light as he had seen it
+every day since they had lived in the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably
+volubly and passionately addressing her.
+
+And there was no one.
+
+"Why--" he said, stopping short.
+
+"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before everything is
+spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed behind to give an
+order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the verandah and shaded her
+eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you can do all that talking
+better after lunch."
+
+He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most private
+place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some arum lilies
+that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood the twins facing
+each other.
+
+"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when they're
+ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's talking right
+away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more quickly for she
+plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to sally out into the
+sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often get a chance of a quiet
+chat together--"
+
+And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her chair ready
+for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning again.
+
+She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite that
+tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the eager
+gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.
+
+She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
+immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,--while Mrs.
+Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if one
+wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he gave
+himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once started
+flowing over him, on this occasion with something of the comfort of
+warm water, and he was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't
+gagged.
+
+While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at the two
+figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs. Bilton
+remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at the different
+stages, of the meal,--at the salad, at the pudding--he stopped her. She
+became more and more pleased by his evident determination to lunch alone
+with her, for after all one remains female to the end, and her
+conversation took on a gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second
+marriages. They had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had
+had no post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
+whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.
+
+The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs. Bilton
+talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she being the
+eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and, if she refused,
+proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But before proceeding to
+Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with peculiar misgiving, he would
+very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose the seriousness of the situation and
+the necessity, the urgency, the sanity of her marrying him. These
+proposals would be kept on the cool level of strict business. Every
+trace of the affection with which he was so overflowing would be sternly
+excluded. For instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel
+of Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
+comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his
+remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most
+scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful
+avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr.
+Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water,
+how difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more female than
+ever.
+
+Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the war.
+Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
+steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated Mr.
+Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of it.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.
+
+Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it. He saw
+that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he would
+explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which after the
+war they--he meant, of course, she--could easily in that land of facile
+and honourable divorce get rid of. Meanwhile, he would point out,
+they--she, of course; bother these twins--would be safely American, and
+he would undertake never to intrude love on them--her--unless by some
+wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr. Twist's
+spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more water.
+
+Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of self-mortification
+for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his wife--again at the dear
+word he had to gulp down water--and one his sister-in-law. They would
+just have to agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
+shilly-shallying. Yes. That was the line to take; and by the time he
+had got to the coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.
+
+But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for anything that
+would support him....
+
+"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the web of
+Mrs. Bilton's words.
+
+"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether female,
+for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,--"You're not sick?"
+
+"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his head
+drooping. "It's nice...."
+
+"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and going away
+rattling a bunch of keys.
+
+At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act of
+putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
+passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He knew
+there would be.
+
+He gulped down more water.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole morning
+and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about it. Besides,
+the expression on her face wanted explaining,--a lot of explaining. Mr.
+Twist didn't like to think so, but Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct
+seemed to him almost artful. It seemed to him older than her years. It
+seemed to justify the lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to
+him as children. That young man Elliott--
+
+But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for looking
+once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was coming towards
+the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had vanished. Why had he
+bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go? He had counted, somehow,
+on beginning with Anna-Rose....
+
+He seized a cigarette and lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand
+steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas,
+walking in beneath the awning.
+
+"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to you."
+
+And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew from the
+look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very remarkable look. It
+was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect bliss, had unaccountably got
+its feet wet. Not more troubled than that; a little troubled, but not
+more than that.
+
+"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished yours, do you
+mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment
+interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise
+Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.
+
+She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it
+without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her
+there.
+
+He could only follow.
+
+In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he
+wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get
+things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less
+of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it....
+And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be
+comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....
+
+"Christopher--" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.
+
+"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
+interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase.
+Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.
+
+"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her voice
+softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.
+
+Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of
+one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in--with,
+that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big chair.
+"It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't think being in
+love would make one want to sit down."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a
+kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your--what did you say?" he asked.
+
+She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance,
+of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to
+her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I can't tell you how
+pleased I am because I've always been afraid I was going to find it a
+difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."
+
+Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this
+afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and
+Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."
+
+And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from
+her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.
+
+"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.
+
+"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation
+for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."
+
+Well. This beat everything.
+
+Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.
+
+Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what
+they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How
+dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come
+making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So
+suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins
+constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them.
+They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug
+them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman
+should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and
+respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they
+wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering
+Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared
+to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to
+think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old
+footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be
+able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his
+addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?
+
+Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all
+tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against
+the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was
+gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy,
+and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one
+great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside
+and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he
+beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.
+
+He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her
+and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very
+calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been
+since the arrival in his life of the twins.
+
+"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."
+
+"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II.,
+that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's
+Elliott."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she
+added, "I now have to allude to him as John."
+
+Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said,
+"think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man
+John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."
+
+"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
+
+"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It
+doesn't strike you as foolish."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've
+been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm
+not _naturally_ quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded
+as a pardonable pride.
+
+"It doesn't strike you as even a little--well, a little improper."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one
+man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's
+husband."
+
+"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife,
+but then that was different.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a flaming
+unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been
+toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had
+a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.
+
+He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of
+half his problem,--and of much the worst half, for it was after all
+Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of
+slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair
+crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution
+was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base
+his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of
+both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the
+idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by
+the realization that now he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut
+the ground from under his feet. He had indeed--what was the expression
+he used the evening before?--yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
+for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn
+feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was
+thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people
+of seventeen; he couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only
+age. Mr. Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he
+was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
+jealously said.
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only time but
+war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden
+about all sorts of things."
+
+"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."
+
+"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many things--"
+
+And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he
+gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent
+smugness.
+
+"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait
+while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular crisis
+fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as much time
+as you seem to think."
+
+"No--and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a
+shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again
+as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet
+wet.
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room.
+"There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty
+well heart-broken over this."
+
+"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle
+deprecation.
+
+"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the impression--the
+remarkably vivid impression--that she's losing you."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's sheer gain.
+Without the least effort or bother on her part she's acquiring a
+brother-in-law."
+
+"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up and down
+the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it all myself."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. "Why
+should two of you be feeling things that aren't?"
+
+"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn't
+be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct."
+
+"But there has to _be_ conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle,
+but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I don't see how
+anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been some conduct first."
+
+"Oh, don't argue--don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose not to mind
+your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn't even seen."
+
+"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
+somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't _argue_!" exclaimed Mr. Twist. "And as
+for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to this
+twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be terribly
+upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy."
+
+"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with love?"
+
+Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes
+troubled, "Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more,
+down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
+saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I found
+she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't be
+comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what
+I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."
+
+Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring at the
+carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don't suppose
+anything I would say--"
+
+"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth
+into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. "You dear
+children," he said, "you dear, dear children--"
+
+"I don't know about children--" began Anna-Felicitas; but was
+interrupted by a knock at the door.
+
+"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the
+expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton.
+"Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out, "and put it on the--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the door an
+inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist," she
+said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says he just must. I
+found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I'm not
+the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in
+with me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."
+
+"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."
+
+"I say--" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. "That's
+John."
+
+"I say--may I come in? I've got something important--"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you rather--?" he began.
+
+"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a most
+beautiful light.
+
+Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said. "Mrs.
+Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you--Commander Elliott of the
+British Navy."
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr. Twist,
+your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?"
+
+"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps you
+wouldn't mind waiting for me there--I don't suppose Mr. Elliott will
+want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."
+
+And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing
+and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.
+
+There stood Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Elliott stopped dead.
+
+"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.
+
+"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.
+
+"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look here, sir," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "could _you_ talk business with her there?"
+
+"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there. I've
+got to talk business," he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,--"business
+about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking
+like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.
+
+"But you'll interrupt--just your being there will interrupt. I shall see
+you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll be impossible not to--I mean
+I know I'll want to--I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've
+got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian--"
+
+"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently.
+"He only very nearly once was."
+
+"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take some
+time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade--for I expect," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?"
+
+"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding
+it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly
+in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might have been almost a
+reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so
+happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first
+wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the
+surprise of it.
+
+"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who
+stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. "I've got to explain
+that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a fearfully
+decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've got a jolly
+little sister here who's respectable and well-known besides, and I'm
+going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that
+I'm perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn't
+health but just foot and which you don't seem to mind anyhow, and how--I
+ask you _how_, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you
+standing there looking like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.
+
+"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"
+
+"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her,
+then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.
+
+"_Somebody's_ got to go," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.
+
+He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear
+the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going
+out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear, after what he
+had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.
+
+All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love.
+He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it
+and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got
+so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He had never tried to
+marry,--again because of his home and his mother and the whole
+only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try now. He would risk it. It was
+awful to risk it, but it was more awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How
+nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he
+taken her in his arms! Why, he would have taken her into them then and
+there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of
+comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that
+he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child.
+Fool that he was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't
+children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
+Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was
+because she was little and easily cried. He loved her for being little.
+He loved her because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to
+comfort, to pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
+mother.
+
+Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
+recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
+answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped in.
+Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo,
+who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li Koo did. He
+jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and
+looked out. There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where
+he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her
+stomach was Anna-Rose.
+
+She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun streamed
+down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked
+round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close to her, so much
+absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn't look
+up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come and talk to me."
+
+"I'm thinking."
+
+"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little--little dear one."
+
+She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said again.
+
+"Come and tell me what you're thinking."
+
+"I'm thinking about cats."
+
+"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully
+keeping her face hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they
+are."
+
+"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and come and
+talk to me now."
+
+"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably twins,
+and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes sixes, but
+still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and don't mind a bit
+what their--what their twins do--"
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."
+
+"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their whiskers
+and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them. Perhaps if I--if I
+had whiskers and a--and a purr--"
+
+The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
+Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.
+
+Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a laugh as
+she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a sound so
+wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him, that Mr.
+Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said, catching at the cat
+and hugging her tight, "I can't let _you_ go--" And she buried her face
+in her fur, so that Mr. Twist still couldn't see it.
+
+"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very firmly.
+"You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up, cat and all,
+and set her on her feet.
+
+Then he saw her face.
+
+"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking shelter
+behind her pride and looking at him as defiantly as she could out of
+eyes almost closed up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen
+to--to seem as if I'd been crying that I--that I'm minding anything."
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had straightway
+forgotten about himself and his longings and his proposals, and only
+knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no," he said, looking at her
+aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding anything, either of us."
+
+He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to
+do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony--yes, it was
+downright agony--on her face.
+
+He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he thought--he
+was pretty sure--she was thinking and feeling that her beloved Columbus
+had gone from her, and gone to a stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to
+a stranger she had never even seen, never even heard of; that her
+Columbus had had secrets from her, had been doing things behind her
+back; that she had had perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was
+tasting the dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that
+she must be sick with fears,--for he knew how responsible she felt, how
+seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin--sick with fear
+about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness, of
+looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for all any
+one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.
+
+Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt. Certainly he
+could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one with confidence,
+who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting mate for Anna-Felicitas.
+But he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
+thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to suffer so
+violently on account of what was, after all, a natural happening. But
+however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.
+
+He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said; and led
+her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen window, towards
+the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come right along with me,"
+he repeated, holding her firmly for she was very wobbly on her feet,
+"and we'll tell each other all about the things we're not minding. Do
+you remember when the _St. Luke_ left Liverpool? You thought I thought
+you were minding things then, and were very angry with me. We've made
+friends since, haven't we, and we aren't going to mind anything ever
+again except each other."
+
+But he hardly knew what he was saying, so great was his concern and
+distress.
+
+Anna-Rose went blindly. She stumbled along, helped by him, clutching the
+cat. She couldn't see out of her swollen eyes. Her foot caught in a
+root, and the cat, who had for some minutes past been thoroughly uneasy,
+became panic-stricken and struggled out of her arms, and fled into the
+wood. She tried to stop it, but it would go. For some reason this broke
+down her self-control. The warm cat clutched to her breast had at least
+been something living to hold on to. Now the very cat had gone. Her
+pride collapsed, and she tumbled against Mr. Twist's arm and just
+sobbed.
+
+If ever a man felt like a mother it was Mr. Twist at that moment. He
+promptly sat her down on the grass. "There now--there, there now," he
+said, whipping out his handkerchief and anxiously mopping up her face.
+"This is what I did on the _St. Luke_--do you remember?--there now--that
+time you told me about your mother--it looks like being my permanent
+job--there, there now--don't now--you'll have no little eyes left soon
+if you go on like this--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--Co-Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes I know all about Columbus. Don't you worry about her. She's
+all right. She's all right in the office at this moment, and we're all
+right out here if only you knew it, if only you wouldn't cry such
+quantities. It beats me where it all comes from, and you so
+little--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know--you're worrying yourself sick because you think
+you're responsible for her to your aunt and uncle, but you won't be, you
+know, once she's married--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--"
+
+"Now don't--now please--yes, yes, I know--he's a stranger, and you
+haven't seen him yet, but everybody was a stranger once," said Mr.
+Twist, quoting Anna-Felicitas's own argument, the one that had
+especially irritated him half-an-hour before, "and he's real good--I'm
+sure of it. And you'll be sure too the minute you see him. That's to
+say, if you're able to see anything or anybody for the next week out of
+your unfortunate stuck-together little eyes."
+
+"Oh but--oh but--you don't--you haven't--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I have. Now turn your face so that I can wipe the other side
+properly. There now, I caught an enormous tear. I got him just in time
+before he trickled into your ear. Lord, how sore your poor little eyes
+are. Don't it even cheer you to think you're going to be a
+sister-in-law, Anna-Rose?"
+
+"Oh but you don't--you haven't--" she sobbed, her face not a whit less
+agonized for all his reassurances.
+
+"Well, I know I wish I were going to be a brother-in-law," said Mr.
+Twist, worried by his inability to reassure, as he tenderly and
+carefully dabbed about the corners of her eyes and her soaked eyelashes.
+"My, shouldn't I think well of myself."
+
+Then his hand shook.
+
+"I wish I were going to be Anna-Felicitas's brother-in-law," he said,
+suddenly impelled, perhaps by this failure to get rid of the misery in
+her face, to hurl himself on his fate. "Not _yours_--get your mind quite
+clear about that,--but Anna-Felicitas's." And his hand shook so much
+that he had to leave off drying. For this was a proposal. If only
+Anna-Rose would see it, this was a proposal.
+
+Anna-Rose, however, saw nothing. Even in normal times she
+wasn't good at relationships, and had never yet understood the
+that-man's-father-was-my-father's-son one; now she simply didn't
+hear. She was sitting with her hands limply in her lap, and sobbing
+in a curious sort of anguish.
+
+He couldn't help being struck by it. There was more in this than he had
+grasped. Again he forgot himself and his proposal. Again he was
+overwhelmed by the sole desire to help and comfort.
+
+He put his hand on the two hands lying with such an air of being
+forgotten on her lap. "What is it?" he asked gently. "Little dear one,
+tell me. It's clear I'm not dead on to it yet."
+
+"Oh--Columbus--"
+
+She seemed to writhe in her misery.
+
+"Well yes, yes Columbus. We know all about that."
+
+Anna-Rose turned her quivering face to him. "Oh, you haven't seen--you
+don't see--it's only me that's seen--"
+
+"Seen what? What haven't I seen? Ah, don't cry--don't cry like that--"
+
+"Oh, I've lost her--lost her--"
+
+"Lost her? Because she's marrying?"
+
+"Lost her--lost her--" sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come now," remonstrated Mr. Twist. "Come now. That's just flat contrary
+to the facts. You've lost nothing, and you've gained a brother."
+
+"Oh,--lost her--lost her," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come, come now," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, looking at him out of her piteous eyes, "has nobody
+thought of it but me? Columbus hasn't. I--I know she hasn't from
+what--from what--she said. She's too--too happy to think. But--haven't
+you thought--haven't you seen--that she'll be English now--really
+English--and go away from me to England with him--and I--I can't go to
+England--because I'm still--I'm still--an alien enemy--and so I've lost
+her--lost her--lost my own twin--"
+
+And Anna-Rose dropped her head on to her knees and sobbed in an
+abandonment of agony.
+
+Mr. Twist sat without saying or doing anything at all. He hadn't thought
+of this; nor, he was sure, had Anna-Felicitas. And it was true. Now he
+understood Anna-Rose's face and the despair of it. He sat looking at
+her, overwhelmed by the realization of her misfortune. For a moment he
+was blinded by it, and didn't see what it would mean for him. Then he
+did see. He almost leaped, so sudden was the vision, and so luminous.
+
+"Anna-Rose," he said, his voice trembling, "I want to put my arm round
+you. That's because I love you. And if you'll let me do that I could
+tell you of a way there is out of this for you. But I can't tell you so
+well unless--unless you let me put my arm round you first...."
+
+He waited trembling. She only sobbed. He couldn't even be sure she was
+listening. So he put his arm round her to try. At least she didn't
+resist. So he drew her closer. She didn't resist that either. He
+couldn't even be sure she knew about it. So he put his other arm round
+her too, and though he couldn't be sure, he thought--he hardly dared
+think, but it did seem as if--she nestled.
+
+Happiness, such as in his lonely, loveless life he had never imagined,
+flooded Mr. Twist. He looked down at her face, which was now so close to
+his, and saw that her eyes were shut. Great sobs went on shaking her
+little body, and her tears, now that he wasn't wiping them, were rolling
+down her cheeks unchecked.
+
+He held her closer to him, close to his heart where she belonged, and
+again he had that sensation, that wonderful sensation, of nestling.
+
+"Little Blessed, the way out is so simple," he whispered. "Little
+Blessed, don't you see?"
+
+But whether Anna-Rose saw seemed very doubtful. There was only that
+feeling, as to which he was no doubt mistaken, of nestling to go on. Her
+eyes, anyhow, remained shut, and her body continued to heave with sobs.
+
+He bent his head lower. His voice shook. "It's so, so simple," he
+whispered. "All you've got to do is to marry me."
+
+And as she made an odd little movement in his arms he held her tighter
+and began to talk very fast.
+
+"No, no," he said, "don't answer anything yet. Just listen. Just let me
+tell you first. I want to tell you to start with how terribly I love
+you. But that doesn't mean you've got to love me--you needn't if you
+don't want to--if you can't--if you'd rather not I'm eighteen years
+older than you, and I know what I'm like to look at--no, don't say
+anything yet--just listen quiet first--but if you married me you'd be an
+American right away, don't you see? Just as Anna-Felicitas is going to
+be English. And I always intended going back to England as soon as may
+be, and if you married me what is to prevent your coming too? Coming to
+England? With Anna-Felicitas and her husband. Anna-Rose--little
+Blessed--think of it--all of us together. There won't be any aliens in
+that quartette, I guess, and the day you marry me you'll be done with
+being German for good and all. And don't you get supposing it matters
+about your not loving me, because, you see, I love you so much, I adore
+you so terribly, that anyhow there'll be more than enough love to go
+round, and you needn't ever worry about contributing any if you don't
+feel like it--"
+
+Mr. Twist broke off abruptly. "What say?" he said, for Anna-Rose was
+making definite efforts to speak. She was also making definite and
+unmistakable movements, and this time there could be no doubt about it;
+she was coming closer.
+
+"What say?" said Mr. Twist breathlessly, bending his head.
+
+"But I do," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do what?" said Mr. Twist, again breathlessly.
+
+She turned her face up to his. On it was the same look he had lately
+seen on Anna-Felicitas's, shining through in spite of the disfiguration
+of her tears.
+
+"But--_of course_ I do," whispered Anna-Rose, an extraordinary smile,
+an awe-struck sort of smile, coming into her face at the greatness of
+her happiness, at the wonder of it.
+
+"What? Do what?" said Mr. Twist, still more breathlessly.
+
+"I--always did," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"_What_ did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able to believe
+it, and yet--and yet--there on her little face, on her little
+transfigured face, shone the same look.
+
+"Oh--_love_ you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close as she could get.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes past four
+that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper obliquely across the
+sign of The Open Arms with the word.
+
+     SHUT
+
+on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr. Twist had
+only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the German inrush a
+few minutes before the hour, because of his being so happy; and when he
+did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the strip on only just in
+time. A car drove up as he came down the ladder.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car, pointing,
+thwarted and astonished, to the sign.
+
+"Shut," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Shut?"
+
+"Shut."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher and Columbus, by Countess
+Elizabeth Von Arnim, Illustrated by Arthur Litle</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Christopher and Columbus</p>
+<p>Author: Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 10, 2005  [eBook #14646]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="Frontise" id="Frontise" href=
+"images/frontise_l.png"><img src="images/frontise_l.png" width=
+"300" alt=
+"Picture of man and two girls having tea in front of an inn. Signed Arthur Litle. Caption: &quot;Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me,&quot; said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.&quot;We love you.&quot; said Anna-Felicitas simply." />
+</a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1><a name="Title" id="Title"></a>CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS</h1>
+<h3>By the Author of <i>Elizabeth and Her German Garden</i></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">FRONTISPIECE BY ARTHUR LITLE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h6>Garden City New York<br />
+Doubleday, Page &amp; Company</h6>
+<h4>1919</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%; margin-top: 4em;" />
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<h3>Table of Contents:</h3>
+<p><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXXVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVIII</b></a></p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a><a name="CHAPTER_I" id=
+"CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p>Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they
+decided, as they sat huddled together in a corner of the
+second-class deck of the American liner <i>St. Luke</i>, and
+watched the dirty water of the Mersey slipping past and the
+Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist, and felt that it
+was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a father or a
+mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized that in
+front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet sea,
+endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of
+it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they
+could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the very
+remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to
+the other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways,
+derelicts, two wretched little Germans who were neither really
+Germans nor really English because they so unfortunately, so
+complicatedly were both,&mdash;they decided, looking very calm and
+determined and sitting very close together beneath the rug their
+English aunt had given them to put round their miserable alien
+legs, that what they really were, were Christopher and Columbus,
+because they were setting out to discover a New World.</p>
+<p>"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go
+and<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a> discover America. All for
+ourselves."</p>
+<p>It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and
+Columbus. She was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their
+seventeenth birthday&mdash;and what a birthday: no cake, no
+candles, no kisses and wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as
+Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it
+hard, you can't get blood out of an aunt&mdash;only a month before.
+Both were very German outside and very English inside. Both had
+fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have, and eyes the colour
+of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic. Their noses
+were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if you are
+a Junker's daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose.
+Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round.
+Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the
+most of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was
+tall and thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker
+made her eyes more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both
+held their heads up with a great air of calm whenever anybody on
+the ship looked at them, as who should say serenely, "We're
+<i>thoroughly</i> happy, and having the time of our lives."</p>
+<p>For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they
+were even aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry.
+Like other persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful
+nor pretended to be so much amused as when they were right down on
+the very bottom of their luck. Like other persons of German blood,
+they had the squashiest corners deep in their hearts, where they
+secretly clung to cakes and<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>
+Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible
+anniversary, both dead and alive.</p>
+<p>The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the
+rubbish that floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily
+forlorn. Empty boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of
+dismal dirtiness lay about on the sullen water; England was
+slipping away, England, their mother's country, the country of
+their dreams ever since they could remember&mdash;and the <i>St.
+Luke</i> with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.</p>
+<p>Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting
+an inch closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a
+submarine already?</p>
+<p>"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly,
+changing as it were the unspoken conversation.</p>
+<p>As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward
+her twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and
+encourage her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them,
+and hadn't seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that
+happened to her,&mdash;such as, for instance, when the war began
+and they three, their father having died some years before, left
+their home up by the Baltic, just as there was the most heavenly
+weather going on, and the garden was a dream, and the blue
+Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens that very
+day,&mdash;all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose
+thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the
+tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery,&mdash;and came
+by slow and difficult stages to England; or such as when their
+mother began catching cold and didn't seem at last ever able to
+leave off <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>catching cold, and
+though she tried to pretend she didn't mind colds and that they
+didn't matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter
+very much, for between them they killed her.</p>
+<p>Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that
+she was dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose's duty, as the next eldest
+in the family, to carry on the tradition and discountenance too
+much drooping in Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much
+too thoughtfully at the deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky
+and the rubbish brooding on the face of the waters, and she had
+jumped rather excessively when the <i>St. Luke</i> stopped so
+suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake hard, and emitted
+that agonized whistle.</p>
+<p>"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, "and
+we're going to discover America."</p>
+<p>"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'll be Christopher."</p>
+<p>"No. I'll be Christopher," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable,
+acquiescent person in the world. "Then I suppose I'll have to be
+Columbus. But I think Christopher sounds prettier."</p>
+<p>Both rolled their r's incurably. It was evidently in their
+blood, for nothing, no amount of teaching and admonishment, could
+get them out of it. Before they were able to talk at all, in those
+happy days when parents make astounding assertions to other parents
+about the intelligence and certain future brilliancy of their
+offspring, and the other parents, however much they may pity such
+self-deception, can't contradict, because after all it just
+possibly may be so, the most foolish people occasionally producing
+geniuses,&mdash;in <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>those happy
+days of undisturbed bright castle-building, the mother, who was
+English, of the two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the
+<i>St. Luke</i>, said to the father, who was German, "At any rate
+these two blessed little bundles of deliciousness"&mdash;she had
+one on each arm and was tickling their noses alternately with her
+eyelashes, and they were screaming for joy&mdash;"won't have to
+learn either German or English. They'll just <i>know</i> them."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father, who was a cautious man.</p>
+<p>"They're born bi-lingual," said the mother; and the twins
+wheezed and choked with laughter, for she was tickling them beneath
+their chins, softly fluttering her eyelashes along the creases of
+fat she thought so adorable.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father.</p>
+<p>"It gives them a tremendous start," said the mother; and the
+twins squirmed in a dreadful ecstasy, for she had now got to their
+ears.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," said the father.</p>
+<p>But what happened was that they didn't speak either language.
+Not, that is, as a native should. Their German bristled with
+mistakes. They spoke it with a foreign accent. It was copious, but
+incorrect. Almost the last thing their father, an accurate man,
+said to them as he lay dying, had to do with a misplaced dative.
+And when they talked English it rolled about uncontrollably on its
+r's, and had a great many long words in it got from Milton, and Dr.
+Johnson, and people like that, whom their mother had particularly
+loved, but as they talked far more to their mother than to their
+father, who was a man of much briefness in words though not in
+temper, they were better on the whole at English than German.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>Their mother, who loved England
+more the longer she lived away from it,&mdash;"As one does; and the
+same principle," Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas when they
+had lived some time with their aunt and uncle, "applies to
+relations, aunts' husbands, and the clergy,"&mdash;never tired of
+telling her children about it, and its poetry, and its spirit, and
+the greatness and glory of its points of view. They drank it all in
+and believed every word of it, for so did their mother; and as they
+grew up they flung themselves on all the English books they could
+lay hands upon, and they read with their mother and learned by
+heart most of the obviously beautiful things; and because she
+glowed with enthusiasm they glowed too&mdash;Anna-Rose in a flare
+and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow and steadily. They adored their
+mother. Whatever she loved they loved blindly. It was a pity she
+died. She died soon after the war began. They had been so happy, so
+<i>dreadfully</i> happy....</p>
+<p>"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a
+shake, for here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to
+think of one's mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to
+a new life and everything is all promise because it isn't anything
+else, and not if one's mother happened to have been so&mdash;well,
+so fearfully sweet. "You can't be Christopher, because, you see,
+I'm the eldest."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with
+it, but she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and
+expressed a hope that Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her
+Col for short. "I'm afraid you will, though," she added, "and then
+I shall feel so like Onkel Nicolas."</p>
+<p>This was their German uncle, known during his life-<a name=
+"Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>time, which had abruptly left off when the
+twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient person, older by far
+even than their father, who had seemed so very old. But Onkel Col
+had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of the
+<i>liebe Gott</i> in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He
+came to a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them
+anything except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a
+black band round the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was
+more good-tempered than ever, and their mother, when they
+questioned her, just said that poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven,
+and that in future they would speak of him as Onkel Nicolas,
+because it was more respectful.</p>
+<p>"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
+Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the
+garden.</p>
+<p>"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so
+often explained to her sister, naturally knew more about
+everything, "because the angels won't like him. Nobody <i>could</i>
+like Onkel Col. Even if they're angels. And though they're obliged
+to have him there because he was such a very good man, they won't
+talk to him much or notice him much when God isn't looking. And
+second of all, because you <i>are</i> poor when you get to heaven.
+Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their things with them,
+and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He couldn't even take
+his clothes with him."</p>
+<p>"Then is he quite&mdash;did Onkel Col go there quite&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection
+with Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at
+them from the folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever
+they were <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>led in, trembling, to
+see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it seemed
+particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
+which was surely of all places the most
+<i>endimanch&eacute;</i>.</p>
+<p>"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a
+little. She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her
+mouth close to Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."</p>
+<p>They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in
+their eyes.</p>
+<p>"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away
+from the awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in
+heaven because they don't have the moth there. It says so in the
+Bible. And you can't have the moth without having anything for it
+to go into."</p>
+<p>"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn
+when they take their furs out."</p>
+<p>"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven,"
+continued Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there <i>isn't</i>
+anything to steal."</p>
+<p>"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for
+she didn't like to think there was nothing really valuable in
+heaven.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nobody ever steals <i>them</i>," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new
+uncomfortable view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right,
+and she always was right for she said so herself, that heaven
+couldn't be such a safe place after all, nor such a kind place.
+Thieves could break in and steal if they wanted to. She had a
+proper horror of thieves. She was sure the night would certainly
+come when they would break into her father's <a name="Page_11" id=
+"Page_11"></a><i>Schloss</i>, or, as her English nurse called it,
+her dear Papa's slosh; and she was worried that poor Onkel Col
+should be being snubbed up there, and without anything to put on,
+which would make being snubbed so much worse, for clothes did
+somehow comfort one.</p>
+<p>She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment
+when she knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour
+for inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the
+orchard, an exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because
+she had learned through affliction that her inside, fond and proud
+of it as she was, was yet not of that superior and blessed kind
+that suffers green apples gladly&mdash;she sought out the
+nursemaid, whose name, too, confusingly, was Anna, and led the
+conversation up to heaven and the possible conditions prevailing in
+it by asking her to tell her, in strict confidence and as woman to
+woman, what she thought Onkel Col exactly looked like at that
+moment.</p>
+<p>"Unrecognizable," said the nursemaid promptly.</p>
+<p>"Unrecognizable?" echoed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>And the nursemaid, after glancing over her shoulder to see if
+the governess were nowhere in sight, told Anna-Felicitas the true
+story of Onkel Col's end: which is so bad that it isn't fit to be
+put in any book except one with an appendix.</p>
+<p>A stewardess passed just as Anna-Felicitas was asking Anna-Rose
+not to remind her of these grim portions of the past by calling her
+Col, a stewardess in such a very clean white cap that she looked
+both reliable and benevolent, while secretly she was neither.</p>
+<p>"Can you please tell us why we're stopping?" Anna-Rose inquired
+of her politely, leaning forward to catch her attention as she
+hurried by.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>The stewardess allowed her
+roving eye to alight for a moment on the two objects beneath the
+rug. Their chairs were close together, and the rug covered them
+both up to their chins. Over the top of it their heads appeared,
+exactly alike as far as she could see in the dusk; round heads,
+each with a blue knitted cap pulled well over its ears, and round
+eyes staring at her with what anybody except the stewardess would
+have recognized as a passionate desire for some sort of
+reassurance. They might have been seven instead of seventeen for
+all the stewardess could tell. They looked younger than anything
+she had yet seen sitting alone on a deck and asking questions. But
+she was an exasperated widow, who had never had children and wasn't
+to be touched by anything except a tip, besides despising, because
+she was herself a second-class stewardess, all second-class
+passengers,&mdash;"As one does," Anna-Rose explained later on to
+Anna-Felicitas, "and the same principle applies to Jews." So she
+said with an acidity completely at variance with the promise of her
+cap, "Ask the Captain," and disappeared.</p>
+<p>The twins looked at each other. They knew very well that
+captains on ships were mighty beings who were not asked
+questions.</p>
+<p>"She's trifling with us," murmured Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Rose was obliged to admit, though the thought was
+repugnant to her that they should look like people a stewardess
+would dare trifle with.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
+silence.</p>
+<p>"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the
+rug."</p>
+<p>"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown
+up."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>Yes. She ought to have seen
+us six months ago."</p>
+<p>Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised
+at the activities and complete appearance of the two pup&aelig; now
+rolled motionless in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both
+been probationers in a children's hospital in Worcestershire,
+arrayed, even as the stewardess, in spotless caps, hurrying hither
+and thither with trays of food, sweeping and washing up, learning
+to make beds in a given time, and be deft, and quick, and never
+tired, and always punctual.</p>
+<p>This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of
+their Aunt Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their
+departure and who had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was
+an amiable aunt, but she didn't understand about birthdays. It was
+the first one they had had since they were complete orphans, and so
+they were rather sensitive about it. But they hadn't cried, because
+since their mother's death they had done with crying. What could
+there ever again be in the world bad enough to cry about after
+that? And besides, just before she dropped away from them into the
+unconsciousness out of which she never came back, but instead just
+dropped a little further into death, she had opened her eyes
+unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row by her bed,
+two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen faces
+and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
+moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and
+distance and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered
+with a flicker of the old encouraging smile that had comforted
+every hurt and bruise they had ever had, "<i>Don't cry</i> ...
+little darlings, <i>don't</i> cry...."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>But on that first birthday
+after her death they had got more and more solemn as time passed,
+and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no sounds, prick up
+their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in the next room,
+no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the presents, and at
+last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open of the door
+and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with candles,
+each on a table covered with flowers and all the things one has
+most wanted.</p>
+<p>Their aunt didn't know. How should she? England was a great and
+beloved country, but it didn't have proper birthdays.</p>
+<p>"Every country has one drawback," Anna-Rose explained to
+Anna-Felicitas when the morning was finally over, in case she
+should by any chance be thinking badly of the dear country that had
+produced their mother as well as Shakespeare, "and not knowing
+about birthdays is England's."</p>
+<p>"There's Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, whose honest mind
+groped continually after accuracy.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Rose admitted after a pause. "Yes. There's Uncle
+Arthur."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a name="Page_15" id=
+"Page_15"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p>Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like
+foreigners, and said so. He never had liked them and had always
+said so. It wasn't the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as
+the war went on, and these German nieces of his wife became more
+and more, as he told her, a blighted nuisance, so did he become
+more and more pointed, and said he didn't mind French foreigners,
+nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks later, that it wasn't
+Italian foreigners either that he minded; and still later, that nor
+was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of countries called
+neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a general way. To
+his wife when alone he said much more.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to
+soften his heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings
+when he came home weary from his daily avocations, which were golf.
+Her own suggestion instantly projected a touching picture on her
+impressionable imagination of youth, grateful for a roof over its
+head, in return alleviating the tedium of crabbed age by
+introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was evidently
+unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great
+masters of English literature.</p>
+<p>But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when
+she proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug,
+where he was moving money <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>about
+in trouser-pockets of the best material. And later on she
+discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen," and
+"Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals
+during his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get
+mentioned were well-known racehorses.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he
+said things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate
+alien nieces longer than one would have supposed possible if one
+had overheard what he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their
+bed. His ordered existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew,
+was shaken in its innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the
+arrival of the two Germans. Other people round about had Belgians
+in their homes, and groaned; but who but he, the most immensely
+British of anybody, had Germans? And he couldn't groan, because
+they were, besides being motherless creatures, his own wife's flesh
+and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but he could and did
+do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs couldn't
+have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she belonged,
+instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when she
+had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
+children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed
+that he would like to know.</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was
+both silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said
+nothing. She herself was quietly going through very much on behalf
+of her nieces. Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The
+tradespeople twitted the cook with having to cook for them and were
+facetious about sausages and asked how one <a name="Page_17" id=
+"Page_17"></a>made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
+very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was
+doing and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard
+such strange things, one never could possibly tell even with
+children; and regularly the local policeman bicycled over to see if
+the aliens, who were registered at the county-town police-station,
+were still safe. And then they looked so very German, Aunt Alice
+felt. There was no mistaking them. And every time they opened their
+mouths there were all those r's rolling about. She hardly liked
+callers to find her nieces in her drawing-room at tea-time, they
+were so difficult to explain; yet they were too old to shut up in a
+nursery.</p>
+<p>After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them
+back to Germany; but their consternation had been so great and
+their entreaties to be kept where they were so desperate that he
+said no more about that. Besides, they told him that if they went
+back there they would be sure to be shot as spies, for over there
+nobody would believe they were German, just as over here nobody
+would believe they were English; and besides, this was in those
+days of the war when England was still regarding Germany as more
+mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever of the tradition of
+great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward a foe, and
+Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be behind his
+country in generosity.</p>
+<p>Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous
+necklace of war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead
+of horror strung upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle
+remaining good, in practice found himself vindictive. He was
+saddled; that's what he was. Saddled with this monstrous <a name=
+"Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic
+of Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given
+notice by his old servants, having particular attention paid his
+house at night by the police, getting anonymous letters about
+lights seen in his upper windows the nights; the Zeppelins came,
+which were the windows of the floor those blighted twins slept on,
+and all because he had married Aunt Alice.</p>
+<p>At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was
+not a place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married
+Uncle Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed;
+but now she was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be
+told that she had brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life
+by having let him marry her. Inquiring backwards into her
+recollections it appeared to her that she had had no say at all
+about being married, but that Uncle Arthur had told her she was
+going to be, and then that she had been. Which was what had indeed
+happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little woman even in those
+days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with agreeable fat at
+the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist delicacy that
+comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she suggested, just
+as now, most of the things most men want to come home
+to,&mdash;slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and
+peace within one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out
+privately to Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the
+first time, she suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied
+fashions succulent, she was doomed to make some good man happy. But
+she did find it real hard work.</p>
+<p>It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that
+Uncle Arthur would not much longer endure <a name="Page_19" id=
+"Page_19"></a>his nieces, and that even if he did she would not be
+able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very dreadful to her
+that she was being forced to choose between two duties, and that
+she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she must
+either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
+and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing
+by, go away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or
+she must stand by Arthur.</p>
+<p>She chose Arthur.</p>
+<p>How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her
+husband? Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole
+of their married life that she was now unalterably attached to him.
+Sometimes a wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing
+dusk of her mind, the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving
+him for them, and helping and protecting the two poor aliens till
+happier days should return. If there were any good stuff in Arthur
+would he not recognize, however angry he might be, that she was
+doing at least a Christian thing? But this illumination would soon
+die out. Her comforts choked it. She was too well-fed. After twenty
+years of it, she no longer had the figure for lean and dangerous
+enterprises.</p>
+<p>And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she
+had of determination in finding an employment for her nieces that
+would remove them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found
+it in a children's hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a
+hospital subscribed to very largely by Arthur, for being a good man
+he subscribed to hospitals. The matron objected, but Aunt Alice
+overrode the matron; and from January to April Uncle Arthur's house
+was pure from Germans.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>Then they came back
+again.</p>
+<p>It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work
+with them. The sick children had relapses when they discovered who
+it was who brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It
+had been arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the
+unfortunate nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They
+were just to be Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,&mdash;("We
+will leave out the von," said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural
+cunning. "They have a von, you know, poor things&mdash;such a very
+labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without it might quite well
+be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as though they had had
+some shocking name like Bismarck.")</p>
+<p>Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the
+rolled r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined
+little mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were
+foreigners, and equally clearly they were not Italians, or
+Russians, or French. Within a week the nurses spoke of them in
+private as Fritz and Franz. Within a fortnight a deputation of
+staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on patriotic grounds,
+for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron, with the fear
+of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the biggest
+subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
+being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably
+have continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the
+nurses if it had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous,
+of the younger Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.</p>
+<p>In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's
+shortcomings by a double zeal, a double <a name="Page_21" id=
+"Page_21"></a>willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas was a
+born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
+never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
+bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her
+duty, but every time she met a pail standing about she knocked
+against it and it fell over. Patients and nurses watched her
+approach with apprehension. Her ward was in a constant condition of
+flood.</p>
+<p>"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried
+eagerly to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.</p>
+<p>"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.</p>
+<p>"She reads, you see, a lot&mdash;whenever she gets the chance
+she reads&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Reads!" echoed the sister.</p>
+<p>"And then, you see, she gets thinking&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Thinking! Reading doesn't make <i>me</i> think."</p>
+<p>"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am
+obliged to dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has
+no vocation for nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is
+shaping well and I shall be pleased to keep her on."</p>
+<p>"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she
+announced these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my
+sister. I'd like very much to know what would become of that poor
+child without me to look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."</p>
+<p>The matron put down her pen,&mdash;she was a woman who made many
+notes&mdash;and stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did
+her nurses speak to her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a
+spot remote from everything except love and laughter, had all the
+<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>fearlessness of ignorance; and
+in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining and her
+face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
+kitten.</p>
+<p>"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One
+should always do what one considers one's first duty."</p>
+<p>So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was
+greatly relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle
+Arthur said Damn.</p>
+<p>"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.</p>
+<p>"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell
+can we&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Arthur," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If
+people wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow
+them any better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for
+when he marries!"</p>
+<p>"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt
+Alice, tears in her gentle eyes.</p>
+<p>There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of
+Aunt Alice. She answered advertisements and offered the twins as
+nursery governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps,
+even as orphans willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim
+on salaries, she offered them for nothing, and at last she offered
+them accompanied by a bonus. "Their mother was English. They are
+quite English," wrote Aunt Alice innumerable times in innumerable
+letters. "I feel bound, however, to tell you that they once had a
+German father, but of course it was through no fault of their own,"
+etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with writing letters; and any
+solution of the problem that <a name="Page_23" id=
+"Page_23"></a>might possibly have been arrived at came to nothing
+because Anna-Rose would not be separated from Anna-Felicitas, and
+if it was difficult to find anybody who would take on one German
+nobody at all could be found to take on two.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt
+Alice was at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The
+twins racked their brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to
+relieve Uncle Arthur of their presence as he was to be relieved. If
+only they could be independent, do something, work, go as
+housemaids,&mdash;anything.</p>
+<p>They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it
+to <i>The Times</i>, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay
+for it. The advertisement was:</p>
+<p class="blockquot">Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but
+unimpeachable sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with
+respectability. No objection to being demeaned.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was
+Anna-Rose's word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding
+things like being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose.
+"Upper and Under. I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the
+eldest."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she
+regarded it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word,
+liked it, and explained that it Put a whole sentence into a
+nut-shell, and wouldn't change it.</p>
+<p>No one answered this advertisement except a society in London
+for helping alien enemies in distress.</p>
+<p>"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>And fancy thinking <i>us</i>
+enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While mummy&mdash;" Her eyes
+filled with tears. She kept them back, however, behind convenient
+long eye-lashes.</p>
+<p>Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of <i>The
+Times</i> that they instantly answered without saying a word to
+Aunt Alice. The advertisement was:</p>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Slightly wounded Officer would
+be glad to find intelligent and</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">interesting companion who can drive
+a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">by arrangement.</span></p>
+<p>"We'll <i>tell</i> him we're intelligent and interesting," said
+Anna-Rose, eagerly.</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given
+a chance?" said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.</p>
+<p>"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the
+emoluments won't have to be doubled."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;because he mightn't like paying twice over."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and while the preliminaries are being settled we
+could be learning to drive Uncle Arthur's car."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they
+different?"</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but only about the same difference as there is
+between a man and a woman. A man and a woman are both human beings,
+you know. And Daimlers and Humbers are both cars."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.</p>
+<p>They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.</p>
+<p>The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward
+the end of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and
+were requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to
+express their sympathy <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>with his
+wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity of driving a
+Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
+instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell
+them if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so
+it was very unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite
+the contrary.</p>
+<p>They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all
+hope and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have
+betrayed their want of intelligence and interestingness right away,
+when one day a letter came from General Headquarters in France,
+addressed <i>To Both the Miss Twinklers</i>, and it was a long
+letter, pages long, from the slightly wounded officer, telling them
+he had been patched up again and sent back to the front, and their
+answer to his advertisement had been forwarded to him there, and
+that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that the one he
+had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped when
+he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
+glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring
+them,&mdash;quick motoring in his racing car, sixty miles an hour
+motoring, flashing through the wonders of the New Forest, where he
+lived. And then there was a long bit about what the New Forest must
+be looking like just then, all quiet in the spring sunshine, with
+lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the big beeches, and the
+heather just coming alive, and all the winding solitary roads so
+full of peace, so empty of noise.</p>
+<p>"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end.
+"You've no idea what it's like getting letters from home out here.
+Write and tell me what you do and what the garden is like these
+fine afternoons. The <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>lilacs must
+be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them still about,
+and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and tea is
+brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
+except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog
+barking somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."</p>
+<p>The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a
+scrawl in the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English
+kids like you that we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again
+soon."</p>
+<p>"English kids like us!"</p>
+<p>They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their
+belligerent ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and
+as if Captain Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under
+false pretences. They also wondered why he should conclude they
+were kids.</p>
+<p>They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly
+what could be described as English, but on the other hand neither
+were they exactly what could be described as German. "We would be
+very glad indeed if we were really <i>something</i>," they
+added.</p>
+<p>But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in
+the list of casualties in <i>The Times</i> that Captain John
+Desmond had been killed.</p>
+<p>And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was
+revealed to Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday
+morning considering his troubles in detail.</p>
+<p>Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into
+being,&mdash;obvious, unquestionable, splendidly simple,&mdash;out
+of a trifle. For, chancing to raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to
+the bookshelves in front of him, they rested on <a name="Page_27"
+id="Page_27"></a>one particular book, and on the back of this book
+stood out in big gilt letters the word</p>
+<h3>AMERICA</h3>
+<p>There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood
+out, and it had all the effect of a revelation.</p>
+<p>There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the
+devil hadn't Alice thought of <i>that</i>? He knew some Americans;
+he didn't like them, but he knew them; and he would write to them,
+or Alice would write to them, and tell them the twins were coming.
+He would give the twins &pound;200,&mdash;damn it, nobody could say
+that wasn't handsome, especially in war-time, and for a couple of
+girls who had no earthly sort of claim on him, whatever Alice might
+choose to think they had on her. Yet it was such a confounded
+mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he wouldn't come
+under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money, as aiding
+the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to be
+rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would
+fall on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed
+Germans without making a face.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
+insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's
+what <i>they've</i> done," he said to himself&mdash;for this was
+1916, and America had not yet made her magnificent entry into the
+war&mdash;as he had already said to himself a hundred times. "Lost
+their chance of coming in on the side of civilization, and helping
+sweep the world up tidy of barbarism. Shoulder to shoulder with us,
+that's where <i>they</i> ought to have been. English-speaking
+races&mdash;duty to the world&mdash;" <a name="Page_28" id=
+"Page_28"></a>He then damned the Americans; but was suddenly
+interrupted by perceiving that if they had been shoulder to
+shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been able to send
+them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was, he
+conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could
+not, however, concede any others.</p>
+<p>At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
+Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
+uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
+to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.</p>
+<p>It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet
+Sunday, when he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had
+overdone the joint.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a name="Page_29"
+id="Page_29"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p>And so, on a late September afternoon, the <i>St. Luke</i>,
+sliding away from her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his
+burden.</p>
+<p>It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it
+would not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies
+themselves knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made
+Uncle Arthur feel so pleasant as he walked home across his park
+from golf to tea that for a moment he was actually of a mind to
+kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and perhaps even address her in the
+language of resuscitated passion, which in Uncle Arthur's mouth was
+Old Girl,&mdash;an idea he abandoned, however, in case it should
+make her self-satisfied and tiresome&mdash;the same knowledge that
+produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
+nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of
+the <i>St. Luke</i> hungrily watching the people on the wharf.</p>
+<p>For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth
+whose enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one
+direction. And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother,
+in England. It seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so
+far away, and leave her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel
+like that. She was with them just the same; wherever they went now
+she would be with them, and they could hear her saying at that very
+moment, "Little darlings, <i>don't</i> cry...." But it was <a name=
+"Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort
+of afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of
+the people waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to
+them.</p>
+<p>"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
+handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.</p>
+<p>"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas
+in her gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of
+bother with her eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the
+fact that she was sniffing.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly
+whipped out her handkerchief and waved it violently.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head
+forward. "Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has
+any one come to see us off?"</p>
+<p>"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until
+they had faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she
+turned round and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on
+to her very tight for a minute.</p>
+<p>"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But
+do you suppose I was going to have us <i>looking</i> like people
+who aren't seen off?"</p>
+<p>And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they
+were safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she
+added, "That man&mdash;" and then stopped. "<a name="Page_31" id=
+"Page_31"></a>What man?"</p>
+<p>"Standing just behind us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any
+more than she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen
+pails.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us,"
+said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to
+indignation.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Did you ever?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put
+her handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever;
+and after a pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new
+responsibilities and anxieties&mdash;she had so many that sometimes
+for a time she didn't remember some of them&mdash;turned her head
+to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried eye on her said, "You won't
+go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna F.?"</p>
+<p>"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.</p>
+<p>"Your German Bible. The bit about <i>wenn die b&ouml;sen Buben
+locken, so folge sie nicht</i>."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a
+troubled brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you,
+Anna F.?"</p>
+<p>For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she
+was very pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite
+creature God had yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed
+this conviction from her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds.
+She considered it wouldn't have been at all good for her; and she
+had, up to this, and ever since they could both remember, jeered in
+a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her defects, concentrating
+particularly <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>on her nose, on her
+leanness, and on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she
+drooped.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her
+own face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
+Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her
+leanness was lovely,&mdash;the same sort of slender grace her
+mother had had in the days before the heart-breaking emaciation
+that was its last phase; and that her head was set so charmingly on
+her neck that when she drooped and forgot her father's constant
+injunction to sit up,&mdash;"For," had said her father at
+monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as straight as
+a fir-tree,"&mdash;she only seemed to fall into even more
+attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone
+had the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming
+younger sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while
+tactfully avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which
+might make her conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself
+with discretion.</p>
+<p>But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of
+all to handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so
+elaborate, and so carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and
+German Scripture at that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't
+succeed in disentangling her meaning, and after a space of staring
+at her with a mild inquiry in her eyes, she decided that perhaps
+she hadn't got one. She was much too polite though, to say so, and
+they sat in silence under the rug till the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled
+and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make conversation about
+Christopher and Columbus.</p>
+<p>She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving
+England. She hoped Anna-Felicitas <a name="Page_33" id=
+"Page_33"></a>hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on like
+that. When the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled, she was ashamed that it
+wasn't only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness
+she put into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant
+to go and discover America was such that that young lady, who if
+slow was sure, said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really
+taking it dreadfully to heart."</p>
+<p>The <i>St. Luke</i> was only dropping anchor for the night in
+the Mersey, and would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from
+the talk of passengers walking up and down the deck in twos and
+threes and passing and repassing the chairs containing the silent
+figures with the round heads that might be either the heads of boys
+or of girls, and they were greatly relieved to think they wouldn't
+have to begin and be sea-sick for some hours yet. "So couldn't we
+walk about a little?" suggested Anna-Felicitas, who was already
+stiff from sitting on the hard cane chair.</p>
+<p>But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a
+ship if they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid
+being sick but also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the
+moment the ship got under way, and not move out of them till it
+stopped again. "Or, at least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt
+Alice, who had never herself been further on a ship than to Calais,
+but recognized that it might be difficult to avoid moving sooner or
+later if it was New York you were going to. "Two such young girls
+travelling alone should be seen as seldom as ever you can manage.
+Your Uncle is sending you second-class for that very reason,
+because it is so much less conspicuous."</p>
+<p>It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle <a name=
+"Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>Arthur's generosities were of the kind
+that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in eating he
+was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be damned,
+so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and the
+extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that
+were necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary,
+before he finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so
+profoundly that when it came to taking their passage he could
+hardly be got not to send them in the steerage. This was too much,
+however, for Aunt Alice, whose maid was going with them as far as
+Euston and therefore would know what sort of tickets they had, and
+she insisted with such quiet obstinacy that they should be sent
+first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the difference and
+consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also explained
+that second-class was less conspicuous.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the
+wisdom of walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already,
+but she too was stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has
+a wonderful effect, as she had already in her brief career had
+numerous occasions to observe, in doing away with prudent
+determinations. So, after cautiously looking round the corners to
+see if the man who was on the verge of being sorry for them were
+nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the damp, dark deck; and
+the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them a sensation of
+being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between two
+worlds.</p>
+<p>Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then
+against the side of the <i>St. Luke</i> when some other steamer,
+invisible in the mist, felt her way slowly <a name="Page_35" id=
+"Page_35"></a>by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
+that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other
+side, hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it
+further and further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt,
+it yet, because on either side of it were still the shores of
+England, didn't seem as forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land
+they were bound for. For suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of
+Anna-Rose, who had been privately asking herself the same thing,
+America didn't like them? Suppose the same sort of difficulties
+were waiting for them over there that had dogged their footsteps in
+England?</p>
+<p>"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself
+on the readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will
+like us, because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to
+it in exactly the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,&mdash;and don't
+you go forgetting it and showing your disagreeable side&mdash;that
+the dove was in when it flew across the waters to the ark, and with
+olive branches in our beaks just the same as the dove's, only
+they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's friends."</p>
+<p>"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends&mdash;" began
+Anna-Felicitas, who had great doubts as to everything connected
+with Uncle Arthur.</p>
+<p>"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she
+wasn't going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question
+liked to give all the information in her power, "secondly, America
+is the greatest of the neutrals except the <i>liebe Gott</i>, and
+is bound particularly to prize us because we're so unusually and
+peculiarly neutral. What ever was more neutral than you and me?
+We're neither one thing nor the other, and yet at the same time
+we're both." <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>Anna-Felicitas
+remarked that it sounded rather as if they were the Athanasian
+Creed.</p>
+<p>"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's
+&pound;200 waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm
+thing to think of. We never had &pound;200 waiting for us anywhere
+in our lives before, did we,&mdash;so you remember that, and don't
+get grumbling."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that
+she couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the
+goodwill of Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt
+Alice's friends they had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's
+friends were more likely to like her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which
+to start on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and
+that one didn't have doubts.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she
+was very hungry, not having had anything that could be called a
+meal since breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in
+"Lycidas," the hungry ones who looked up and were not fed, and she
+quoted the lines in case Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which
+Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew the lines by heart, and if there
+was any quoting to be done liked to do it herself), and said she
+felt just like that,&mdash;"Empty," said Anna-Felicitas, "and yet
+swollen. When do you suppose people have food on board ships? I
+don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about&mdash;oh well, about
+leaving England, if it was after dinner."</p>
+<p>"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At
+least, not more than's just proper."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily.
+"Except what's proper."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>And even if we were feeling
+it <i>dreadfully</i>," said Anna-Rose, with a little catch in her
+voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't make any
+difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."</p>
+<p>"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got
+much to bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things,
+Anna-F."</p>
+<p>"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there
+wouldn't soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all
+disappeared. They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there
+were no lights. The row of cabin windows along the wall were
+closely shuttered, and the door they had come through when first
+they came on deck was shut too, and they couldn't find it in the
+dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling along a wall for a door they
+knew was there and not be able to find it, that they began to
+laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up more than
+anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
+Arthur.</p>
+<p>"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and
+vainly along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.</p>
+<p>"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said
+Anna-Felicitas, following in her tracks.</p>
+<p>A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left
+off patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity
+against the wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It
+was a male figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they
+thought, and it stopped in front of them and said in an American
+voice, "Hello."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>Anna-Rose cast rapidly about
+in her mind for the proper form of reply to Hello.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured
+"Hello" back again.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to
+people they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think
+they had brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided
+that perhaps "Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said
+it.</p>
+<p>"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of
+this.</p>
+<p>"That's what <i>we</i> think," agreed Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.</p>
+<p>"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose,
+still distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to
+know.</p>
+<p>"But <i>don't</i> tell us to ask the Captain," said
+Anna-Felicitas, even more earnestly.</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."</p>
+<p>The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding
+on; and they followed him as obediently as though such persons as
+possible <i>b&ouml;se Buben</i> didn't exist.</p>
+<p>"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs
+were long and they could hardly keep up with him.</p>
+<p>"English?" said the man.</p>
+<p>"Ye&mdash;es," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "<a name="Page_39"
+id="Page_39"></a>I said," Anna-Felicitas endeavoured to explain,
+hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep within reach of his
+ear, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the
+pantings for breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"</p>
+<p>They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful
+question to have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but,
+having got to the door they had been searching for, opened it and
+stepped into the bright light inside, and putting out his arm
+behind him pulled them in one after the other over the high wooden
+door-frame.</p>
+<p>Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the
+afternoon, engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like
+grievances to an official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She
+stopped suddenly when the man appeared, and the official took his
+hands out of his pockets and became alert and attentive, and the
+stewardess hastily picked up a tray she had set down and began to
+move away along a passage.</p>
+<p>The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and
+came back even more quickly than she had tried to go.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to
+Anna-Felicitas, "it's Hi she answers to."</p>
+<p>"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good
+circumlocutions to throw them away on her."</p>
+<p>"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.</p>
+<p>He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason
+into a laugh, and turned away and beckoned <a name="Page_40" id=
+"Page_40"></a>to the official to follow him, and went out again
+into the night.</p>
+<p>"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the
+stewardess down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber
+and machine-oil and cooking all mixed up together.</p>
+<p>"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't
+tell us to ask the Captain, because we really do know better than
+that."</p>
+<p>"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."</p>
+<p>The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of
+course."</p>
+<p>"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess
+shortly, eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.</p>
+<p>"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."</p>
+<p>"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing
+to stare round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her
+down arm-in-arm.</p>
+<p>"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do
+you suppose we quarrel?"</p>
+<p>"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
+stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."</p>
+<p>She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short
+girl or the long girl.</p>
+<p>"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said
+Anna-Felicitas gently. "<a name="Page_41" id=
+"Page_41"></a>Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head.
+She was unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of
+containing a reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow
+off and on for ten years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it
+would take more than even the Captain to obsess <i>me</i>."</p>
+<p>They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room,
+and the stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before
+indignantly leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If
+you're friends, what do you want to know his name for, then?"</p>
+<p>"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"The Captain's," said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
+patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."</p>
+<p>"Then&mdash;" began the stewardess. She restrained herself,
+however, and merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman <i>was</i>
+the Captain," went upstairs and left them.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your
+advice," she called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for
+it was evident that for some reason her heart was hardened, by
+flattery. "You <i>told</i> us to ask the Captain."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a name="Page_42" id=
+"Page_42"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p>In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it
+occurred to them that perhaps what was the matter with the
+stewardess was that she needed a tip. At first, with their recent
+experiences fresh in their minds, they thought that she was
+probably passionately pro-Ally, and had already detected all those
+Junkers in their past and accordingly couldn't endure them. Then
+they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You will have to give
+your stewardess a little something."</p>
+<p>This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they
+had been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the
+tippers, and anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses.
+Neither, it appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she
+said vaguely that as it was an American boat they were going on she
+supposed it would have to be American money, which was dollars, and
+she didn't know much about dollars except that you divided them by
+four and multiplied them by five, or else it was the other way
+about; and when, feeling still uninformed, they had begged her to
+tell them why one did that, she said it was the quickest way of
+finding out what a dollar really was, and would they mind not
+talking any more for a little while because her head ached.</p>
+<p>The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had
+all been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but
+Americans, Aunt Alice told them, <a name="Page_43" id=
+"Page_43"></a>were in some respects, in spite of their talking
+English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this
+point and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to
+crane out her head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her
+whether she didn't think that might be so, but was afraid of
+disturbing the people in the opposite berths.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin,
+and Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
+Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the
+opposite side were two similar berths, each containing as
+Anna-Felicitas whispered after peeping cautiously through their
+closed curtains,&mdash;for at first on coming in after dinner to go
+to bed the cabin seemed empty, except for inanimate things, like
+clothes hanging up and an immense smell,&mdash;its human freight.
+They were awed by this discovery, for the human freight was
+motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the noises
+suggesting sleep.</p>
+<p>They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible,
+but it was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for
+anything, not even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced
+a little uneasily at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed
+cautiously and delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly
+was. It appeared to be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum
+pudding at Christmas, and German bedrooms in the morning. It was a
+smell they didn't like the idea of sleeping with, but they saw no
+way of getting air. They thought of ringing for the stewardess and
+asking her to open a window, though they could see no window, but
+came to the conclusion it was better not to stir her up; not yet,
+at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed what was the matter
+with her. They said <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>nothing out
+loud, for fear of disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains,
+but they knew what each was thinking, for one isn't, as they had
+long ago found out, a twin for nothing.</p>
+<p>There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely
+hoisted up into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for
+some time after the rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had
+already neatly inserted herself into her own berth, after watching
+these legs in silence and fighting a desire to give them a tug and
+see what would happen, had to get out at last on hearing
+Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there as though she were
+choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was then on a
+level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
+Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do
+anything with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the
+blankets, but lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes
+up very tight and stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and
+evidently struggling with what appeared to be an attack of
+immoderate and ill-timed mirth.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was
+suddenly seized herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a
+hasty glance round at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her
+own berth and pulled the sheet over her mouth.</p>
+<p>She was sobering herself by going over her different
+responsibilities, checking them off on her fingers,&mdash;the two
+five-pound notes under her pillow for extra expenses till they were
+united in New York to their capital, the tickets, the passports,
+and Anna-Felicitas,&mdash;when two thick fair pigtails appeared
+dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by Anna-Felicitas's
+head.</p>
+<p>"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered <a name=
+"Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>Anna-Felicitas, her eyelashes still wet
+from her late attack; and stretching her neck still further down
+till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood rushing
+into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
+freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious
+negativeness of its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at
+all and was really stowaways.</p>
+<p>"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head
+emphatically, which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose,
+considering that it was upside down. "<i>German</i> stowaways,"
+whispered Anna-Felicitas, sniffing expressively though
+cautiously.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the
+bulging curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much
+curved. In spite of herself her flesh began to creep a little.</p>
+<p>"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously
+congested. "Stowaways are."</p>
+<p>There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board
+and took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till
+they came to bed.</p>
+<p>"<i>German</i> men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a
+delicate expressive sniff.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into
+ladies' cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."</p>
+<p>"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies'
+disguise." She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible
+suggestions.</p>
+<p>"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly,
+for Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic
+fit.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
+inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see <a name="Page_46"
+id="Page_46"></a>Anna-Rose presently very cautiously emerge from
+underneath her and on her bare feet creep across to the opposite
+side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness. She sat up to
+watch, her eyes round with interest.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with
+several pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the
+berths. Having got there she stood still a moment listening, and
+then putting a careful finger between the curtain of the lower
+berth and its frame, drew it the smallest crack aside and peeped
+in.</p>
+<p>Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your
+pardon," she said out loud, turning very red. "I&mdash;I
+thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush
+down her back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any
+more than before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker
+than she had gone. She just stopped on the way to switch off the
+light, and then felt along the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till
+she got to her head, and pulling it near her by its left pigtail
+whispered with her mouth close to its left ear, "Wide awake.
+Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."</p>
+<p>And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a name="Page_47" id=
+"Page_47"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p>The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady
+in the berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that
+didn't make them less German. Nothing ever makes a German less
+German, Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their
+blood by the right kind of mother."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."</p>
+<p>This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the
+next day, by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human
+freight being Germans, for one of their own submarines came after
+the <i>St. Luke</i> and no one was quite so loud in expression of
+terror and dislike as the two Germans.</p>
+<p>They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were
+Germans. They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was
+nothing compared to how one had been born. The curtains of their
+berths, till then so carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and
+the berths gave up their contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas
+remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it was the resurrection and the
+berths were riven sepulchres chucking up their dead.</p>
+<p>This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the <i>St.
+Luke</i> was pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The
+twins, waking about seven, found with a pained surprise that they
+were not where they <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>had been
+dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing tennis
+happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
+that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
+groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how
+long it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised
+her head once with the intention of asking if she could help at
+all, but dropped it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes
+tight and lay as quiet as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas
+didn't even raise her head, she felt so very uncomfortable.</p>
+<p>At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in&mdash;the same
+stewardess, they languidly noted, with whom already they had had
+two encounters, for it happened that this was one of the cabins she
+attended to&mdash;and said that if anybody wanted breakfast they
+had better be quick or it would be over.</p>
+<p>"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending
+tone; and instantly was sick.</p>
+<p>The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the
+twins, in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so
+as not to witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the
+cabin, feebly marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being
+quick to persons who were being constantly stood on their heads.
+And breakfast,&mdash;they shuddered and thought of other things; of
+fresh, sweet air, and of the scent of pinks and apricots warm with
+the sun.</p>
+<p>At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in,
+and with determination in every gesture.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them
+talking at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side,
+"you mustn't give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed.
+You must <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>get up and go on deck.
+And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all the
+time?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was
+more on the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could
+only see the stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured
+that she didn't care.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat
+drill at mid-day, and you've got to be present."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't
+care.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every
+soul on the ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat
+drill."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that
+moment how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths
+redoubled their groans.</p>
+<p>"Come, come&mdash;" said the stewardess.</p>
+<p>Then the <i>St. Luke</i> whistled five times, and the stewardess
+turned pale. For a brief space, before they understood what had
+happened, the twins supposed she was going to be sick. But it
+wasn't that that was the matter with her, for after a moment's
+staring at nothing with horror on her face she pounced on them and
+pulled them bodily out of their berths, regardless by which end,
+and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she plunged about and
+produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the passage flinging
+open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled back again and
+tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with hands that
+shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and all
+the time she was calling out "Quick&mdash;quick&mdash;quick&mdash;"
+<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>There was a great tramping of
+feet on deck and cries and shouting.</p>
+<p>The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came
+the Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and
+struggled vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur
+coats, and had the fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very
+energetic steward who ran in and said fur coats in the water were
+death-traps,&mdash;a steward so much bent on saving people that he
+began to pull off the other things the German ladies had on as
+well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in
+the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother Nature&mdash;Mother
+Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only stopped just in
+the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and seeing what
+was happening to the helpless Germans.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt
+there was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing
+their valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward
+assuring them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be
+taken up and somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never
+dare do anything to a ship containing its own flesh and
+blood&mdash;and an American ship, too&mdash;there must be some
+awful mistake&mdash;but anyhow they must be saved&mdash;there would
+be terrible trouble, that they could assure the steward and the
+twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if America
+allowed two Germans to be destroyed&mdash;and anyhow they would
+insist on having their passage money refunded....</p>
+<p>The German ladies departed down the passage, very <a name=
+"Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>incoherent and very unhappy but no
+longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of her berth,
+feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly wondered,
+while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at the
+cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
+buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally
+seemed busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious
+little bag of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it
+round her neck in spite of the steward's assuring her that it would
+drag her down in the water like a stone tied to a kitten.</p>
+<p>"You're a <i>very</i> cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said,
+as he pushed them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding
+up Anna-Felicitas on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run
+alone.</p>
+<p>The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at
+the foot of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got
+her on deck propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to
+the set of cabins they were in, and darted away and in a minute was
+back again with a big coat which he wrapped round her.</p>
+<p>"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to drown," he said
+briskly, "but mind you don't forget to throw it off, Missie, the
+minute you feel the water."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning
+against the wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference
+to whatever might be going to happen next. Her face was now as
+white as the frill of the night-gown that straggled out from
+beneath her coat, for the journey from the cabin to the deck had
+altogether finished her. <a name="Page_52" id=
+"Page_52"></a>Anna-Rose was thankful that she felt too ill to be
+afraid. Her own heart was black with despair,&mdash;despair that
+Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one, should presently, at
+any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving water, and certainly
+be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of life.</p>
+<p>She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep
+her warm. Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold
+hands and put them away beneath the coat the steward had brought.
+She slid an arm round her and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so
+that she should know somebody was there, somebody who loved her.
+"What's the <i>good</i> of it all&mdash;<i>why</i> were we
+born&mdash;" she wondered, staring at the hideous gray waves as
+they swept up into sight over the side of the ship and away again
+as the ship rose up, and at the wet deck and the torn sky, and the
+miserable-looking passengers in their life-jackets collected
+together round the life-boat.</p>
+<p>Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed,
+kept up a constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly
+smoking cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about
+them, all of them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the
+torpedo to appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed.
+The ship was zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay
+on. An official stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water
+in it and provisions. That the submarine must be mad, as the
+official remarked, to fire on an American ship, didn't console
+anybody, and his further assurance that the matter would not be
+allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt too sure that in
+all probability they themselves were going to rest there, down
+underneath that <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>repulsive icy
+water, after a struggle that was going to be unpleasant.</p>
+<p>The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship left
+the landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be
+sorry for her, came across from the first class, where his
+life-boat was, to watch for the track of the expected torpedo, and
+caught sight of the twins huddled in their corner.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes out
+at the desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home:
+the home that was, that used to be till such a little while ago,
+the home that now seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably
+beautiful and blest, with its daily life of love and laughter and
+of easy confidence that to-morrow was going to be just as good.
+Happiness had been the ordinary condition there, a simple matter of
+course. Its place was taken now by courage. Anna-Rose felt sick at
+all this courage there was about. There should be no occasion for
+it. There should be no horrors to face, no cruelties to endure. Why
+couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must people get killing each
+other? She, for her part, would be behind nobody in courage and in
+the defying of a Fate that could behave, as she felt, so very
+unlike her idea of anything even remotely decent; but it oughtn't
+to be necessary, this constant condition of screwed-upness; it was
+waste of effort, waste of time, waste of life,&mdash;oh the
+<i>stupidity</i> of it all, she thought, rebellious and
+bewildered.</p>
+<p>"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little into a
+small cup.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her.
+She recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had
+much better be <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>sorry for himself
+now, she thought, because he, just as much as they were, was bound
+for a watery bier.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the
+smell of brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar
+strictness on no account to talk to strange men, "I don't
+drink."</p>
+<p>"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.</p>
+<p>"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping
+a drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell
+me where your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on,
+considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."</p>
+<p>The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that
+they had a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine
+hand over fist. Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of
+supposing her to be in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did
+in spite of herself steal into her heart.</p>
+<p>He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some
+pillows.</p>
+<p>"If you <i>will</i> sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the
+pillows behind their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open
+her eyes, and her head hung about so limply that it looked as if it
+might at any moment roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable
+as you can."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange
+Anna-Felicitas's indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw
+little use in being comfortable just a minute or two before
+drowning. "<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Drowning be hanged,"
+said the man.</p>
+<p>"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling
+suddenly quite at home, "except that <i>he</i> would have said
+'Drowning be damned.'"</p>
+<p>The man laughed. "Is he dead?" he asked, busy with
+Anna-Felicitas's head, which defied their united efforts to make it
+hold itself up.</p>
+<p>"Dead?" echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur's
+ever being anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear
+words for such a long time as eternity seemed very odd.</p>
+<p>"You said he <i>used</i> to talk like that."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no he's not dead at all. Quite the contrary."</p>
+<p>The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas's head
+arranged in a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had
+some sort of self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she
+could manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back.
+He was going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going
+to say "You poor things," or words to that effect. That's what the
+people round Uncle Arthur's had said to them. That's what everybody
+had said to them since the war began, and Aunt Alice's friends had
+said it to her too, because she had to have her nieces live with
+her, and no doubt Uncle Arthur's friends who played golf with him
+had said it to him as well, except that probably they put in a damn
+so as to make it clearer for him and said "You poor damned thing,"
+or something like that, and she was sick of the very words poor
+things. Poor things, indeed! "We're with each other," she said
+briefly, lifting her chin.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't think that's enough," said the man. "<a name=
+"Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>Not half enough. You ought to have a
+mother or something."</p>
+<p>"<i>Everybody</i> can't have mothers," said Anna-Rose very
+defiantly indeed, tears rushing into her eyes.</p>
+<p>The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. "There
+now," he said. "That's better. What's the good of catching your
+deaths?"</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn't gone on about mothers, said that
+with so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to
+her particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a
+chair and sat down beside her.</p>
+<p>She didn't know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation
+to laugh at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily
+comforting. It made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like
+waking up to sunshine and one's morning bath and breakfast after a
+nightmare. He seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked
+him to sit near them. She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had
+said there were very few good men, hardly any in fact except one's
+husband, but this one did seem one of the few exceptions. And she
+thought that by now, he having brought them all those pillows, he
+could no longer come under the heading of strange men. When he
+wasn't looking she put out her hand secretly and touched his coat
+where he wouldn't feel it. It comforted her to touch his coat. She
+hoped Aunt Alice wouldn't have disapproved of seeing her sitting
+side by side with him and liking it.</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose,
+having given her the desired promise not to talk or let
+Anna-Felicitas talk to strange men, and desiring to collect any
+available information for her <a name="Page_57" id=
+"Page_57"></a>guidance in her new responsible position had asked,
+"But when are men <i>not</i> strange?"</p>
+<p>"When you've married them," said Aunt Alice. "After that, of
+course, you love them."</p>
+<p>And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a name="Page_58" id=
+"Page_58"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p>Nothing more was seen of the submarine.</p>
+<p>The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them
+know he had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having
+saved the ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a
+ship, and they the one just man whose presence would have saved
+those cities if he had been in them; and the American passengers
+were equally sure that the submarine, on thinking it over, had
+decided that President Wilson was not a man to be trifled with, and
+had gone in search of some prey which would not have the might and
+majesty of America at its back.</p>
+<p>As the day went on, and the <i>St. Luke</i> left off
+zig-zagging, the relief of those on board was the relief of a
+reprieve from death. Almost everybody was cured of sea-sickness,
+and quite everybody was ready to overwhelm his neighbour with
+cordiality and benevolence. Rich people didn't mind poor people,
+and came along from the first class and talked to them just as if
+they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves. A
+billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
+times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly
+proud of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked
+somebody in a dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale,
+if he had been frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston
+talked quite a long while to an English lady without first having
+made sure that she was well-<a name="Page_59" id=
+"Page_59"></a>connected. What could have been more like heaven? The
+tone on the <i>St. Luke</i> that day was very like what the tone in
+the kingdom of heaven must be in its simple politeness. "And so you
+see," said Anna-Rose, who was fond of philosophizing in season and
+out of season, and particularly out of season, "how good comes out
+of evil."</p>
+<p>She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
+Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr.
+Twist&mdash;such, the amiable stranger had told them, was his
+name&mdash;who had gone to see about tea being brought up to them;
+and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to sit up and take notice, the
+hours of fresh air having done their work, smiled the ready,
+watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It was so nice
+not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If she had
+been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about the
+number and size of one's negative blessings&mdash;all the things
+one hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to
+them once you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and
+yet people grumble.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent
+mood in which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled
+at anybody who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would
+have smiled just like that, with just that friendly, boneless
+familiarity at the devil if he had appeared, or even at Uncle
+Arthur himself.</p>
+<p>The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were
+having the pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the
+realization of this that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good
+coming out of evil. The background, she could not but perceive, was
+a very odd one for their pleasantest day for months&mdash;a
+<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>rolling steamer and a cold wind
+flicking at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out
+to Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly,
+are negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that
+matters. Of what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid
+summer afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so
+beautifully framed in Uncle Arthur?</p>
+<p>No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.</p>
+<p>In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in
+the end.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble
+agreement.</p>
+<p>She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable,
+Anna-Rose remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to
+him than they could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded
+Anna-Felicitas how they used to rub their eyes to try and see more
+clearly, for surely these means of happiness, these elaborate
+arrangements for it all round them, couldn't be for nothing? There
+must be some of it somewhere, if only they could discover where?
+And there was none. Not a trace of it. Not even the faintest little
+swish of its skirts.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a
+long time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's
+death blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas
+said aloud that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was
+true. Their mother's death was something so tender, so beautiful,
+that terrible as it was to them to be left without her they yet
+felt raised up by it somehow, raised on to a higher level than
+where they had been before, closer in their hearts to real things,
+to real <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>values. But Uncle Arthur
+came into possession of their lives as a consequence of that death,
+and he had towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun.
+Suddenly there was no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly
+everything one said and did was wrong. "And you needn't think,"
+Anna-Felicitas had said wisely, "that he's like that because we're
+Germans&mdash;or <i>seem</i> to be Germans," she amended. "It's
+because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice. <i>She's</i> not a
+German. And yet look at her."</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her
+mind's eye, for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a
+wood picnicking, and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> luncheon with Uncle Arthur
+who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she didn't
+like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
+less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what
+she imagined was simply awful,&mdash;Anna-Rose had, I say, looked
+at Aunt Alice in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was
+true.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray
+of tea and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful
+picnic.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him
+quite soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to
+clear his mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas,
+though their clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which
+their flair was done, might be misleading, were no longer children,
+but quite the contrary; that they were, in fact, persons who were
+almost ripe for going to dances, and certainly in another year
+would be perfectly ripe for dances supposing there were any.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>Mr. Twist listened
+attentively, and begged her to tell him any other little thing she
+might think of as useful to him in his capacity of friend and
+attendant,&mdash;both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
+till he had seen them safely landed in New York.</p>
+<p>"I hope you don't think we <i>need</i> anybody," said Anna-Rose.
+"We shall like being friends with you very much, but only on terms
+of perfect equality."</p>
+<p>"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.</p>
+<p>"I thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She hesitated a moment.</p>
+<p>"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.</p>
+<p>"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry
+for us."</p>
+<p>"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.</p>
+<p>"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to&mdash;to our friends."</p>
+<p>"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Which was great waste of your time."</p>
+<p>"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an
+activity in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr.
+Twist's attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, which
+was, as he said, one of mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was
+never sea-sick, he could move about and do things for them that
+might be difficult to do for themselves; as he knew a great deal
+about stewardesses, he could tell them what sort of tip theirs
+expected; as he was American, he could illuminate them about that
+country. He had been doing Red Cross work with an American
+ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home for a short
+visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose <a name="Page_63" id=
+"Page_63"></a>gathered, was ancient and widowed, was getting on.
+His mother, he said, lived in seclusion in a New England village
+with his sister, who had not married.</p>
+<p>"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you,"
+said Mr. Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up&mdash;I
+mean," he added hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's
+less&mdash;well, less completely young."</p>
+<p>"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity.
+"People are completely young the day they're born, and ever after
+that they spend their time becoming less so."</p>
+<p>"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than
+you have. I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than
+I am."</p>
+<p>"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's
+head where it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must
+have got to the stage when one is called a maiden lady."</p>
+<p>"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who
+hadn't till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely
+at him whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be
+either a lady or a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of
+Germans, I think," went on Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at
+the cake Mr. Twist was offering her, "never to let us be anything
+but Its till we've taken on some men."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage,
+and inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.</p>
+<p>"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said
+Anna-Rose, turning to her severely, "you start <a name="Page_64"
+id="Page_64"></a>being indiscreet. Well, I suppose," she added with
+a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or later. Our
+name is Twinkler."</p>
+<p>She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist,
+perceiving he was expected to say something, said that he didn't
+mind that anyhow, and that he could bear something worse in the way
+of revelations.</p>
+<p>"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished,
+for in Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in
+England it was well known.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he
+said.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said,
+speaking very distinctly. "It's <i>von</i> Twinkler."</p>
+<p>"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained
+serene.</p>
+<p>"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen
+that we weren't."</p>
+<p>"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we
+used to have a German father."</p>
+<p>"But only because our mother married him," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "Else we wouldn't have."</p>
+<p>"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it
+has dogged our footsteps ever since."</p>
+<p>"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying
+anybody does. You go into a church, and before you know where you
+are, you're all tangled up with posterity."</p>
+<p>"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at
+her own past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you.
+It's really simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>If there hadn't been a war
+we'd have been all right," said Anna-Felicitas. "But directly
+there's a war, whoever it is you've married, if it isn't one of
+your own countrymen, rises up against you, just as if he were too
+many meringues you'd had for dinner."</p>
+<p>"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against
+you."</p>
+<p>"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We never used to bother about what we were," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "We were just human beings, and so was everybody
+else just human beings."</p>
+<p>"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people
+not being Germans."</p>
+<p>"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because, you see, we're not."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little
+prominent and pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he
+put his head on one side and looked at them, of an attentive
+fox-terrier. "I don't think I quite follow," he said again.</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"It's because you've got into your head that we're German
+because of our father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father,
+when all's said and done?"</p>
+<p>"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."</p>
+<p>"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a
+mother," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's
+always busy. He's always thinking of something else."</p>
+<p>"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight,"
+said Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, <a name="Page_66" id=
+"Page_66"></a>whose habit of drooping still persisted in spite of
+her father's admonishments.</p>
+<p>"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to
+remember that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up
+beautifully for a moment, "but that's about everything."</p>
+<p>"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
+perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander.
+Whereas one's mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't
+bear speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began
+to cry. The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any
+sort were possible.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here,
+Anna-F.," she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't <i>have</i>
+you be sentimental&mdash;I won't <i>have</i> you be
+sentimental...."</p>
+<p>And then she too began to cry.</p>
+<p>Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves,
+there was nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost
+confidence. It was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man.
+A person they hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their
+feelings. Showing their innermost miserable places.</p>
+<p>They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend
+they weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just
+tears,&mdash;odd ones left over from last time, which was years and
+years ago,&mdash;"But <i>really</i> years and years ago," sobbed
+Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,&mdash;"the years one falls down on
+garden paths in, <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>and cuts one's
+knees, and one's mother&mdash;one's mother&mdash;c-c-c-comforts
+one&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and
+pulling out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even
+been unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right
+away."</p>
+<p>And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid
+promptness his Red Cross experience had taught him, started
+competently wiping up their faces.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a name="Page_68"
+id="Page_68"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p>There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
+encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something
+not too determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those
+pictures of efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe
+is familiar,&mdash;eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm
+mouths and chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect,
+offering in capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist
+was the reverse of eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of
+good-looking; that is, he would have been very handsome indeed, as
+Anna-Rose remarked several days later to Anna-Felicitas, when the
+friendship had become a settled thing,&mdash;which indeed it did as
+soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping their eyes and noses that
+first afternoon, it being impossible, they discovered, to have
+one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being friends
+afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged to
+the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
+after which in books you married him; but this having only been
+wiping, said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by
+friendship)&mdash;he would have been very handsome indeed if he
+hadn't had a face.</p>
+<p>"But you have to <i>have</i> a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who
+didn't think it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could
+eat with it and see out of it.</p>
+<p>"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said <a name=
+"Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>Anna-Rose; but secretly she thought that
+having been begun so successfully at his feet, and carried upwards
+with such grace of long limbs and happy proportions, he might as
+well have gone on equally felicitously for the last little bit.</p>
+<p>"I expect God got tired of him over that last bit," she mused,
+"and just put on any sort of head."</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that happened to be lying about," agreed
+Anna-Felicitas. "In a hurry to get done with him."</p>
+<p>"Anyway he's very kind," said Anna-Rose, a slight touch of
+defiance in her voice.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>very</i> kind," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And it doesn't matter about faces for being kind," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Not in the least," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And if it hadn't been for the submarine we shouldn't have got
+to know him. So you see," said Anna-Rose,&mdash;and again produced
+her favourite remark about good coming out of evil.</p>
+<p>Those were the days in mid-Atlantic when England was lost in its
+own peculiar mists, and the sunshine of America was stretching out
+towards them. The sea was getting calmer and bluer every hour, and
+submarines more and more unlikely. If a ship could be pleasant,
+which Anna-Felicitas doubted, for she still found difficulty in
+dressing and undressing without being sea-sick and was unpopular in
+the cabin, this ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day
+long, staring at the blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if
+you were living in the middle of a jewel, and tried not to
+remember&mdash;oh, there were heaps of things it was best not to
+remember; and when the rail of the ship moved up across the horizon
+too far into the sky, or moved down across it and showed too much
+water, you <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>just shut your eyes
+and then it didn't matter; and the sun shone warm and steady on
+your face, and the wind tickled the tassel on the top of your
+German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist came and read aloud to you, which
+sent you to sleep quicker than anything you had ever known.</p>
+<p>The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket
+was called "Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an American
+collection of English poetry, professing in its preface to be a
+Short Cut to Culture; and he would read with what at that time, it
+being new to them, seemed to the twins a strange exotic
+pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to Dooty," and the effect was as
+if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian psalm in its ribs, and
+make it leap and giggle.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she didn't
+mind what the ship's rail did with the horizon, opened them very
+round when first Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was
+used to hearing them read by her mother in the adorable husky voice
+that sent such thrills through one, but she listened with the
+courtesy and final gratitude due to the efforts to entertain her of
+so amiable a friend, and only the roundness of her eyes showed her
+astonishment at this waltzing round, as it appeared to her, of Mr.
+Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God. He also read
+"Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur took for a Derby
+winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to refrain from
+stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point of
+having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
+questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on
+deck, which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it
+was because her deck-chair was so very much harder than she
+was.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>Anna-Felicitas, who
+considered that, if these things were short-cuts to anywhere,
+seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got there,
+snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
+off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which
+worried Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment
+less beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more
+than ever, unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being
+administered, to make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again
+by taking and shaking her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of
+waking up suddenly and forgetting to be polite, as one does when
+first one wakes up and hasn't had time to remember one is a lady.
+"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures noo," Mr. Twist would
+finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp of satisfaction at having
+swallowed yet another solid slab of culture; and Anna-Felicitas,
+returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur, with her eyes
+still shut and her head lolling limply, things like, "After all, it
+<i>does</i> rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still doesn't
+like it."</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild
+inquiry, and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately
+explain what Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from
+anything resembling what she had said that Mr. Twist looked more
+mildly inquiring than ever.</p>
+<p>Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too
+sleepy or too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got
+angry, and would get what the Germans call a red head and look at
+Anna-Felicitas very severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would
+close his book and watch with that alert, cocked-up-ear <a name=
+"Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>look of a sympathetic and highly
+interested terrier; but sooner or later the ship would always give
+a roll, and Anna-Felicitas would shut her eyes and fade to paleness
+and become the helpless bundle of sickness that nobody could
+possibly go on being severe with.</p>
+<p>The passengers in the second class were more generally friendly
+than those in the first class. The first class sorted itself out
+into little groups, and whispered about each other, as Anna-Rose
+observed, watching their movements across the rope that separated
+her from them. The second class remained to the end one big group,
+frayed out just a little at the edge in one or two places.</p>
+<p>The chief fraying out was where the Twinkler kids, as the
+second-class young men, who knew no better, dared to call them,
+interrupted the circle by talking apart with Mr. Twist. Mr. Twist
+had no business there. He was a plutocrat of the first class; but
+in spite of the regulations which cut off the classes from
+communicating, with a view apparently to the continued sanitariness
+of the first class, the implication being that the second class was
+easily infectious and probably overrun, there he was every day and
+several times in every day. He must have heavily squared the
+officials, the second-class young men thought until the day when
+Mr. Twist let it somehow be understood that he had known the
+Twinkler young ladies for years, dandled them in their not very
+remote infancy on his already full-grown knee, and had been
+specially appointed to look after them on this journey.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist did not specify who had appointed him, except to the
+Twinkler young ladies themselves, and to them he announced that it
+was no less a thing, being, or creature, than Providence. The
+second-class young men, therefore, in spite of their rising spirits
+as danger <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>lay further behind,
+and their increasing tendency, peculiar to those who go on ships,
+to become affectionate, found themselves no further on in
+acquaintance with the Misses Twinkler the last day of the voyage
+than they had been the first. Not that, under any other conditions,
+they would have so much as noticed the existence of the Twinkler
+kids. In their blue caps, pulled down tight to their eyebrows and
+hiding every trace of hair, they looked like bald babies. They
+never came to meals; their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was,
+feeding them on deck with the care of a mother-bird for its
+fledglings, so that nobody except the two German ladies in their
+cabin had seen them without the caps. The young men put them down
+as half-grown only, somewhere about fourteen they thought, and
+nothing but what, if they were boys instead of girls, would have
+been called louts.</p>
+<p>Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed
+in the way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and
+the Misses Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent
+baldness, and their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt
+have been the objects of advances before New York was reached if it
+hadn't been for Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty in the
+second class on that voyage, the young men resentfully pointed out
+to each other, except these two kids who were too much under it,
+and a young lady of thirty who sat manicuring her nails most of the
+day with her back supported by a life-boat, and polishing them with
+red stuff till they flashed rosily in the sun. This young lady was
+avoided for the first two days, while the young men still
+remembered their mothers, because of what she looked like; but was
+greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely for that
+reason.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>Still, every one couldn't get
+near her. She was only one; and there were at least a dozen active,
+cooped-up young men taking lithe, imprisoned exercise in long,
+swift steps up and down the deck, ready for any sort of enterprise,
+bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So that at last the
+left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy nails was
+less kind to, actually in their despair attempted ghastly
+flirtations with the two German ladies. They approached them with a
+kind of angry amorousness. They tucked them up roughly in rugs.
+They brought them cushions as though they were curses. And it was
+through this <i>rapprochement</i>, in the icy warmth of which the
+German ladies expanded like bulky flowers and grew at least ten
+years younger, the ten years they shed being their most respectable
+ones, that the ship became aware of the nationality of the Misses
+Twinkler.</p>
+<p>The German ladies were not really German, as they explained
+directly there were no more submarines about, for a good woman,
+they said, becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they,
+therefore, were merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal
+as you could find, but the Twinklers were the real thing, they
+said,&mdash;real, unadulterated, arrogant Junkers, which is why
+they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no Junker, said the German
+ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked to except another
+Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck not been
+born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had missed
+it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
+were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
+democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers
+most abound, and knew the sort of thing well.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>It seemed to Mr. Twist, who
+caught scraps of conversation as he came and went, that in the
+cabin the Twinklers must have alienated sympathy. They had. They
+had done more; they had got themselves actively disliked.</p>
+<p>From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into
+their shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this
+prejudice had later flared up into a great and justified dislike.
+The ladies, to begin with, hadn't known that they were von
+Twinklers, but had supposed them mere Twinklers, and the von, as
+every German knows, makes all the difference, especially in the
+case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a race, the ladies knew,
+of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in the Westphalian
+district, but with it were one of the oldest families in Prussia;
+known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
+wherever it went.</p>
+<p>In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated
+the two apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their
+conduct, age, and obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded
+by their questionings, the smaller and more active Twinkler had let
+out her von at them much as one lets loose a dog when one is alone
+and weak against the attacks of an enemy, instead of falling in
+harmoniously with the natural change of attitude of the ladies,
+which became immediately perfectly polite and conciliatory, as well
+as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two young Junkers
+went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most motherly
+questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
+themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be
+permitted to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently,
+after a day or <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>two of such
+uncloaked repugnance to it, left with quantities of it useless on
+their hands and all going sour.</p>
+<p>From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain
+Twinklers they had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin,
+and as von Twinklers they were intolerable in their high-nosed
+indifference.</p>
+<p>It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the
+beginning of the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such
+manifest youth should rise politely and considerately each morning
+very early, and get themselves dressed and out of the way in at the
+most ten minutes, leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful
+putting together bit by bit of that which ultimately emerged a
+perfect specimen of a lady of riper years, but the weedy Twinkler
+insisted on lying in her berth so late that if the ladies wished to
+be in time for the best parts of breakfast, which they naturally
+and passionately did wish, they were forced to dress in her
+presence, which was most annoying and awkward.</p>
+<p>It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but
+you never know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to
+trust them. They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have
+seen; they apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their
+spectacled American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so
+much gustiness, if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the
+weedy one had a most tiresome trick of being sick instantly every
+time Odol was used, or a little brandy was drunk. Odol is most
+refreshing; it has a lovely smell, without which no German bedroom
+is complete. And the brandy was not common schnaps, but an old
+expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell, was a credit to
+anybody's cabin.</p>
+<p>The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed <a name=
+"Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>did persist in using Odol and drinking a
+little brandy, indifferent to the feeble prayer from the upper
+berth which floated down entreating them not to, but in their own
+interests they were forced to give it up. The objectionable child
+did not pray a second time; she passed immediately from prayer to
+performance. Of two disagreeables wise women choose the lesser, but
+they remain resentful.</p>
+<p>The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and
+take herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of
+toilet with those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her
+hair, preparatory to washing her face, with their hairpins.</p>
+<p>When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding
+any, having come to the end of her own, lost no time in
+irresolution but picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her
+pigtails with that.</p>
+<p>It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
+everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an
+outrage, but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When
+they told her sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she
+was instantly to take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in
+a silence that was itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails
+with their buttonhook instead.</p>
+<p>Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and
+asked her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they
+raised their voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they
+later on declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had
+nevertheless acquired by practice in imitation some of the more
+salient Junker characteristics.</p>
+<p>"You are <i>salop</i>," said the upper berth lady,&mdash;which
+<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>is untranslatable, not on
+grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is not, however, a term of
+praise.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that is what you are&mdash;<i>salop</i>," echoed the lower
+berth lady. "And your sister is <i>salop</i> too&mdash;lying in bed
+till all hours."</p>
+<p>"It is shameful for girls to be <i>salop</i>," said the upper
+berth.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was ours,"
+said Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with vehemence.</p>
+<p>"That is because you are <i>salop</i>," said the lower
+berth.</p>
+<p>"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors either."</p>
+<p>"<i>Salop, salop</i>," said the lower berth, beating her hand on
+the wooden edge of her bunk.</p>
+<p>"And&mdash;and I'm sorry."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry, she looked
+angry. And so she was; but it was with herself, for having failed
+in discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have noticed that the
+scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had pounced on them with
+the ill-considered haste of twelve years old. She hadn't been a
+lady,&mdash;she whose business it was to be an example and mainstay
+to Anna-Felicitas, in all things going first, showing her the
+way.</p>
+<p>She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was
+just going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when
+the upper berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of
+herself to have brought you up so badly."</p>
+<p>"And send you off like this before she has taught you even the
+ABC of manners," said the lower berth.</p>
+<p>"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none
+herself."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>Evidently," said the lower
+berth, "she is herself <i>salop</i>."</p>
+<p>The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin
+in Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there
+in her nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful
+flight, her eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top
+of her head.</p>
+<p>The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize
+the significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large
+angry faces as a target. One of the faces would certainly have
+received the sponge and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if
+it hadn't been for the prompt and skilful intervention of
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the
+unusual loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into
+attention and opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were
+saying and saw the sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was
+Anna-Rose who held it, where it would be in another second, and
+hastily putting out a shaking little hand from her top berth,
+caught hold feebly but obstinately of the upright ends of
+Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.</p>
+<p>"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of
+mind and entire absence of candour.</p>
+<p>She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be
+sick, and the excellent child&mdash;<i>das gute Kind</i>, as her
+father used to call her because she, so conveniently from the
+parental point of view, invariably never wanted to be or do
+anything particularly&mdash;without hesitation sacrificed herself
+in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and immediately
+was.</p>
+<p>By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, <a name=
+"Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>all fury had died out. She never could
+see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after one of these
+attacks without forgiving her and everybody else everything.</p>
+<p>She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and
+tuck her blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut,
+murmured, "Christopher&mdash;don't mind <i>them</i>&mdash;" and she
+suddenly realized, for they never called each other by those names
+except in great moments of emotion when it was necessary to cheer
+and encourage, what Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it
+had been done deliberately, she could only whisper back, because
+she was so afraid of crying, "No, no, Columbus dear&mdash;of
+course&mdash;who really cares about <i>them</i>&mdash;" and came
+down off the steps with no fight left in her.</p>
+<p>Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
+retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled
+Twinkler should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a
+crack apart in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be
+going to do next and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness,
+getting dressed, they merely inquired what part of Westphalia she
+came from, and only in the tone they asked it did they convey that
+whatever part it was, it was anyhow a contemptible one.</p>
+<p>"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a
+little, in spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to
+have to be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.</p>
+<p>"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being
+a Twinkler it must be Westphalia."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>We don't really," said
+Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words and making a great
+effort to speak politely. "We come from England."</p>
+<p>"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling.
+"You were born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in
+Westphalia."</p>
+<p>"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only
+circumstance that stops them is if their mothers happen to be
+temporarily absent."</p>
+<p>"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts
+to remain bland.</p>
+<p>"Are you pretending&mdash;pretending to <i>us</i>," said the
+lower berth lady, again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk,
+"that you are not German?"</p>
+<p>"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner,
+"but I don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go
+on being one directly he got to a really neutral place."</p>
+<p>"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly,
+scenting what she had from the first suspected, something sinister
+in the Twinkler background.</p>
+<p>"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause
+of consideration, tying her shoe-laces.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling
+themselves now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly
+from Westphalia?"</p>
+<p>"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
+considering.</p>
+<p>She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with
+a deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was
+remaining calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but
+Prussia," she said.</p>
+<p>"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising
+themselves on their elbows.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>That's where our father
+lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her surprise at their
+surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he died he did
+that there too."</p>
+<p>"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your
+father fled his country."</p>
+<p>"No. <i>You</i> said that," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to
+the door. She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of
+Anna-Felicitas, might not be able to be a lady.</p>
+<p>"After all, it <i>is</i> what you do when you go to heaven," she
+said as she opened the door, unable to resist, according to her
+custom, having the last word.</p>
+<p>"But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it
+were, from afar. "Then&mdash;you were born in Prussia?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the
+door quickly behind her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a name="Page_83"
+id="Page_83"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind&mdash;he
+had the most amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was
+Edward&mdash;took a lively interest in the plans and probable
+future of the two Annas. He also took a lively and solicitous
+interest in their present, and a profoundly sympathetic one in
+their past. In fact, their three tenses interested him to the
+exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief desire was to
+see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting them in
+the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends&mdash;he distrusted Uncle
+Arthur, and therefore his friends&mdash;into the safe and pleasant
+waters of real American hospitality and kindliness.</p>
+<p>He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the
+tap. He reminded himself of that which he had been taught since
+childhood, of the mighty heart of America which, once touched,
+would take persons like the twins right in and never let them out
+again. But it had to be touched. It had, as it were, to be put in
+connection with them by means of advertisement. America, he
+reflected, was a little deaf. She had to be shouted to. But once
+she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...</p>
+<p>He cogitated much in his cabin&mdash;one with a private
+bathroom, for Mr. Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample
+means&mdash;on these two defenceless children. If they had been
+Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons plainly in need of
+relief! As it was, America would be <a name="Page_84" id=
+"Page_84"></a>likely, he feared, to consider that either Germany or
+England ought to be looking after them, and might conceivably
+remain chilly and uninterested.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn't many friends in America, and
+those he had didn't like him. At least that was what Mr. Twist
+gathered from the conversation of Anna-Rose. She didn't positively
+assert but she very candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite
+believe that Uncle Arthur's friends wouldn't be warm ones. Their
+hospitality he could imagine fleeting and perfunctory. They would
+pass on the Twinklers as soon as possible, as indeed why should
+they not? And presently some dreary small job would be found for
+them, some job as pupil-teacher or girls' companion in the sterile
+atmosphere of a young ladies' school.</p>
+<p>As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike,
+Mr. Twist disliked Uncle Arthur. Patriotism was nothing at any time
+to Mr. Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur's particular
+kind of patriotism was very odious to him. To wreak it on these two
+poor aliens! Mr. Twist had no words for it. They had been cut
+adrift at a tender age, an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American
+son and brother, was unable to regard unmoved, and packed off over
+the sea indifferent to what might happen to them so long as Uncle
+Arthur knew nothing about it. Having flung these kittens into the
+water to swim or drown, so long as he didn't have to listen to
+their cries while they were doing it, Uncle Arthur apparently cared
+nothing.</p>
+<p>All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose
+up within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and
+ask him what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him
+whether he called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do
+this, <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>being on a ship heading
+for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of the
+ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,&mdash;but the right
+sort of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards
+you as a sacred and precious charge.</p>
+<p>In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical
+bullying, red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured
+him under-sized and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through
+the soppy green fields of England to his trembling household. He
+was quite disconcerted one day to discover from something Anna-Rose
+said that he was a tall man, and not fat at all, except in one
+place.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye
+view of Uncle Arthur.</p>
+<p>"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of
+her dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck
+when it got to his waistcoat."</p>
+<p>"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to
+explain and describe further if required.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of
+Uncle Arthur, and this time got him right,&mdash;the tall, not
+bad-looking man, clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than
+he, Mr. Twist, had. He had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now
+perceived that he could be hardly more than middle-aged and that
+Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he felt an almost painful sympathy, had
+a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get through before she was done.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word middle-aged as
+correct. "Neither of his ends looks much older than yours do. He's
+aged in the middle. That's the only place. Where the bomb is."</p>
+<p>"I suppose that's why it's called middle-aged," said <a name=
+"Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>Anna-Felicitas dreamily. "One
+middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It must be
+queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself gradually
+rotting."</p>
+<p>These were the sorts of observations, Mr. Twist felt, that might
+prejudice his mother against the twins If they could be induced not
+to say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he
+felt that his house, of all houses in America, should be offered
+them as a refuge whenever they were in need of one. But his mother
+was not, he feared, very adaptable. In her house&mdash;it was
+legally his, but it never felt as if it were&mdash;people adapted
+themselves to her. He doubted whether the twins could or would.
+Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was candour. They
+had no <i>savoir faire</i>. They seemed incapable of anything but
+naturalness, and their particular type of naturalness was not one,
+he was afraid, that his mother would understand.</p>
+<p>She had not been out of her New England village, a place called
+briefly, with American economy of time, Clark, for many years, and
+her ideal of youthful femininity was still that which she had been
+herself. She had, if unconsciously, tried to mould Mr. Twist also
+on these lines, in spite of his being a boy, and owing to his
+extreme considerateness had not yet discovered her want of success.
+For years, indeed, she had been completely successful, and Mr.
+Twist arrived at and embarked on adolescence with the manners and
+ways of thinking of a perfect lady.</p>
+<p>Till he was nineteen he was educated at home, as it were at his
+mother's knee, at any rate within reach of that sacred limb, and
+she had taught him to reverence women; the reason given, or rather
+conveyed, being that he had had and still was having a mother.
+Which <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>he was never to forget. In
+hours of temptation. In hours of danger. Mr. Twist, with his
+virginal white mind, used to wonder when the hours of temptation
+and of danger would begin, and rather wish, in the elegant leisure
+of his half-holidays, that they soon would so that he might show
+how determined he was to avoid them.</p>
+<p>For the ten years from his father's death till he went to
+Harvard, he lived with his mother and sister and was their
+assiduous attendant. His mother took the loss of his father badly.
+She didn't get over it, as widows sometimes do, and grow suddenly
+ten years younger. The sight of her, so black and broken, of so
+daily recurring a patience, of such frequent deliberate brightening
+for the sake of her children, kept Mr. Twist, as he grew up, from
+those thoughts which sometimes occur to young men and have to do
+with curves and dimples. He was too much absorbed by his mother to
+think on such lines. He was flooded with reverence and pity.
+Through her, all women were holy to him. They were all mothers,
+either actual or to be&mdash;after, of course, the proper
+ceremonies. They were all people for whom one leapt up and opened
+doors, placed chairs out of draughts, and fetched black shawls. On
+warm spring days, when he was about eighteen, he told himself
+earnestly that it would be a profanity, a terrible secret sinning,
+to think amorously&mdash;yes, he supposed the word was
+amorously&mdash;while there under his eyes, pervading his days from
+breakfast to bedtime, was that mourning womanhood, that lopped
+life, that example of brave doing without any hope or expectation
+except what might be expected or hoped from heaven. His mother was
+wonderful the way she bore things. There she was, with nothing left
+to look for<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>ward to in the way of
+pleasures except the resurrection, yet she did not complain.</p>
+<p>But after he had been at Harvard a year a change came over Mr.
+Twist. Not that he did not remain dutiful and affectionate, but he
+perceived that it was possible to peep round the corners of his
+mother, the rock-like corners that had so long jutted out between
+him and the view, and on the other side there seemed to be quite a
+lot of interesting things going on. He continued, however, only to
+eye most of them from afar, and the nearest he got to temptation
+while at Harvard was to read "Madame Bovary."</p>
+<p>After Harvard he was put into an engineering firm, for the
+Twists only had what would in English money be five thousand pounds
+a year, and belonged therefore, taking dollars as the measure of
+standing instead of birth, to the middle classes. Aunt Alice would
+have described such an income as ample means; Mrs. Twist called it
+straitened circumstances, and lived accordingly in a condition of
+perpetual self-sacrifice and doings without. She had a car, but it
+was only a car, not a Pierce-Arrow; and there was a bathroom to
+every bedroom, but there were only six bedrooms; and the house
+stood on a hill and looked over the most beautiful woods, but they
+were somebody else's woods. She felt, as she beheld the lives of
+those of her neighbours she let her eyes rest on, who were the
+millionaires dotted round about the charming environs of Clark,
+that she was indeed a typical widow,&mdash;remote, unfriended,
+melancholy, poor.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist might feel poor, but she was certainly comfortable.
+It was her daughter Edith's aim in life to secure for her the
+comfort and leisure necessary for any grief that wishes to be
+thorough. The house was <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>run
+beautifully by Edith. There were three servants, of whom Edith was
+one. She was the lady's maid, the head cook, and the family butler.
+And Mr. Twist, till he went to Harvard, might be described as the
+page-boy, and afterwards in his vacations as the odd man about the
+house. Everything centred round their mother. She made a good deal
+of work, because of being so anxious not to give trouble. She
+wouldn't get out of the way of evil, but bleakly accepted it. She
+wouldn't get out of a draught, but sat in it till one or other of
+her children remembered they hadn't shut the door. When the
+inevitable cold was upon her and she was lamentably coughing, she
+would mention the door for the first time, and quietly say she
+hadn't liked to trouble them to shut it, they had seemed so busy
+with their own affairs.</p>
+<p>But after he had been in the engineering firm a little while, a
+further change came over Mr. Twist. He was there to make money,
+more money, for his mother. The first duty of an American male had
+descended on him. He wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in
+spite of his own tastes being so simple that his income of
+&pound;5000&mdash;it was his, not his mother's, but it didn't feel
+as if it were&mdash;would have been more than sufficient for him.
+Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that might
+comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined an
+expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be
+made to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out
+altogether beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for
+him, and definitely grew up.</p>
+<p>The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him
+to be at home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board
+with her brother Charles, a <a name="Page_90" id=
+"Page_90"></a>clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic
+Refreshment at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of
+which Uncle Charles poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable
+meals&mdash;for he practised the austerities and had no
+wife&mdash;dribbled at its spout. Hold it as carefully as one might
+it dribbled at its spout, and added to the confused appearance of
+the table by staining the cloth afresh every time it was used.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and
+generosity, his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth,
+being all amiability and affection, above the nose was quite
+different. In the middle came his nose, a nose that led him to
+improve himself, to read and meditate the poets, to be tenacious in
+following after the noble; and above were eyes in which simplicity
+sat side by side with appreciation; and above these was the
+forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were inventions.</p>
+<p>He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he
+came into daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood
+he had often fixed up little things for Edith,&mdash;she was three
+years older than he, and was even then canning and preserving and
+ironing,&mdash;little simplifications and alleviations of her
+labour; but they had been just toys, things that had amused him to
+put together and that he forgot as soon as they were done. But the
+teapot revealed to him clearly what his forehead was there for. He
+would not and could not continue, being the soul of
+considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
+every meal&mdash;they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
+supper&mdash;and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at
+every meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful
+with it. He handled it <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>with the
+most delicate precision. He gave it time. He never hurried it. He
+never filled it more than half full. And yet at the end of every
+pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the cloth.</p>
+<p>Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different
+pattern, with a curved spout instead of a straight one.</p>
+<p>The same thing happened.</p>
+<p>Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot
+section trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring
+water, provided by a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant,
+out of each different make of teapot into cups.</p>
+<p>They all dribbled.</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought
+and thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin
+hand; and what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it
+as complete in every detail as Pallas Athene when she very
+similarly sprang, was that now well-known object on every breakfast
+table, Twist's Non-Trickler Teapot.</p>
+<p>In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His
+mother passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still
+would only call a modest competence, but what in England would have
+been regarded as wallowing in money. She left off being
+middle-class, and was received into the lower upper-class, the
+upper part of this upper-class being reserved for great names like
+Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With these Mrs. Twist could not
+compete. She would no doubt some day, for Edward was only thirty
+and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was able to add to
+the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss of the
+elder Twist with less of bleakness in her <a name="Page_92" id=
+"Page_92"></a>resignation. It was as though an east wind veered
+round for a brief space a little to the south.</p>
+<p>Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every
+other reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she
+once more sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist,
+and hung her cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a
+peg. When the novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of
+six, and a great deal of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten
+times of everything else instead of only once, began to wear off,
+Mrs. Twist drooped again, and pulled the departed Twist out of the
+decent forgetfulness of the past, and he once more came to dinner
+in the form of his favourite dishes, and assisted in the family
+conversations by means of copious quotations from his alleged
+utterances.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy
+thousand pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having
+invented and patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths
+of America, and indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to
+receive his percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But
+so much had he changed since his adolescence that he preferred to
+stick to his engineering and his office in New York rather than go
+home and be happy with his mother.</p>
+<p>She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She
+understood his behaviour still less when he went off to France in
+1915, himself equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.</p>
+<p>For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided
+Mrs. Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an
+only son in danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was
+never so much <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>called upon as
+during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest, and there
+was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of the
+funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.</p>
+<p>While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the
+Twinklers&mdash;this was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she
+tried Anna-Rose's patience severely by asking her not once but
+several times whether she didn't think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose
+disliked it from the first because of the suggestion it contained
+that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them as works of
+mercy&mdash;while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at his
+home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
+to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense
+slaughtering of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being
+now the head servant of many instead of three was more than double
+as hard-worked as she used to be, was on her feet those last few
+days without stopping. And she had to go and meet Edward in New
+York as well. Whether Mrs. Twist feared that he might not come
+straight home or whether it was what she said it was, that dear
+Edward must not be the only person on the boat who had no one to
+meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that when it came to
+the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had difficulty in
+maintaining her usual brightness.</p>
+<p>Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the
+<i>St. Luke</i> got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey
+from New York, and during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared
+for. She thought Edith surprisingly thoughtless to be so much
+pleased to go. She examined her flat and sinewy form with
+disapproval when she came in hatted and booted to say good-bye.
+<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>No wonder nobody married Edith.
+And the money wouldn't help her either now&mdash;she was too old.
+She had missed her chances, poor thing.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years
+before, when Edward was still in the school room, who had almost
+married Edith. He was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had
+come to Clark to stay with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to
+do through a long vacation, and had taken to dropping in at all
+hours and interrupting Edith in her housekeeping; and Edith, even
+then completely flat but of a healthy young uprightness and bright
+of eyes and hair, had gone silly and forgotten how to cook, and had
+given her mother, who surely had enough sorrows already, an attack
+of indigestion.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
+necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith.
+And besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry.
+She told herself that she could not bear the thought of poor
+Edith's running the risk of an affliction similar to her own. If
+one hasn't a husband one cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw.
+If Edith married she would certainly lose him unless he lost her.
+Marriage had only two solutions, she explained to her silent
+daughter,&mdash;she would not, of course, discuss with her that
+third one which America has so often flown to for solace and
+relief,&mdash;only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either
+one died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other
+one did. It was only a question of time before one of the married
+was left alone to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it
+always ended black. "And think of my having to see you like
+<i>this</i>" she said, with a gesture indicating her sad dress.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>Edith was intimidated; and
+the young man presently went away whistling. He was the only one.
+Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely from her mind;
+and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet Edward in the
+clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she unconsciously felt a
+faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time to get married
+in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been married at
+twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone through, was
+hardly more gray than Edith's.</p>
+<p>"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself
+after bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable
+to bear the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased
+face, went off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked
+her, if she still had a minute to spare, to help her to the sofa,
+because she felt faint.</p>
+<p>"I expect the excitement has been too much for me," she
+murmured, lying down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined
+in affection and attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and
+settled down to getting her mother well again in time for
+Edward.</p>
+<p>Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York,
+and he accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he mightn't
+otherwise have done.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a name="Page_96" id=
+"Page_96"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<p>When the <i>St. Luke</i> was so near its journey's end that
+people were packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the
+scraps of talk the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried
+condition of mind Mr. Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of
+the days had produced in them, and began to consider their
+prospects with more attention. This attention soon resulted in
+anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being irritable. Anna-Felicitas
+didn't show hers at all.</p>
+<p>It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America
+and never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future
+for them once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about
+a new life and a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer
+it; but when the new world was really upon them, and the new life,
+with all the multitudinous details that would have to be tackled,
+going to begin in a few hours, their hearts became uneasy and sank
+within them. England hadn't liked them. Suppose America didn't like
+them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's
+friends didn't like them either? Their hearts sank to, and remained
+in, their boots.</p>
+<p>Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from
+what Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their
+fellow-passengers, was a chamois-leather bag containing their
+passports, a letter to the bank where their &pound;200 was, a
+letter to those friends of <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>Uncle
+Arthur's who were to be tried first, a letter to those other
+friends of his who were to be the second line of defence supposing
+the first one failed, and ten pounds in two &pound;5 notes.</p>
+<p>Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used
+in bed most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so
+miserable, had given Anna-Rose one of the &pound;5 notes for the
+extra expenses of the journey till, in New York, she should be able
+to draw on the &pound;200, though what expenses there could be for
+a couple of girls whose passage was paid Uncle Arthur was damned,
+he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had secretly added the
+other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it would have to
+be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to be ready
+for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing
+restlessness of the passengers that it would soon be time to go and
+change it. How many dollars ought she to get?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have
+asked him long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the
+end of their journey. Only yesterday there was the same old
+limitless sea everywhere, the same old feeling that they were never
+going to arrive. Now the waves had all gone, and one could actually
+see land. The New World. The place all their happiness or
+unhappiness would depend on.</p>
+<p>She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as
+if she had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and
+was going to say something appropriate and encouraging on the
+Christopher and Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been
+pondering the &pound;5 notes problem, wouldn't listen.</p>
+<p>"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, "<a name=
+"Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>isn't like a shilling or a mark, but on
+the other hand neither is it like a pound."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate
+business.</p>
+<p>"It's four times more than one, and five times less than the
+other," said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how you've got to count.
+That's what Aunt Alice said."</p>
+<p>"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said Anna-Rose, frowning.
+"As if it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange.
+Uncle Arthur said we weren't to forget that."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange,
+and Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who
+had to be kept in her proper place, especially when one was just
+getting to America and she might easily become above herself, said
+that it was something that varied. ("The exchange, you know,
+varies," Uncle Arthur had said when he gave her the &pound;5 note.
+"You must keep your eye on the variations." Anna-Rose was all
+eagerness to keep her eye on them, if only she had known what and
+where they were. But one never asked questions of Uncle Arthur. His
+answers, if one did, were confined to expressions of anger and
+amazement that one didn't, at one's age, already know.)</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose
+out of the corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her
+further.</p>
+<p>"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking
+in the direction he usually appeared from.</p>
+<p>"We won't always have <i>him</i>" remarked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>The young lady of the nails
+appeared at that moment in a hat so gorgeous that the twins stopped
+dead to stare. She had a veil on and white gloves, and looked as if
+she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue the very next minute.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody specially and
+means nothing in particular.</p>
+<p>"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you," said
+Anna-Rose. "There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now,
+remember. I won't."</p>
+<p>"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said Anna-Felicitas
+mildly. "I shall be walking about New York."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>you'll</i> see," said Anna-Rose irritably.</p>
+<p>She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the
+tipping, and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's
+friends, whose names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so
+naturally she was irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood
+this better than Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she said, after a
+moment's pause during which she wondered whether, in the interests
+of Anna-Rose's restoration to calm, she mightn't have to be sick
+again. She did hope she wouldn't have to. She had supposed she had
+done with that. It is true there were now no waves, but she knew
+she had only to go near the engines and smell the oil. "Let's go
+and put on our hats," she suggested, slipping her hand through
+Anna-Rose's arm.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>Anna-Rose let herself be
+led away, and they went to their cabin; and when they came out of
+it half an hour later, no longer with that bald look their caps had
+given them, the sun catching the little rings of pale gold hair
+that showed for the first time, and clad, instead of in the
+disreputable jerseys that they loved, in neat black coats and
+skirts&mdash;for they still wore mourning when properly
+dressed&mdash;with everything exactly as Aunt Alice had directed
+for their arrival, the young men of the second class could hardly
+believe their eyes.</p>
+<p>"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to Anna-Felicitas
+as she passed him, "but you're looking very well to-day."</p>
+<p>"I expect that's because I <i>am</i> well," said Anna-Felicitas
+amiably.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated
+"My!"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by the
+difference the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid days
+of cap and jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do somehow seem
+very splendid."</p>
+<p>"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd make the very angels
+jealous, and get pulling off their haloes and kicking them over the
+edge of heaven."</p>
+<p>"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have
+squeezed them out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing lost in
+admiration at Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge nice hats easily
+at all."</p>
+<p>And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye
+fell on Anna-Felicitas, "<i>Ja, ja, die hat Rasse.</i>"</p>
+<p>And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair that
+spent the night in a different part of the cabin from her head and
+had been seen doing it by <a name="Page_101" id=
+"Page_101"></a>Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and was grudging.
+"<i>Gewiss</i>," she muttered back, "<i>bis auf der Nase. Die Nase
+aber entfremdet mich. Die ist keine echte Junkernase</i>."</p>
+<p>So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came
+a little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for
+there were the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives
+every minute now.</p>
+<p>Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say,
+that does make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light
+lay over New York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air,
+a delicate dry crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got
+close, were delicate too&mdash;delicate pale gold, and green, and
+brown, and they seemed so composed and calm, the twins thought,
+standing there quietly after the upheavals and fidgetiness of the
+Atlantic. New York was well into the Fall, the time of year when it
+gets nearest to beauty. The beauty was entirely in the atmosphere,
+and the lights and shadows it made. It was like an exquisite veil
+flung over an ugly woman, hiding, softening, encouraging hopes.</p>
+<p>Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides.
+Everybody was exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly
+and talkative. They all waved whenever another boat passed. Those
+who knew America pointed out the landmarks to those who didn't. Mr.
+Twist pointed them out to the twins, and so did the young man who
+had remarked favourably on Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as they did
+it simultaneously and there was so much to look at and so many
+boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had actually got to the
+statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her &pound;10 and the
+dollars.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>The young man was saying
+how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and the word dollars made
+Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where
+it very visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I forgot&mdash;I
+must get change. And how much do you think we ought to tip the
+stewardess? I've never tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish&mdash;I
+wish I hadn't to."</p>
+<p>She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to
+someone so much older than herself and who till almost that very
+morning had treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of
+tiresome children. Surely she would be most offended at being
+tipped by people such years younger than herself?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist thought not.</p>
+<p>"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar. That's the figure.
+Not a cent more, or you girls'll get inflating prices and Wall
+Street'll bust up."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place
+where her bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't seemed
+to mind them quite so much last night, and still less that morning,
+and perhaps some little memento&mdash;something that wasn't
+money&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man, bursting
+into hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he was a low
+young man.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
+shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also
+stewards, softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it
+didn't mean they wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he would
+do the tipping for her if she liked.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess <a name=
+"Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>had haunted her at intervals
+throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night. She felt
+that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard
+that she couldn't begin with somebody more her own size.</p>
+<p>"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel," she said, "I
+can give you my &pound;5 notes, and perhaps you would get them
+changed for me and deduct what you think the stewardess ought to
+have."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to stay
+behind with the exuberant young man though she was quite
+unconscious of his presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel,
+where after a great deal of private fumbling, her back turned to
+them, she produced the two much-crumpled &pound;5 notes.</p>
+<p>"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well," said Anna-Rose
+eagerly. "I don't think I <i>could</i> offer him a tip. He has been
+so fatherly to us. And imagine offering to tip one's father."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in
+time. He promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that
+the tips he bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back
+with messages of thanks from the tipped&mdash;such polite ones from
+the stewardess that the twins were astonished&mdash;and gave
+Anna-Rose a packet of very dirty-looking slices of green paper,
+which were dollar bills, he said, besides a variety of strange
+coins which he spread out on a ledge and explained to her.</p>
+<p>"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr. Twist,
+counting out the money.</p>
+<p>"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did <a name=
+"Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>you keep your eye on its variations?"
+she added a little loudly, with a view to rousing respect in
+Anna-Felicitas who was lounging against a seat and showing a total
+absence of every kind of appropriate emotion.</p>
+<p>"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause. "I kept both
+my eyes on all of them."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess
+each with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because
+the exchange was so favourable this had made no difference to the
+&pound;5 notes. Reducing each &pound;5 note into German marks,
+which was the way the Twinklers, in spite of a year in England,
+still dealt in their heads with money before they could get a clear
+idea of it, there would have been two hundred marks; and as it
+took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two hundred marks
+would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside that extra
+complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the
+exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping
+quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said
+Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end of her
+calculation, fifty dollars.</p>
+<p>"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with respectful
+attention. "Here they are."</p>
+<p>"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't be <i>exactly</i>
+fifty dollars. The tips anyhow would alter that."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but you forget the exchange."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
+Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
+sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as
+Anna-Rose industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was
+the better of the two. But even so, the difference entitled
+<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>her to authority on the
+subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her
+calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her method,
+she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise the
+inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held her
+down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and was unable to respect
+her.</p>
+<p>Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to
+rejoice in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from
+asking questions.</p>
+<p>"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a
+little.</p>
+<p>She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her
+bag. They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into her
+pocket, for which also there were too many; but she refused
+Anna-Felicitas's offer to put some of them in hers on the ground
+that sooner or later she would be sure to forget they weren't her
+handkerchief and would blow her nose with them.</p>
+<p>"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to Mr. Twist,
+as she stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous patting to get
+it to look inconspicuous. "We're never going to forget you, Anna-F.
+and me. We'll write to you often, and we'll come and see you as
+often as you like."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched the shore of
+Long Island sliding past. "Of course you've got your relations, but
+relations soon pall, and you may be quite glad after a while of a
+little fresh blood."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several
+other things Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said
+about relations, again with that air of addressing nobody specially
+and meaning nothing <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>in
+particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with the obesity of her
+pocket.</p>
+<p>"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist, whose
+misgivings as to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother grew
+rather than subsided, "I shall certainly come to see you."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said Anna-Felicitas,
+her eyes far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't. He wouldn't let the maids
+have any, so they had to go out and do the following themselves. We
+had a follower once, didn't we, Anna-R.?" she continued her voice
+pensive and reminiscent. "He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite
+old. At least thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he
+<i>could</i> follow. But he did. And he used to come home to tea
+with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of chocolate for us out of his
+pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We ate them and felt
+perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he tried to kiss
+one of us&mdash;I forget which. And that, combined with the
+chocolates, revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we
+told him they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to
+some place where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by
+Uncle Arthur's vengeance, and we said how surprised we were,
+because he was so old and we didn't know followers were as old as
+that ever."</p>
+<p>"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having subdued
+the swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates and then not
+want to kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing, Anna-F. and me.
+Still, we were full of his chocolates; there was no getting away
+from that. So we talked it over after he had gone, and decided that
+next day when he came we'd tell him he might kiss one of us if he
+still wanted to, and we drew <a name="Page_107" id=
+"Page_107"></a>lots which it was to be, and it was me, and I filled
+myself to the brim with chocolates so as to feel grateful enough to
+bear it, but he didn't come."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come again for a long
+while, and when he did there was no follow left in him. Quite the
+contrary."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because
+it was the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her.
+He was used to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of
+Anna-Rose who had looked upon him as her best friend since the day
+he had wiped up her tears; but Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell
+to talk. She had uttered languid and brief observations from time
+to time with her eyes shut and her head lolling loosely on her
+neck, but this was the first time she had been, as it were, an
+ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet, walking about,
+looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in a
+condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was a born mother. The more trouble he was given the
+more attached he became. He had rolled Anna-Felicitas up in rugs so
+often that to be not going to roll her up any more was depressing
+to him. He was beginning to perceive this motherliness in him
+himself, and he gazed through his spectacles at Anna-Felicitas
+while she sketched the rise and fall of the follower, and wondered
+with an almost painful solicitude what her fate would be in the
+hands of the Clouston Sacks.</p>
+<p>Equally he wondered as to the other one's fate; for he could not
+think of one Twinkler without thinking of the other. They were
+inextricably mixed together in the impression they had produced on
+him, and they dwelt together in his thoughts as one person called,
+<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>generally, Twinklers. He stood
+gazing at them, his motherly instincts uppermost, his hearty
+yearning over them now that the hour of parting was so near and his
+carefully tended chickens were going to be torn from beneath his
+wing. Mr. Twist was domestic. He was affectionate. He would have
+loved, though he had never known it, the sensation of pattering
+feet about his house, and small hands clinging to the apron he
+would never wear. And it was entirely characteristic of him that
+his invention, the invention that brought him his fortune, should
+have had to do with a teapot.</p>
+<p>But if his heart was uneasy within him at the prospect of
+parting from his charges their hearts were equally uneasy, though
+not in the same way. The very name of Clouston K. Sack was
+repugnant to Anna-Rose; and Anna-Felicitas, less quick at
+disliking, turned it over cautiously in her mind as one who turns
+over an unknown and distasteful object with the nose of his
+umbrella. Even she couldn't quite believe that any good thing could
+come out of a name like that, especially when it had got into their
+lives through Uncle Arthur. Mr. Twist had never heard of the
+Clouston Sacks, which made Anna-Rose still more distrustful. She
+wasn't in the least encouraged when he explained the bigness of
+America and that nobody in it ever knew everybody&mdash;she just
+said that everybody had heard of Mr. Roosevelt, and her heart was
+too doubtful within her even to mind being told, as he did
+immediately tell her within ear-shot of Anna-Felicitas, that her
+reply was unreasonable.</p>
+<p>Just at the end, as they were all three straining their eyes, no
+one with more anxiety than Mr. Twist, to try and guess which of the
+crowd on the landing-stage were <a name="Page_109" id=
+"Page_109"></a>the Clouston Sacks, they passed on their other side
+the <i>Vaterland</i>, the great interned German liner at its
+moorings, and the young man who had previously been so very
+familiar, as Anna-Rose said, but who was only, Mr. Twist explained,
+being American, came hurrying boldly up.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't miss this," he said to Anna-Felicitas, actually
+seizing her by the arm. "Here's something that'll make you feel
+home-like right away."</p>
+<p>And he led her off, and would have dragged her off but for
+Anna-Felicitas's perfect non-resistance.</p>
+<p>"He <i>is</i> being familiar," said Anna-Rose to Mr. Twist,
+turning very red and following quickly after him. "That's not just
+being American. Everybody decent knows that if there's any laying
+hold of people's arms to be done one begins with the eldest
+sister."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps he doesn't realize that you <i>are</i> the elder," said
+Mr. Twist. "Strangers judge, roughly, by size."</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose,
+not heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you,
+being left sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all
+that. And the worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She
+hasn't nearly come to the end of what she can do in that direction.
+I see it growing on her. Every Sunday she's inches prettier than
+she was the Sunday before. And wherever I take her to live, and
+however out of the way it is, I'm sure the path to our front door
+is going to be black with suitors."</p>
+<p>This dreadful picture so much perturbed her, and she looked up
+at Mr. Twist with such worried eyes, that he couldn't refrain from
+patting her on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>"There, there," said Mr. Twist, and he begged her to be sure to
+let him know directly she was in the least <a name="Page_110" id=
+"Page_110"></a>difficulty, or even perplexity,&mdash;"about the
+suitors, for instance, or anything else. You must let me be of some
+use in the world, you know," he said.</p>
+<p>"But we shouldn't like it at all if we thought you were
+practising being useful on us," said Anna-Rose "It's wholly foreign
+to our natures to enjoy being the objects of anybody's
+philanthropy."</p>
+<p>"Now I just wonder where you get all your long words from," said
+Mr. Twist soothingly; and Anna-Rose laughed, and there was only one
+dimple in the Twinkler family and Anna-Rose had got it.</p>
+<p>"What do you want to get looking at <i>that</i> for?" she asked
+Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the
+<i>Vaterland</i>, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening
+abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was
+treating her to,&mdash;that terse, surprising, swift
+hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was
+hearing in such abundance for the first time.</p>
+<p>The American passengers appeared one and all to be rejoicing
+over the impotence of the great ship. Every one of them seemed to
+be violently pro-Ally, derisively conjecturing the feelings of the
+<i>Vaterland</i> as every day under her very nose British ships
+arrived and departed and presently arrived again,&mdash;the same
+ships she had seen depart coming back unharmed, unhindered by her
+country's submarines. Only the two German ladies, once more
+ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It was incredible
+to them, simply <i>unfassbar</i> as they said in their thoughts,
+that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare lay
+a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything
+belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. Well, these
+Americans, these dollar-grubbing <a name="Page_111" id=
+"Page_111"></a>Yankees, would soon get taught a sharp, deserved
+lesson&mdash;but at this point they suddenly remembered they were
+Americans themselves, and pulled up their thoughts violently, as it
+were, on their haunches.</p>
+<p>They turned, however, bitterly to the Twinkler girl as she
+pushed her way through to her sister,&mdash;those renegade Junkers,
+those contemptible little apostates&mdash;and asked her, after
+hearing her question to Anna-Felicitas, with an extraordinary
+breaking out of pent-up emotion where she, then, supposed she would
+have been at that moment if it hadn't been for Germany.</p>
+<p>"Not here I think," said Anna-Rose, instantly and fatally ready
+as she always was to answer back and attempt what she called
+reasoned conversation. "There wouldn't have been a war, so of
+course I wouldn't have been here."</p>
+<p>"Why, you wouldn't so much as have been born without Germany,"
+said the lady whose hair came off, with difficulty controlling a
+desire to shake this insolent and perverted Junker who could repeat
+the infamous English lie as to who began the war. "You owe your
+very existence to Germany. You should be giving thanks to her on
+your knees for her gift to you of life, instead of jeering at this
+representative&mdash;" she flung a finger out toward the
+<i>Vaterland</i>&mdash;"this patient and dignified-in
+-temporary-misfortune representative, of her power."</p>
+<p>"I wasn't jeering," said Anna-Rose, defending herself and
+clutching at Anna-Felicitas's sleeve to pull her away.</p>
+<p>"You wouldn't have had a father at all but for Germany," said
+the other lady, the one whose hair grew.</p>
+<p>"And perhaps you will tell me," said the first one, "where you
+would have been <i>then</i>."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>I don't believe," said
+Anna-Rose, her nose in the air, "I don't believe I'd have ever been
+at a loss for a father."</p>
+<p>The ladies, left speechless a moment by the arrogance as well as
+several other things about this answer gave Anna-Rose an
+opportunity for further reasoning with them, which she was unable
+to resist. "There are lots of fathers," she said, "in England, who
+would I'm sure have been delighted to take me on if Germany had
+failed me."</p>
+<p>"England!"</p>
+<p>"Take you on!"</p>
+<p>"An English father for you? For a subject of the King of
+Prussia?"</p>
+<p>"I&mdash;I'm afraid I&mdash;I'm going to be sick," gasped
+Anna-Felicitas suddenly.</p>
+<p>"You're never going to be sick in this bit of bathwater, Miss
+Twinkler?" exclaimed the young man, with the instant ungrudging
+admiration of one who is confronted by real talent. "My, what a
+gift!"</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose darted at Anna-Felicitas's drooping head, that which
+she had been going to say back to the German ladies dissolving on
+her tongue. "Oh no&mdash;<i>no</i>&mdash;" she wailed. "Oh
+<i>no</i>&mdash;not in your best hat, Columbus darling&mdash;you
+can't&mdash;it's not done&mdash;and your hat'll shake off into the
+water, and then there'll only be one between us and we shall never
+be able to go out paying calls and things at the same
+time&mdash;come away and sit down&mdash;Mr. Twist&mdash;Mr.
+Twist&mdash;oh, please come&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas allowed herself to be led away, just in time as
+she murmured, and sat down on the nearest seat and shut her eyes.
+She was thankful Anna-Rose's attention had been diverted to her so
+instantly, for it would have been very difficult to be sick with
+the <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>ship as quiet as one's own
+bedroom. Nothing short of the engine-room could have made her sick
+now. She sat keeping her eyes shut and Anna-Rose's attention
+riveted, wondering what she would do when there was no ship and
+Anna-Rose was on the verge of hasty and unfortunate argument. Would
+she have to learn to faint? But that would terrify poor Christopher
+so dreadfully.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas pondered, her eyes shut, on this situation. Up to
+now in her life she had always found that situations solved
+themselves. Given time. And sometimes a little assistance. So, no
+doubt, would this one. Anna-Rose would ripen and mellow. The German
+ladies would depart hence and be no more seen; and it was unlikely
+she and Anna-Rose would meet at such close quarters as a ship's
+cabin any persons so peculiarly and unusually afflicting again. All
+situations solved themselves; or, if they showed signs of not going
+to, one adopted the gentle methods that helped them to get solved.
+Early in life she had discovered that objects which cannot be
+removed or climbed over can be walked round. A little deviousness,
+and the thing was done. She herself had in the most masterly manner
+when she was four escaped church-going for several years by a
+simple method, that seemed to her looking back very like an
+inspiration, of getting round it. She had never objected to going,
+had never put into words the powerful if vague dislike with which
+it filled her when Sunday after Sunday she had to go and dangle her
+legs helplessly for two hours from the chair she was put on in the
+enclosed pew reserved for the <i>hohe gr&auml;fliche
+Herrschaften</i> from the Slosh.</p>
+<p>Her father, a strict observer of the correct and a <a name=
+"Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>pious believer in God for other
+people, attended Divine Service as regularly as he wound the clocks
+and paid the accounts. He <i>repr&auml;sentierte</i>, as the German
+phrase went; and his wife and children were expected to
+<i>repr&auml;sentieren</i> too. Which they did uncomplainingly; for
+when one has to do with determined husbands and fathers it is
+quickest not to complain. But the pins and needles that patient
+child endured, Anna-Felicitas remembered, looking back through the
+years at the bunched-up figure on the chair as at a stranger, were
+something awful. The edge of the chair just caught her legs in the
+pins and needles place. If she had been a little bigger or a little
+smaller it wouldn't have happened; as it was, St. Paul wrestling
+with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas
+perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after
+Sunday bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside
+her, and she heard her own voice floating out into the void above
+the heads of the mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible
+distinctness in a sort of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold
+potato for breakfast,"&mdash;and a second time, in the breathless
+suspension of mumbling that followed upon this: "I only had a cold
+potato for breakfast,"&mdash;and a third time she opened her mouth
+to repeat the outrageous statement, regardless of her mother's
+startled hand laid on her arm, and of Anna-Rose's petrified stare,
+and of the lifted faces of the congregation, and of the bent,
+scandalized brows of the pastor,&mdash;impelled by something that
+possessed her, unable to do anything but obey it; but her father, a
+man of deeds, rose up in his place, took her in his arms, and
+carried her down the stairs and out of the church. And the minute
+she found herself really rescued, and out where <a name="Page_115"
+id="Page_115"></a>the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
+larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as
+affectionately against her father's head as if she were a daughter
+to be proud of, and would have purred if she had had had a purr as
+loudly as the most satisfied and virtuous of cats.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mein Kind</i>," said her father, standing her up on a
+convenient tomb so that her eyes were level with his, "is it then
+true about the cold potato?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her
+legs were feeling like again.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mein Kind</i>," said her father, "do you not know it is
+wrong to lie?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her
+eyes, gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the
+trees.</p>
+<p>"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, <i>Kind</i>, you
+know what a lie is?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her
+satisfaction at being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he
+still stood staring at her she put her hands one on each of his
+cheeks and squeezed his face together and murmured, "Oh, I do
+<i>love</i> you."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><a name="Page_116" id=
+"Page_116"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<p>Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat
+with her eyes shut long after she needn't have.</p>
+<p>She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the
+future so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of
+the Baltic again, where bits of amber where washed up after a
+storm, and the pale rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was
+hardly salt, and the air seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the
+cottage gardens in the little village that clustered round a
+clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in them, for there was
+something in the soil that made lilacs be more wonderful there than
+anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole forest as far as
+one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After rain on a May
+evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running down the
+black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to the
+shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
+the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that
+lifting of one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea
+smell and the lilac. And then there was home to come back to when
+the forest began to look too dark and its deep silence made one's
+flesh creep&mdash;home, and a light in the window where ones mother
+was. Incredible the security of those days, the safe warmth of
+them, the careless roominess....</p>
+<p>"You know if you <i>could</i> manage to feel a little better,
+<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose's
+voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get off this
+ship."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
+self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the
+deck except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last
+alongside the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was
+ashamed of herself for having wandered off so easily and
+comfortably into the past, and left poor Christopher alone in the
+difficult present.</p>
+<p>"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her
+hat a tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for
+anything, especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep.
+Have you&mdash;" she hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are
+they&mdash;are the Clouston Sacks visible yet?"</p>
+<p>"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too,
+and looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here
+sooner to see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them,
+and they looked so like what I think they will look like that I
+went into our cabin again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them.
+They've found the people they were after, and have gone."</p>
+<p>"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and
+I think we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know
+what they're like and they don't know what you're like it may be
+difficult. Heaven forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you,
+but I have to catch a train if I'm to get home to-night, and I
+don't intend to catch it until I've handed you over safely to the
+Sacks."</p>
+<p>"Those Sacks&mdash;" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished
+irrelevantly by remarking that it was the details <a name=
+"Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>of life that were
+discouraging,&mdash;from which Anna Felicitas knew that
+Christopher's heart was once more in her boots.</p>
+<p>"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
+"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but
+at some time when we're more at leisure."</p>
+<p>It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston
+Sacks would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the
+beginning that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at
+least their plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them
+away to the Sack lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family
+mansion. It was, they knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing
+to them. Only Mr. Twist knew how far away it was. He had always
+supposed the Sacks would meet their young charges, stay that night
+in New York, and continue on to Boston next day. The twins were so
+certain they would be met that Mr. Twist was certain too. He had
+concluded, with a growingly empty feeling in his heart as the time
+of separation drew near, that all that now remained for him to do
+on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over to the Sacks. And
+then leave them. And then go home to that mother he loved but had
+for some time known he didn't like,&mdash;go home a bereft and
+lonely man.</p>
+<p>But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been
+Sacks for all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody
+in fact seemed to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said,
+"Are you the Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms;
+the air was full of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate
+kissing of relations; but nobody took any <a name="Page_119" id=
+"Page_119"></a>notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
+waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's
+luggage&mdash;only his was baggage&mdash;was examined, and the
+kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed hither and thither, and broke
+up into groups, and was shot through by interviewers, and got
+packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and thinner, and at last
+was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it was no longer
+possible.</p>
+<p>There were no Sacks.</p>
+<p>To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed
+hall piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly
+and asked if they were intending to meet some young ladies called
+Twinkler. His tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one
+of inquiry, it almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were
+cold. He wandered about uncertainly from group to group, his soft
+felt hat on the back of his head and his brow getting more and more
+puckered; and Anna-Rose, anxiously looking on from afar, became
+impatient at last of these refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and
+thought that perhaps Mr. Twist wasn't making himself clear.</p>
+<p>Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she
+approached a group on her own account and asked them, enunciating
+her words very clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and
+Mrs. Clouston Sack.</p>
+<p>The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at
+her in astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr.
+Twist being turned away for the fifth time in the distance a wave
+of red despair came over her, and she said, reproach in her voice
+and tears in her eyes, "But <i>somebody's</i> got to be the
+Sacks."</p>
+<p>Upon which the group she was addressing stared at her in a more
+astonished silence than ever.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>Mr. Twist came up mopping
+his brow and took he arm and led her back to Anna-Felicitas, who
+was taking care of the luggage and had sat down philosophically to
+await developments on a bag of sulphur. She didn't yet know what
+sulphur looked like on one's clothes after one has sat on it, and
+smiled cheerfully and encouragingly at Anna-Rose as she came
+towards her.</p>
+<p>"There <i>are</i> no Sacks," said Anna-Rose, facing the
+truth.</p>
+<p>"It's exactly like that Uncle Arthur of yours," said Mr. Twist,
+mopping his forehead and speaking almost vindictively. "Exactly
+like him. A man like that <i>would</i> have the sort of friends
+that don't meet one."</p>
+<p>"Well, we must do without the Sacks," said Anna-Felicitas,
+rising from the sulphur bag with the look of serene courage that
+can only dwell on the face of one who is free from care as to what
+has happened to him behind. "And it isn't," she added sweetly to
+Mr. Twist, "as if we hadn't got <i>you</i>."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, suddenly seeing daylight. "Of course.
+What do Sacks really matter? I mean, for a day or two? You'll take
+us somewhere where we can wait till we've found them."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Some nice quiet old-fashioned
+coffee-house sort of place, like the one the Brontes went to in St.
+Paul's Churchyard the first time they were launched into the
+world."</p>
+<p>"Yes. Some inexpensive place."</p>
+<p>"Suited to the frugal."</p>
+<p>"Because although we've got &pound;200, even that will need
+watching or it will go."</p>
+<p>During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead.
+As often as he mopped it it broke out <a name="Page_121" id=
+"Page_121"></a>afresh and had to be mopped again. They were the
+only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He
+couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim,
+locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers
+attentively.</p>
+<p>Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her
+wharves and landing-places with officials specially appointed to
+guard the purity of family life. Family life obviously cannot be
+pure without a marriage being either in it or having at some time
+or other passed through it. The officials engaged in eyeing Mr.
+Twist and the twins were all married themselves, and were well
+acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the Twist and Twinkler
+party as they might, they could see no trace of marriage anywhere
+about it.</p>
+<p>On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it
+amounted to conscious illegality.</p>
+<p>"Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead.</p>
+<p>"These here&mdash;" said the official, jerking his thumb at the
+twins. "They your sisters?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like
+him?"</p>
+<p>"Daughters?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of
+repudiation. "You <i>can't</i> really think we look as much like
+him as all that?"</p>
+<p>"Wife and sister-in-law?"</p>
+<p>Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose
+forgetting her cares for a moment. <a name="Page_122" id=
+"Page_122"></a>But they were flattered, because it was at least a
+proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up.</p>
+<p>"Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters,
+and they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said
+Mr. Twist vehemently.</p>
+<p>"Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out
+his jaw. "This is a free country, and I'll have no darned
+cheek."</p>
+<p>"These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more
+patiently. "They're my friends."</p>
+<p>"Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're
+going to do with them next."</p>
+<p>"Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered
+brow at the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew."</p>
+<p>The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant
+contempt. He had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed
+already. There had been a slump in sinners the past week, and he
+was as full of suppressed energy and as much tormented by it as an
+unexercised and overfed horse. "Step this way," he ordered curtly,
+waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden erection that was apparently an
+office. "Oh, don't you worry about the girls," he added, as his
+prey seemed disinclined to leave them.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist did worry. He saw Ellis Island looming up behind
+the two figures that were looking on in an astonishment that had
+not yet had time to turn into dismay as he was marched off out of
+sight. "I'll be back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"That's as may be," remarked the official grimly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>But he was back; if not in
+a minute in a little more than five minutes, still accompanied by
+the official, but an official magically changed into tameness and
+amiability, desirous to help, instructing his inferiors to carry
+Mr. Twist's and the young ladies' baggage to a taxi.</p>
+<p>It was the teapot that had saved him,&mdash;that blessed teapot
+that was always protruding itself benevolently into his life. Mr.
+Twist had identified himself with it, and it had instantly saved
+him. In the shelter of his teapot Mr. Twist could go anywhere and
+do anything in America. Everybody had it. Everybody knew it. It was
+as pervasive of America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly
+pervasive. It was only less visible because it stayed at home. It
+was more like a wife than Ford's cars were. From a sinner caught
+red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable creator, leapt to the position
+of one who can do no wrong, for he had not only placed his teapot
+between himself and judgment but had accompanied his proofs of
+identity by a suitable number of dollar bills, pressed
+inconspicuously into the official's conveniently placed hand.</p>
+<p>The twins found themselves being treated with distinction. They
+were helped into the taxi by the official himself, and what was to
+happen to them next was left entirely to the decision and
+discretion of Mr. Twist&mdash;a man so much worried that at that
+moment he hadn't any of either. He couldn't even answer when asked
+where the taxi was to go to. He had missed his train, and he tried
+not to think of his mother's disappointment, the thought was so
+upsetting. But he wouldn't have caught it if he could, for how
+could he leave these two poor children?</p>
+<p>"I'm more than ever convinced," he said, pushing his <a name=
+"Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>hat still further off his forehead,
+and staring at the back of the Twinkler trunks piled up in front of
+him next to the driver, while the disregarded official at the door
+still went on asking him where he wished the cab to go to, "that
+children should all have parents."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><a name="Page_125" id=
+"Page_125"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<p>The hotel they were finally sent to by the official, goaded at
+last by Mr. Twist's want of a made-up mind into independent
+instructions to the cabman, was the Ritz. He thought this very
+suitable for the evolver of Twist's Non-Trickler, and it was only
+when they were being rushed along at what the twins, used to the
+behaviour of London taxis and not altogether unacquainted with the
+prudent and police-supervised deliberation of the taxis of Berlin,
+regarded as a skid-collision-and-mutilation-provoking speed, that a
+protest from Anna-Rose conveyed to Mr. Twist where they were
+heading for.</p>
+<p>"An hotel called Ritz sounds very expensive," she said. "I've
+heard Uncle Arthur talk of one there is in London and one there is
+in Paris, and he said that only damned American millionaires could
+afford to stay in them. Anna-Felicitas and me aren't American
+millionaires&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Or damned," put in Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;but quite the contrary," said Anna-Rose, "hadn't you
+better take us somewhere else?"</p>
+<p>"Somewhere like where the Brontes stayed in London," said
+Anna-Felicitas harping on this idea. "Where cheapness is combined
+with historical associations."</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord, it don't matter," said Mr. Twist, who for the first
+time in their friendship seemed ruffled.</p>
+<p>"Indeed it does," said Anna-Rose anxiously.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>You forget we've got to
+husband our resources," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't run away with the idea that because we've got
+&pound;200 we're the same as millionaires," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, "frequently told us that
+&pound;200 is a very vast sum; but he equally frequently told us
+that it isn't."</p>
+<p>"It was when he was talking about having given to us that he
+said it was such a lot," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"He said that as long as we had it we would be rich," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "but directly we hadn't it we would be poor."</p>
+<p>"So we'd rather not go to the Ritz, please," said Anna-Rose, "if
+you don't mind."</p>
+<p>The taxi was stopped, and Mr. Twist got out and consulted the
+driver. The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for
+the twins floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle
+Charles would speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit,
+and approached those he did speak to with caution till they were
+sixty. He regarded them as one of the chief causes of modern
+unrest. He liked them so much that he hated them. He could practise
+abstinence, but not temperance. Uncle Charles was no good as a
+refuge.</p>
+<p>"Well now, see here," said the driver at last, after Mr. Twist
+had rejected such varied suggestions of something small and quiet
+as the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Biltmore, "you tell me
+where you want to go to and I'll take you there."</p>
+<p>"I want to go to the place your mother would stay in if she came
+up for a day or two from the country," said Mr. Twist
+helplessly.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>Get right in then, and
+I'll take you back to the Ritz," said the driver.</p>
+<p>But finally, when his contempt for Mr. Twist, of whose identity
+he was unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy
+pleasantries with him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in
+a street off the less desirable end of Fifth Avenue, and got rid of
+him.</p>
+<p>It was one of those quiet and cheap New York hotels that yet are
+both noisy and expensive. It was full of foreigners,&mdash;real
+foreigners, the twins perceived, not the merely technical sort like
+themselves, but people with yellow faces and black eyes. They
+looked very seedy and shabby, and smoked very much, and talked
+volubly in unknown tongues. The entrance hall, a place of mottled
+marble, with clerks behind a counter all of whose faces looked as
+if they were masks, was thick with them; and it was when they
+turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas passed and Anna-Rose
+was thinking proudly, "Yes, you don't see anything like that every
+day, do you," and herself looked fondly at her Columbus, that she
+saw that it wasn't Columbus's beauty at all but the sulphur on the
+back of her skirt.</p>
+<p>This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in
+the lift to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was
+trying to brush it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best
+one.</p>
+<p>"That's all your grips, ain't it?" said the youth in buttons who
+had come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom
+floor.</p>
+<p>"Our what?" said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. "Do
+you mean our bags?"</p>
+<p>"No. Grips. These here," said the youth.</p>
+<p>"Is that what they're called in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas,
+with the intelligent interest of a traveller <a name="Page_128" id=
+"Page_128"></a>determined to understand and appreciate everything,
+while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the condition of the best
+skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before the youth,
+continued to brush her down as best she could with her
+handkerchief.</p>
+<p>"I don't call them. It's what they are," said the youth. "What I
+want to know is, are they all here?"</p>
+<p>"How interesting that you don't drop your h's," said
+Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him. "The rest of you is so <i>like</i>
+no h's."</p>
+<p>The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he
+didn't follow.</p>
+<p>"Those <i>are</i> all our&mdash;grips, I think," said Anna-Rose
+counting them round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. "Thank
+you very much," she added after a pause, as he still lingered.</p>
+<p>But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in
+England. Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off
+the table, and shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle
+was empty. "Want some ice water?" he inquired.</p>
+<p>"What for?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"What for?" echoed the youth.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's
+manner which seemed to her familiar, "we don't want ice water, but
+we should be glad of a little hot water."</p>
+<p>"You'll get all you want of that in there," said the youth,
+jerking his head towards a door that led into a bathroom. "It's ice
+water and ink that you get out of me."</p>
+<p>"Really?" said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more
+intelligent interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being
+America, a country, she had heard, of <a name="Page_129" id=
+"Page_129"></a>considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his
+person bristling with taps which only needed turning.</p>
+<p>"We don't want either, thank you," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brushing began to grow vehement.
+Why didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and
+hurt his feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he?
+Anna-Felicitas, who was much too pleasantly detached, thought
+Anna-Rose, for such a situation, the door being wide open to the
+passage and the ungetridable youth standing there staring, was
+leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing her hair.</p>
+<p>"Suppose you're new to this country," said the youth after a
+pause.</p>
+<p>"Brand," said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Then p'raps," said the youth, "you don't know that the feller
+who brings up your grips gets a tip."</p>
+<p>"Of course we know that," said Anna-Rose, standing up straight
+and trying to look stately.</p>
+<p>"Then if you know why don't you do it?"</p>
+<p>"Do it?" she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into
+respectfulness by haughtily throwing back her head. "Of course we
+shall do it. At the proper time and place."</p>
+<p>"Which is, as you must have noticed," added Anna-Felicitas
+gently, "departure and the front door."</p>
+<p>"That's all right," said the youth, "but that's only one of the
+times and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is
+the first one."</p>
+<p>"Do I understand," said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified,
+while her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one
+offer people like this?&mdash;"that to America one tips at the
+beginning as well?"</p>
+<p>"Yep," said the youth. "And in the middle too. <a name=
+"Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>Right along through. Never miss an
+opportunity, is as good a slogan as you'll get when it comes to
+tipping."</p>
+<p>"I believe you'd have liked Kipps," said Anna-Felicitas
+meditatively, shaking some dust off her hat and remembering the
+orgy of tipping that immortal young man went in for at the seaside
+hotel.</p>
+<p>"What I like now," said the youth, growing more easy before
+their manifest youth and ignorance, "is tips. Guess you can call it
+Kipps if it pleases you."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose began to fumble nervously in her purse "It's horrid, I
+think, to ask for presents," she said to the youth in deep
+humiliation, more on his account than hers.</p>
+<p>"Presents? I'm not asking for presents. I'm telling you what's
+done," said the youth. And he had spots on his face. And he was
+repugnant to her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose gave him what looked like a shilling. He took it, and
+remarking that he had had a lot of trouble over it went away; and
+Anna-Rose was still flushed by this encounter when Mr. Twist
+knocked and asked if they were ready to be taken down to tea.</p>
+<p>"He might have said thank you," she said indignantly to
+Anna-Felicitas, giving a final desperate brushing to the
+sulphur.</p>
+<p>"I expect he'll come to a bad end," said Anna-Felicitas
+soothingly.</p>
+<p>They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing
+such a thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables
+laid for dinner. It wasn't the custom much in America, explained
+Mr. Twist, to have tea, and no preparations were made for it in
+hotels of that sort. The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be
+discouraged, were showing their detachment from it by sitting in a
+corner of the room playing dominoes. <a name="Page_131" id=
+"Page_131"></a>It was a big room, all looking-glasses and windows,
+and the street outside was badly paved and a great noise of passing
+motor-vans came in and drowned most of what Mr. Twist was saying.
+It was an unlovely place, a place in which one might easily feel
+homesick and that the world was empty of affection, if one let
+oneself go that way. The twins wouldn't. They stoutly refused, in
+their inward recesses, to be daunted by these externals. For there
+was Mr. Twist, their friend and stand-by, still with them, and
+hadn't they got each other? But they felt uneasy all the same; for
+Mr. Twist, though he plied them with buttered toast and macaroons
+and was as attentive as usual, had a somnambulatory quality in his
+attention. He looked like a man who is doing things in a dream. He
+looked like one who is absorbed in something else. His forehead
+still was puckered, and what could it be puckered about, seeing
+that he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a
+clear and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a
+man?</p>
+<p>"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last,
+when he hadn't even heard a question she asked,&mdash;he, the
+polite, the interested, the sympathetic friend of the journey
+across.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in
+his pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at
+and said, "Yes."</p>
+<p>"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+<p>"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in
+my mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.</p>
+<p>"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "<a name=
+"Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>you've got the idea we want such a lot
+of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel quite
+comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant
+friends?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.</p>
+<p>"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but
+as co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.</p>
+<p>"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said
+Anna-Rose, supporting Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"For instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we
+were on it so heavily and so long."</p>
+<p>"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're
+starting a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on
+<i>instantly</i>."</p>
+<p>"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What
+were we made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on
+our own feet?"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends
+with everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it
+seems to give you a lot of satisfaction."</p>
+<p>"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such
+perfect equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as
+objects to be looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all
+be."</p>
+<p>"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed <a name=
+"Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>in her heart she loved and clung to
+Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all you've done for us
+and the way you were so kind to us on the boat,&mdash;we've been
+<i>most</i> obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much indeed,
+I know."</p>
+<p>"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in
+Anna-Felicitas, "and we've got to start life now in earnest."</p>
+<p>"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me
+what it is you propose to do next?"</p>
+<p>"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."</p>
+<p>"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."</p>
+<p>"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved
+abominably," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.</p>
+<p>"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed
+to Boston."</p>
+<p>"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the
+really proper and natural course was for him to have been able to
+take them to his mother. Pity one's mother wasn't&mdash;</p>
+<p>He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on
+the verge of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different
+one.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><a name="Page_134"
+id="Page_134"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<p>"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of
+New York, this one evening, let us go and look at it."</p>
+<p>He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose
+pulled out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe
+determination.</p>
+<p>"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless
+to protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American
+manhood. I only listened with half an ear to all the things you
+both said in the taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise
+of finding myself still with you instead of on the train for Clark,
+and because you both of you do say so very many things. But
+understand once and for all that in this country everything female
+has to be paid for by some man. I'm that man till I've left you on
+the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be Sack&mdash;confound him,"
+finished Mr. Twist suddenly.</p>
+<p>And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
+indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet
+seen in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to
+put him to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an
+established custom, surely," he said more gently.</p>
+<p>So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
+Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy,
+while reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack,
+who was, in their <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>ignorance of
+his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might be going to be
+mothers' helps in the Sack <i>m&eacute;nage</i> for all they
+knew,&mdash;they might, they said, be going to be anything, from
+honoured guests to typists.</p>
+<p>"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"No," said the twins.</p>
+<p>He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked
+down to the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for
+three enchanting miles. The sun had set some time before they got
+there, and had left a clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light
+on the river. Lamps were being lit, and hung like silver globes in
+the thin air. Steep grass slopes, and groups of big trees a little
+deeper yellow than the sky, hid that there were houses and a street
+above them on their right. Up and down the river steamers passed,
+pierced with light, their delicate smoke hanging in the air long
+after they had gone their way. It was so great a joy to walk in all
+this after ten days shut up on the <i>St. Luke</i> and to see such
+blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
+suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible
+not to be cheerful, translated from the <i>St. Luke</i> into such a
+place, trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all
+tingly.</p>
+<p>The world seemed suddenly quite good,&mdash;the simplest,
+easiest of objects to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it
+weigh on one, to laugh rather than cry. They trotted along humming
+bits of their infancy's songs, feeling very warm and happy inside,
+felicitously full of tea and macaroons and with their feet
+comfortably on something that kept still and didn't heave or lurch
+beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than he had been for some
+hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent a telegram to
+his <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>mother, expressing proper
+sorrow at being detained in New York, but giving no reason for it,
+and promising he would be with her rather late the next evening;
+and he had sent a telegram to the Clouston Sacks saying the
+Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed them in New York, would
+arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind was clear again
+owing to the determination of the twins to go to the Sacks. He was
+going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back to
+Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from
+Boston.</p>
+<p>If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks
+who, in Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he
+wouldn't have had the heart to press them to go; and then what
+would he have done with them? Their second and last line of
+defence, supposing they had considered the Sacks had failed and
+were to be ruled out, was in California, a place they spoke of as
+if it were next door to Boston and New York. How could he have let
+them set out alone on that four days' journey, with the possibility
+of once more at its end not being met? No wonder he had been
+abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of his forehead
+going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to the Sacks.
+For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without preparation
+and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York while
+he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist, the
+verb dropping into his mind with the <i>aplomb</i> of an
+inspiration, are the difficulties that beset a man directly he
+begins to twinkle. Already he had earnestly wished to knock the
+reception clerk in the hotel office down because of, first, his
+obvious suspicion of the party before he had heard Mr. Twist's
+name, and <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>because of, second,
+his politeness, his confidential manner as of an understanding
+sympathizer with a rich man's recreations, when he had. The tea,
+which he, had poured out of one of his own teapots, had been
+completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was only this teapot
+that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave Trafficker.
+He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the Twinklers, or
+into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a country,
+Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh from
+where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
+surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
+toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't
+be uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found
+America untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over
+the suspected amorousness of the rich, still putting people into
+uniforms in order to buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question
+him as to his private purities.</p>
+<p>He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
+pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he
+resist the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They
+walked along, talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster
+than he did, especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every
+few steps because of his so much longer legs, his face restored to
+all its usual kindliness as he listened benevolently to their
+remarks, and just when they were beginning to feel as if they soon
+might be tired and hungry a restaurant with lamp-hung gardens
+appeared as punctually as if they had been in Germany, that land of
+nicely arranged distances between meals. They had an extremely
+cheerful little supper out of <a name="Page_138" id=
+"Page_138"></a>doors, with things to eat that thrilled the
+Twinklers in their delicious strangeness; heavenly food, they
+thought it after the rigours of the second-class cooking on the
+<i>St. Luke</i>, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
+lives,&mdash;great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
+advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy
+of the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
+happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist
+was quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other
+tables at the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration,
+and so did the people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked.
+On the ship he had only sometimes been aware of it,&mdash;there
+would come a glint of sunshine and settle on Anna-Rose's little
+cheek where the dimple was, or he would lift his eyes from the
+Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness of Anna-Felicitas's
+eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now, dressed properly, and
+in their dryland condition of cheerful animation, he perceived that
+they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas was more than
+very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most unsuitable
+couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred pounds to
+support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them slip
+about if it should enter their heads to slip about,&mdash;go off
+without explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the
+Clouston Sacks,&mdash;but of course ridiculous as a serious
+background to life. A girl should either have enough money or be
+completely dependent on her male relations. As a girl was usually
+young reflected Mr. Twist, his spectacles with the Broadway lights
+in them blazing <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>on the two
+specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So
+were her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of
+wisdom.</p>
+<p>And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast
+at ten o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their
+grape-fruit in little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of
+American dish ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken
+pie, a page came in with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him
+instantly conspicuous&mdash;a thing he particularly
+disliked&mdash;and handed him a letter.</p>
+<p>The twins had gone.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><a name="Page_140"
+id="Page_140"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<p>They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they
+wrote, no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a
+discussion in their bedroom the night before when they got back in
+which Anna-Rose supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments,
+and it ended in Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to
+her original standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by
+the comfort and security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been
+inclined to slip.</p>
+<p>It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest.
+Anna-Felicitas had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently
+affectionate as a wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason
+into her husband. Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a
+husband, bristled at the mere breath of criticism of her superior
+intelligence and wisdom. She was the leader of the party, the head
+and guide, the one who had the dollars in her pocket, and being the
+eldest naturally must know best. Besides, she was secretly nervous
+about taking Anna-Felicitas about alone. She too had observed the
+stares of the public, and had never supposed that any of them might
+be for her. How was she to get to Boston successfully with so
+enchanting a creature, through all the complications of travel in
+an unknown country, without the support and counsel of Mr. Twist?
+Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents cowed her. The
+strangeness of <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>everything,
+while it delighted her so long as she could peep at it from behind
+Mr. Twist, appalled her the minute she was left alone with it.
+America seemed altogether a foreign country, a strange place whose
+inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a strange language. They
+talked English; or rather what sounded like English till you found
+that it wasn't really.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn
+horror of accepting money or other benefits from people who had no
+natural right to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal
+to. Christopher, after long wrestling restored at last to pride,
+did sit down and write the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's
+breakfast next morning, while Columbus slouched about the room
+suggesting sentences.</p>
+<p>It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for
+them, and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
+Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved
+long words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In
+rolling sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his
+concern, they pointed out that his first duty was to his mother,
+and his second was not to squander his possessions in paying the
+hotel and railway bills of persons who had no sort of claim on him,
+except those general claims of humanity which he had already on the
+<i>St. Luke</i> so amply discharged. They would refrain from paying
+their hotel bill, remembering his words as to the custom of the
+country, though their instincts were altogether against this
+course, but they could and would avoid causing him the further
+expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
+taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without
+him. They promised to write from the Sacks and let <a name=
+"Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>him know of their arrival to the
+address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget him
+as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
+A.-F. Twinkler.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.</p>
+<p>The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening
+before looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on
+the 8.15 for Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at
+seven o'clock, had asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to
+Boston, inquired about the station, etc., and had specially
+requested that Mr. Twist should not be disturbed.</p>
+<p>"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and
+didn't like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you
+knew all about it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.</p>
+<p>"So I did&mdash;so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go
+back to his breakfast for three.</p>
+<p>"So he did&mdash;so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to
+the other clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from
+the expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting
+things to each other.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary
+intensity at the station in getting their tickets, trying to
+understand the black man who seized and dealt with their luggage,
+and closely following him wherever he went in case he should
+disappear, were sitting in a state of relaxation and relief in the
+Boston express, their troubles over for at least several hours.</p>
+<p>The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who
+had children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay
+behind the twins' assumption <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>a
+of severe dignity, and took them in hand and got seats for them in
+the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars, parlour or
+otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to the
+booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
+third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the
+press and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as
+these dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in
+them some time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants
+offering them fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just
+as if they had been in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked
+admiringly, that counting their money they discovered what a hole
+the journey had made in it. But they were too much relieved at
+having accomplished so much on their own, quite uphelped for the
+first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it particularly to
+heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the &pound;200,
+and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train again
+for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
+they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr.
+Twist's purse.</p>
+<p>The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and
+privately in chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger
+should start staring at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her
+back altogether on him; to have one's feet on footstools when they
+were the sort of feet that don't reach the ground; to see the
+lovely autumn country flying past, hills and woods and fields and
+gardens golden in the October sun, while the horrible Atlantic was
+nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly reminiscent of
+English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a bit like
+either; to be able to have the window wide open <a name="Page_144"
+id="Page_144"></a>without getting soot in one's eyes because one of
+the ministering angels&mdash;clad, this one, appropriately to
+heaven, in white, though otherwise black&mdash;pulled up the same
+sort of wire screen they used to have in the windows at home to
+keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve, when they grew
+bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers and cause
+the black angel to spread a little table between them and bring
+clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
+curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to
+have the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose
+mouth was full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee
+from his own private supply at last when they had refused
+regretfully a dozen suggestions to buy&mdash;"Have a bit," he said,
+thrusting it under their noses. "As a gentleman to ladies&mdash;no
+pecuniary obligations&mdash;come on, now;" all this was to the
+twins too interesting and delightful for words.</p>
+<p>They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered,
+and since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant
+in return, intermittent amenities passed between them and the young
+man as he journeyed up and down through the cars.</p>
+<p>"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some
+reluctance, for presently it appeared to the twins that the clam
+broth and the toffee didn't seem to be liking each other now they
+had got together inside them, and also for fear of hurting his
+feelings if they refused, they took some more.</p>
+<p>They nodded and smiled stickily.</p>
+<p>"English, I guess."</p>
+<p>They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest
+working of their toffee-filled jaws.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>Then Anna-Felicitas, her
+cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had given the captain of
+the <i>St. Luke,</i> and said, "Practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r
+in "practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever
+did; but the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his
+way.</p>
+<p>"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for
+her jaws clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to
+be asked that the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to
+us. We'd better decide what we're going to say, and practise saying
+it without hesitation."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.</p>
+<p>"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
+swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid
+it would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise,
+then reflection, and then suspicion."</p>
+<p>"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
+disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is
+German when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like
+Germans. Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In
+God's eye we're not, and that's the principal eye after all."</p>
+<p>Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that
+parents when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties
+they're going to place their children in."</p>
+<p>"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I
+mean," she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be
+questioning the perfect love and forethought of their mother,
+"fathers don't."</p>
+<p>They were silent a little after this, each thinking <a name=
+"Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>things tinged to sobriety by the
+effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam broth and
+the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the Clouston
+Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful security of
+the train and begin to be active again, and quick and clever.
+Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be clever
+till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was so
+impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
+cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she
+hadn't an idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now&mdash;Aunt
+Alice had said, "You must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and
+Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much
+puckered as Mr. Twist's in her desire to get exactly at what
+tactful was in order to be able diligently to be it, asked for
+definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what gentlewomen were
+instinctively.</p>
+<p>"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston
+Anna-Rose repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time
+provided Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition,
+"seeing that we're supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do
+is to behave according to our instincts."</p>
+<p>But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts,
+especially Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being
+older, but even hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in
+unexpected directions according to the other person's behaviour.
+Her instinct, for instance, when engaged by Uncle Arthur in
+conversation had usually been to hit him. Was that tact? Yet she
+knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard that, since first she had
+heard words at all, from every servant, teacher, visitor and
+relation&mdash;except her <a name="Page_147" id=
+"Page_147"></a>mother&mdash;in her Prussian home. Indeed, over
+there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman, for she
+was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
+drip tact.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end,
+when the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea,
+"says that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been
+there."</p>
+<p>"Sensitive&mdash;sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head
+at his cup. "Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly
+whatever else they are. A great country. Everything on a vast
+scale, including sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite
+easy really&mdash;-" He raised a pedagogic finger at the twins.
+"You merely add half as much again to the quantity of your tact as
+the quantity you encounter of their sensitiveness, and it's all
+right."</p>
+<p>"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.</p>
+<p>As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's
+recipe for social success by heart, became more silent. On the
+ship, when the meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in
+sudden panic to her cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have
+been tact. But it was instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once
+again dread took possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to
+get there, to stay in the train and go on and on. She said nothing,
+of course, of her dread to Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine
+that young person's <i>morale</i>, but she did very much wish that
+principles weren't such important things and one needn't have cut
+oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered <a name=
+"Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>severely to Anna-Felicitas, gripping
+her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow passage to the door
+waiting to be let out at Boston.</p>
+<p>On the platform, they both thought, would be the
+Sacks,&mdash;certainly one Sack, and they had feverishly made
+themselves tidy and composed their faces into pleasant smiles
+preparatory to the meeting. But once again no Sacks were there. The
+platform emptied itself just as the great hall of the landing-stage
+had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the Twinklers.</p>
+<p>"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when
+it was finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have
+acquired the meeting habit."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what
+Aunt Alice used to complain about the housemaids,&mdash;neither
+punctual nor methodical."</p>
+<p>"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not
+escape us. I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of
+not having them. We will now proceed to track them to their
+lair."</p>
+<p>For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was
+still there. It was going on further and further away from the
+Sacks. Happy train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But
+she resisted, and engaged a porter.</p>
+<p>Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they
+had been the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand,
+and they knew what an American porter looked like. The porter and a
+taxi were engaged with comparative ease and assurance, and on
+giving the porter, who had staggered beneath the number of their
+grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud on his face, they doubled it
+instantly sooner than have trouble, and trebled it equally quickly
+on his displaying <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>yet further
+dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled
+up round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating
+themselves on how much easier it was to get away from a train than
+to get into one.</p>
+<p>But the minute their activities were over and they had time to
+think, silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They
+both composed their faces to indifference to hide that they were
+nervous, examining the streets they passed through with a calm and
+<i>blas&eacute;</i> stare worthy of a lorgnette. It was the tact
+part of the coming encounter that was chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose,
+and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her conviction that nobody who
+was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly be agreeable. "By
+their friends ye shall know them," thought Anna-Felicitas, staring
+out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also the persistence of
+the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations was
+discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
+wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and
+Anna-Rose being German.</p>
+<p>This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
+particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
+little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a
+hurt finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being
+knocked. Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable
+behaviour of Providence which had led their mother, so safely and
+admirably English, to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry
+somebody who wasn't. Of course there was this to be said for it,
+that she wasn't their mother then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas
+felt sure she wouldn't have. Then, <a name="Page_150" id=
+"Page_150"></a>perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult
+to follow she gave them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's
+arm and gave it a squeeze.</p>
+<p>"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be
+very eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi
+stopped.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><a name="Page_151"
+id="Page_151"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<p>The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and
+almost before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the
+intervening wide pavement and thrust his face through the
+window.</p>
+<p>"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.</p>
+<p>He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open;
+for it seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside
+it in a seething mass.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
+grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."</p>
+<p>"They ain't," said the boy promptly.</p>
+<p>"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her
+surprise.</p>
+<p>"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you
+my Sunday shirt they ain't."</p>
+<p>The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their
+conversations with the lower classes to be talked to about
+shirts.</p>
+<p>The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick
+that it flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going
+off.</p>
+<p>"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself.
+"We'll go up and see for ourselves."</p>
+<p>"You won't see," said the boy.</p>
+<p>"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>You won't see," he said,
+pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do see Sacks up there
+I'm a Hun."</p>
+<p>The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two
+umbrellas, two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged
+appearance repugnant to American ideas of baggage which run on big
+simple lines of huge trunks, an <i>attach&eacute;</i> case, a suit
+case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box. Outside beside the driver
+were two such small and modest trunks that they might almost as
+well have been grips themselves.</p>
+<p>"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
+difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway,
+and pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the
+knapsack lay and into which the basket, now that her body no longer
+kept it in, was rolling.</p>
+<p>"In where?" crackled the boy.</p>
+<p>"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs.
+Clouston Sack are."</p>
+<p>"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the
+boy, increasing the loudness of his crackling.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her
+turn disentangling herself from that which was still inside the
+taxi, and immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all
+and the <i>attach&eacute;</i> case.</p>
+<p>"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they
+don't. One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I
+meant when you said they're expecting you and I said they
+ain't."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say&mdash;" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of
+her breath. "Do you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice,
+"that one of them&mdash;one of them is dead?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>Dead? Bless you, no.
+Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone. Left. Got," said the
+boy.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last
+word, whose meaning escaped her, "oh&mdash;you mean just gone to
+meet us. And missed us. You see," she said, turning to
+Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after all."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack
+had tried to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.</p>
+<p>"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new
+point of view. "Well, I don't know about that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs.
+Clouston Sack who is here?"</p>
+<p>"Mr.," said the boy.</p>
+<p>"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose
+proceeded, followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.</p>
+<p>The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles
+lying on the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No
+hurry about them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to
+take them up when the gurls ask again&mdash;" and he darted after
+the gurls to hand them over to his colleague who worked what he
+called the elevator.</p>
+<p>"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+mildly inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to
+see Mr. Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest
+all the way up, "when it is really a lift?"</p>
+<p>"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.</p>
+<p>"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced
+that it's a lift."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>The boy didn't answer this.
+He was as silent as the other one wasn't; but there was a thrill
+about him too, something electric and tense. He stared at
+Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose, then
+quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
+obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of
+an idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
+entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life
+of the Sacks.</p>
+<p>The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the
+door of a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered,
+the actual door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they
+wished to commit suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of
+their own front door. They would then fall, infinitely far, on to
+the roof of the lift lurking at the bottom.</p>
+<p>The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once
+exposed to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a
+manservant standing in it staring at them.</p>
+<p>Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of
+his lift, approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him
+by saying, "Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and
+whispered in his ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who,
+however, regarded it as some expression peculiarly American and
+were left unmoved by it, "The co-respondents."</p>
+<p>The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only
+been gone a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her
+presence and authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted
+co-respondents to be about the place if she had been there, but on
+the other hand she wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole <a name=
+"Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>possession now. Nobody knew where Mrs.
+Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
+among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In
+his heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart,
+for the servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently
+explained, was all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore
+uncertainly at the twins, his brain revolving round their colossal
+impudence in coming there before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as
+had time to get, as it were, cold.</p>
+<p>"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear
+little voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was
+pulled open and the gentleman himself appeared.</p>
+<p>"I heard a noise of arrival&mdash;" he said, stopping suddenly
+when he saw them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's
+voice&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the
+bright conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr.
+Clouston Sack?"</p>
+<p>She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to
+him and held out their hands.</p>
+<p>"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have
+noticed it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He
+looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the
+manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was
+a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on
+his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly
+and had wriggled up to the rim of his collar.</p>
+<p>"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>There hasn't been much
+time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's less than two months
+since there were all those letters."</p>
+<p>"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"</p>
+<p>"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that
+she was unnerved.</p>
+<p>"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish
+brightness.</p>
+<p>Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear
+the last few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of
+the lift-boy, lingering and he further saw the expression on his
+servant's face Even to his bewilderment it was clear what he was
+thinking.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the
+dining-room. "Come in, come in," he said distractedly.</p>
+<p>They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant
+lingered a moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy
+dropped away in his lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen.
+"I'm darned," was all he could articulate. "I'm darned."</p>
+<p>"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on
+getting inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her
+determined cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"</p>
+<p>"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead.
+"Excuse me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day&mdash;it
+makes me stupid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm <i>very</i> sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.</p>
+<p>"And so am I&mdash;<i>very</i>," said Anna-Felicitas, equally
+solicitous. "Have you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy
+like that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh thank you&mdash;it's good of you, it's good of you. <a name=
+"Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>The effect, you see, is that I can't
+think very clearly. But do tell me&mdash;why luggage?
+Luggage&mdash;luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."</p>
+<p>"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't
+there&mdash;isn't there always luggage in America too when people
+come to stay with one?"</p>
+<p>"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand
+to his forehead again.</p>
+<p>"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;I know. You've told me that."</p>
+<p>"So naturally we've come."</p>
+<p>"But <i>is</i> it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them
+distractedly.</p>
+<p>"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs.
+Sack, which is the same thing&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it
+were. It ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to
+meet us in New York, or where?"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's&mdash;gone."</p>
+<p>"Gone where?"</p>
+<p>"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh,"
+he went on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him,
+he fought with and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in
+the hall I thought&mdash;I had a moment's hope&mdash;for a minute I
+believed&mdash;she had come back. So I went out. Else I couldn't
+have seen you. I'm not fit to see strangers&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice,
+were so much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile
+that the twins viewed him <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>with
+the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion and passed no
+judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an American
+one naturally behaved like that.</p>
+<p>"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call
+us strangers. We're the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;I know&mdash;you keep on telling me that," said
+Mr. Sack. "But I can't call to mind&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're
+the nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit&mdash;as I'm sure,"
+Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for
+being."</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
+pretty girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile
+all over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly
+unvain as a person intent on something else would be.</p>
+<p>"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she
+continued, "because he showed us your answers back. You invited us
+to come and stay with you. And, as you perceive, we've done
+it."</p>
+<p>"Then it must have been months ago&mdash;months ago," said Mr.
+Sack, "before all this&mdash;do I remember something about it? I've
+had such trouble since&mdash;I've been so distracted one way and
+another&mdash;it may have slipped away out of my memory under the
+stress&mdash;Mrs. Sack&mdash;" He paused and looked round the room
+helplessly. "Mrs. Sack&mdash;well, Mrs. Sack isn't here now."</p>
+<p>"We're <i>very</i> sorry you've had trouble," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though.
+Man that is born of woman is full of misery. <a name="Page_159" id=
+"Page_159"></a>That's what the Burial Service says, and it ought to
+know."</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you
+a pretty&mdash;" he again began.</p>
+<p>"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"I wish I knew&mdash;I wish I could hope&mdash;but she's gone
+for a long while, I'm afraid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said
+miserably.</p>
+<p>There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each
+other.</p>
+<p>"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a
+little pull.</p>
+<p>"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
+warning.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind
+his back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas,
+forgetful of what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge
+of the table and began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.</p>
+<p>"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with
+friendly and interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt
+Alice&mdash;that's Uncle Arthur's wife, the one we're the nieces
+of&mdash;seemed to put up with the utmost contumely from their
+husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been something awful
+to yours."</p>
+<p>"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her.
+I do worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in
+Boston. I was as proud of her as any man has ever been of his
+wife."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>Then why did she go?"
+asked Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and
+I'm interested."</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack went because I was able&mdash;I was so
+constructed&mdash;that I could be fond of other people as well as
+of her," said Mr. Sack.</p>
+<p>"Well, <i>that's</i> nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."</p>
+<p>"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very
+politely indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall
+nevertheless continue to like other people as well. You, for
+instance. Will she mind that?"</p>
+<p>"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack,
+walking about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than
+addressing anybody, "but that I liked other people so
+<i>much</i>."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like
+over-eating whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got
+the resulting ache."</p>
+<p>"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is
+so full of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's
+eyes to them?"</p>
+<p>"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack.
+"Exactly. That's what I did."</p>
+<p>"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say
+anything against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet
+really, you know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty&mdash;" he began
+again, with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut
+short by Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were
+beginning to press.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed
+as the situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never
+to stay with people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they
+have a mother or other female relative living with them. She was
+most particular about it, and said whatever else we did we weren't
+ever to do this. So I'm afraid," she continued in her politest
+voice, determined to behave beautifully under circumstances that
+were trying, "much as we should have enjoyed staying with you and
+Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay with, seeing that she isn't
+we manifestly can't."</p>
+<p>"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his
+bewildered eyes to her. "Were you going to?"</p>
+<p>"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are,
+unless you can produce a mother&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired
+Anna-Felicitas, who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if
+possible to stay in it, and who besides was sure that in their
+forlorn situation a Sack <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>in
+the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the
+look of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair.
+He badly wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand
+he seemed to her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic
+helplessness her own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany,
+had had the day he caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked
+at Anna-Felicitas, while she was trying to get him out of it, with
+just the same expression on his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he
+walked about the room twisting and untwisting his fingers behind
+his back. Only, her Irish terrier hadn't had a Gibson profile.
+Also, he had looked much more efficient.</p>
+<p>"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack stared at her.</p>
+<p>"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>Mr. Sack stared at her.</p>
+<p>"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the
+circumstances&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more
+turns in front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect
+his thoughts, "that I&mdash;that we&mdash;had arranged to look
+after you?"</p>
+<p>"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur
+Abinger. Of course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote
+bidding us welcome. He showed us the letter."</p>
+<p>"Abinger. Abinger. Oh&mdash;<i>that</i> man," said Mr. Sack, his
+mind clearing.</p>
+<p>"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.</p>
+<p>"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly <a name=
+"Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>quite clear, "you must be&mdash;why,
+you <i>are</i> the Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals
+since we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said
+Anna-Rose with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say
+good-bye."</p>
+<p>"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas,
+"but where are we to go to?"</p>
+<p>"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of
+her size, "Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's
+other friends. But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train
+and go to Clark, to Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><a name="Page_164" id=
+"Page_164"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<p>And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother,
+son and daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired
+after a long afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to
+strike and, with the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and
+announce supper, but waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet
+recovered from an elaborate welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the
+lovely twilight of a golden day, were hastening up the winding road
+from the station towards them. Silent, and a little exhausted, the
+unconscious Twists sat in their drawing-room, a place of marble and
+antimacassars, while these light figures, their shoes white with
+the dust of a country-side that had had no rain for weeks, sped
+every moment nearer.</p>
+<p>The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through
+quiet, delicious evening country, and there was one little star
+twinkling encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed
+Clark would be. At the station there had been neither porter nor
+conveyance, nor indeed anybody or anything at all except
+themselves, their luggage, and a thin, kind man who represented
+authority. Clark is two miles away from its station, and all the
+way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a cluster of
+those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way places
+till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
+immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening
+sky.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>You can't miss it,"
+encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along after your noses
+till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate. I'll look after
+the menagerie&mdash;" thus did he describe the Twinkler luggage.
+"Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get there.
+Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
+arriving this very day. <i>I</i> wouldn't have forgotten you. No,
+not for a dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.</p>
+<p>"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+"when he isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."</p>
+<p>"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as
+they walked off. "He's a <i>great</i> friend of ours."</p>
+<p>"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum;
+and as the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he
+had been interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the
+train.</p>
+<p>"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road
+does. Give yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about
+stick to it. You'll meet other roads, but don't you take any notice
+of them."</p>
+<p>Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the
+twins went up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be
+going to see their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had,
+ever since the collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him
+very much. As they hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet
+fields, between yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing
+duskier and the beckoning star lighter, they remembered Mr. Twist's
+extraordinary kindness, his devoted and unfailing care, with the
+warmest feelings of gratitude and affection. Even <a name=
+"Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often
+had he rearranged her head when it was hopelessly rolling about;
+how often had he fed her when she felt better enough to be hungry.
+Anna-Felicitas was very hungry. She still thought highly of pride
+and independence, but now considered their proper place was after a
+good meal. And Anna-Rose, with all the shameless cheerfulness of
+one who for a little has got rid of her pride and is feeling very
+much more comfortable in consequence remarked that one mustn't
+overdo independence.</p>
+<p>"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm so dreadfully hungry. I
+do so terribly want supper. And I'm sure it's supper-time, and the
+Twists will have finished and we mightn't get any."</p>
+<p>"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!" exclaimed Anna-Rose,
+proud and confident.</p>
+<p>But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they
+raced the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist
+doorstep panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head
+maid's surprised and ungarnished inquiry as to what they wanted,
+when she opened the door and found them there.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she could
+speak.</p>
+<p>Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked, thinking
+perhaps they might be a deputation of elder school children sent to
+recite welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe return from the
+seat of war. Yet she knew all the school children and everybody
+else in Clark, and none of them were these.</p>
+<p>"No&mdash;from the station," panted Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We didn't see any village," panted Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling with her
+breath.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>Amanda eyed them. "Having
+supper," she said curtly.</p>
+<p>"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I hope he isn't
+eating it all."</p>
+<p>"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting on her
+dignity. "The Miss Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"The who?" said Amanda.</p>
+<p>"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still more
+dignity, for there was that in Amanda's manner which roused the
+Junker in her.</p>
+<p>"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda briefly.</p>
+<p>"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of
+conviction, "that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise
+he'll show no resentment whatever."</p>
+<p>Amanda half shut the door.</p>
+<p>"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into
+what was left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that
+we're totally unaccustomed to the doorstep?"</p>
+<p>Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
+herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and
+equal America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but
+taken aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that
+did it. She wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except
+on Sundays when the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she
+wasn't used to politeness. That so much of it should come out of
+objects so young rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.</p>
+<p>She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through
+it; instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.</p>
+<p>"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have <a name=
+"Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>arrived," said Anna-Rose, looking
+every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of Anna-Rose, but
+every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want of
+discipline, was sheer Junker.</p>
+<p>Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life,
+was stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was
+about to fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and
+ill-considered assertion that if he was her master she was his
+mistress and so there now, when the bell which had rung once
+already since they had been standing parleying rang again and more
+impatiently, and the dining-room door opened and a head appeared.
+The twins didn't know that it was Edith's head, but it was.</p>
+<p>"Amanda&mdash;" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the
+nearest she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice;
+but she stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked
+like a crowd. "Oh&mdash;" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh&mdash;" And
+was for withdrawing her head and shutting the door.</p>
+<p>But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light
+shining behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with
+outstretched hands.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," they both said cordially. "<i>Don't</i> go away
+again."</p>
+<p>Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly
+feeding mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held
+it to behind her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was
+taken and shaken even as Mr. Sack's had been.</p>
+<p>"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively <a name=
+"Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>moving her nose, a particularly
+delicate instrument, round among the various really heavenly smells
+that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them out and
+guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed
+into her mouth.</p>
+<p>The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr.
+Twist suddenly appeared in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances
+changed colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was
+stirred, and they were red now, and seemed translucent with the
+bright light behind him shining through them.</p>
+<p>The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they
+were to see him again. It was as if for years they had been
+separated from their dearest friend. The few hours since the night
+before had been enough to turn their friendship and esteem for him
+into a warm proprietary affection. They felt that Mr. Twist
+belonged to them. Even Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she
+beheld him were bright with pleasure.</p>
+<p>"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in
+her voice, and catching hold of his arm.</p>
+<p>"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of
+his other arm.</p>
+<p>"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"They weren't our difficulties&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"They were the Sacks'&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But they reacted on us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And so here we are."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>Who is it, Edward?" asked
+the voice inside.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose
+eagerly.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got
+there," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they
+did that," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas</p>
+<p>"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we
+turned straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.</p>
+<p>"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in
+that moment of excitement not without complacency at her own
+aptness.</p>
+<p>"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.</p>
+<p>"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because of perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten
+it all, and we so dreadfully hungry&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and
+more insistently.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the
+situation in his mind.</p>
+<p>He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have
+been natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her,
+if she hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to
+his fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined
+to the first-class passengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he
+had hardly spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the
+women.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's
+becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled <a name="Page_171"
+id="Page_171"></a>with ladies. Sin would be bad enough&mdash;for
+Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even with ladies it
+is possible to sin&mdash;but marriage for Edward would be even
+worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had
+at least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and
+done with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but
+there was no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy
+thing, and you don't repent of holy things,&mdash;at least, you
+oughtn't to. If, as ill-advised young men so often would, Edward
+wanted as years went on to marry in spite of his already having an
+affectionate and sympathetic home with feminine society in it, then
+it seemed to Mrs. Twist most important, most vital to the future
+comfort of the family, that it should be someone she had chosen
+herself. She had observed him from infancy, and knew much better
+than he what was needed for his happiness; and she also knew, if
+there must be a wife, what was needed for the happiness of his
+mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about the
+second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of
+hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the
+slums of a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the
+Twinklers into her mental range. Not during those first hours,
+anyhow. There would be plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient
+unto the day would be the Twinklers thereof.</p>
+<p>But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had
+said nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his
+mother asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained
+him, he said as many another honest man, pressed by the searching
+affection of relations, has said before him, <a name="Page_172" id=
+"Page_172"></a>that it was business. Now it appeared that he would
+have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't business.
+It was these."</p>
+<p>His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially
+he hated to have lied,&mdash;at the moment, one plunged in spurred
+by sudden necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating
+one's degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his
+mother, he well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her.
+She had been so terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh
+from praying,&mdash;for before he went to Harvard he used to
+pray&mdash;he had on one or two occasions for a few minutes
+endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer fright at the effect of
+his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her to forget it and
+forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded by his
+having lied.</p>
+<p>The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with
+a sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in
+France, to come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling
+one's way about among tender places ...</p>
+<p>"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third
+time.</p>
+<p>"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to
+know who we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"</p>
+<p>"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full
+satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't
+run anywhere.</p>
+<p>"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.</p>
+<p>"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.</p>
+<p>Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed
+out. She was gazing at the Twinklers <a name="Page_173" id=
+"Page_173"></a>with the same kind eyes her brother had, but without
+the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and anxiety
+were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the twins
+hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually
+have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.</p>
+<p>"Edith&mdash;Edward&mdash;Amanda," called the voice, this time
+with unmistakable anger.</p>
+<p>For one more moment Mr. Twist stood uncertain, looking down at
+the happy confident faces turned up to him exactly, as
+Anna-Felicitas had just said, like flowers turning to the sun.
+Visions of France flashed before him, visions of what he had known,
+what he had just come back from. His friends over there, the gay
+courage, the helpfulness, the ready, uninquiring affection, the
+breadth of outlook, the quick friendliness, the careless assumption
+that one was decent, that one's intentions were good,&mdash;why
+shouldn't he pull some of the splendid stuff into his poor, lame
+little home? Why should he let himself drop back from heights like
+those to the old ridiculous timidities, the miserable habit of
+avoiding the truth? Rebellion, hope, determination, seized Mr.
+Twist. His eyes shone behind his spectacles. His ears were two red
+flags of revolution. He gripped hold of the twins, one under each
+arm.</p>
+<p>"You come right in," he said, louder than he had ever spoken in
+his life. "Edith, see these girls? They're the two Annas. Their
+other name is Twinkler, but Anna'll see you through. They want
+supper, and they want beds, and they want affection, and they're
+going to get it all. So hustle with the food, and send the Cadillac
+for their baggage, and fix up things for them as comfortably as you
+know how. And as for Mrs. Sack," he said, looking first at one twin
+and then <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>at the other, "if it
+hadn't been for her running away from her worthless
+husband&mdash;I'm convinced that fellow Sack is worthless&mdash;you
+might never have come here at all. So you see," he finished,
+laughing at Anna-Rose, "how good comes out of evil."</p>
+<p>And with the sound of these words preceding him he pushed open
+the dining-room door and marched them in.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><a name="Page_175"
+id="Page_175"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<p>At the head of the table sat his mother; long, straight, and
+grave. She was in the seat of authority, the one with its back to
+the windows and its face to the door, from whence she could see
+what everybody did, especially Amanda. Having seen what Amanda did,
+she then complained to Edith. She didn't complain direct to Amanda,
+because Amanda could and did give notice.</p>
+<p>Her eyes were fixed on the door. Between it and her was the
+table, covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and
+therefore, according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious
+days, all the food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in
+together, and Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten
+oyster patties lay on Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected
+champagne had bubbled itself flat. Her hand still held her fork,
+but loosely, as an object that had lost its interest, and her eyes
+and ears for the last five minutes had not departed from the
+door.</p>
+<p>At first she had felt mere resigned annoyance that Amanda
+shouldn't have answered the bell, but she didn't wish to cast a
+shadow over Edward's homecoming by drawing poor Edith's attention
+before him to how very badly she trained the helps, and therefore
+she said nothing at the moment; then, when Edith, going in search
+of Amanda, had opened the door and let in sounds of argument, she
+was surprised, for she knew no one so intimately that they would be
+likely to <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>call at such an
+hour; but when Edward too leapt up, and went out and stayed out and
+failed to answer her repeated calls, she was first astonished, then
+indignant, and then suddenly was overcome by a cold foreboding.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist often had forebodings, and they were always cold.
+They seized her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief
+functions was to comfort and reassure her for as long a while each
+time as was required to reach the stage of being able to shake them
+off. Here was one, however, too icily convincing to be shaken off.
+It fell upon her with the swiftness of a revelation. Something
+unpleasant was going to happen to her; something perhaps worse than
+unpleasant,&mdash;disastrous. And something immediate.</p>
+<p>Those excited voices out in the hall,&mdash;they were young,
+surely, and they were feminine. Also they sounded most intimate
+with Edward. What had he been concealing from her? What
+disgracefulness had penetrated through him, through the son the
+neighbourhood thought so much of, into her very home? She was a
+widow. He was her only son. Impossible to believe he would betray
+so sacred a position, that he whom she had so lovingly and proudly
+welcomed a few hours before would allow his&mdash;well, she really
+didn't know what to call them, but anyhow female friends of whom
+she had been told nothing, to enter that place which to every
+decent human being is inviolable, his mother's home. Yet Mrs. Twist
+did instantly believe it.</p>
+<p>Then Edward's voice, raised and defiant&mdash;surely
+defiant?&mdash;came through the crack in the door, and every word
+he said was quite distinct. Anna; supper; affection ... Mrs. Twist
+sat frozen. And then <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>the door
+was flung open and Edward tumultuously entered, his ears crimson,
+his face as she had never seen it and in each hand, held tightly by
+the arm, a girl.</p>
+<p>Edward had been deceiving her.</p>
+<p>"Mother&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," said the girls together, and actually with
+smiles.</p>
+<p>Edward had been deceiving her. That whole afternoon how quiet he
+had been, how listless. Quite gentle, quite affectionate, but
+listless and untalkative. She had thought he must be tired; worn
+out with his long journey across from Europe. She had made
+allowances for him; been sympathetic, been considerate. And look at
+him now. Never had she seen him with a face like that. He
+was&mdash;Mrs. Twist groped for the word and reluctantly found
+it&mdash;rollicking. Yes; that was the word that exactly described
+him&mdash;rollicking. If she hadn't observed his languor up to a
+few minutes ago at supper, and seen him with her own eyes refuse
+champagne and turn his back on cocktails, she would have been
+forced to the conclusion, dreadful though it was to a mother, that
+he had been drinking. And the girls! Two of them. And so young.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had known Edward, as she sometimes informed Edith,
+all his life, and had not yet found anything in his morals which
+was not blameless. Watch him with what loving care she might she
+had found nothing; and she was sure her mother's instinct would not
+have failed her. Nevertheless, even with that white past before
+her&mdash;he hadn't told her about "Madame Bovary"&mdash;she now
+instantly believed the worst.</p>
+<p>It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst. Clark was very
+small, and therefore also very virtuous. Each inhabitant was the
+careful guardian of his neigh<a name="Page_178" id=
+"Page_178"></a>hour's conduct. Nobody there ever did anything that
+was wrong; there wasn't a chance. But as Nature insists on a
+balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil. They were
+minds active in suspicion. They leapt with an instantaneous agility
+at the worst conclusions. Nothing was ever said in Clark, but
+everything was thought. The older inhabitants, made fast prisoners
+in their mould of virtue by age, watched with jealous care the
+behaviour of those still young enough to attract temptation. The
+younger ones, brought up in inhibitions, settled down to
+wakefulness in regard to each other. Everything was provided and
+encouraged in Clark, a place of pleasant orchards and gentle
+fields, except the things that had to do with love. Husbands were
+there; and there was a public library, and social afternoons, and
+an Emerson society. The husbands died before the wives, being less
+able to cope with virtue; and a street in Clark of smaller houses
+into which their widows gravitated had been christened by the
+stationmaster&mdash;a more worldly man because of his three miles
+off and all the trains&mdash;Lamentation Lane.</p>
+<p>In this village Mrs. Twist had lived since her marriage, full of
+dignity and honour. As a wife she had been full of it, for the
+elder Mr. Twist had been good even when alive, and as a widow she
+had been still fuller, for the elder Mr. Twist positively improved
+by being dead. Not a breath had ever touched her and her children.
+Not the most daring and distrustful Clark mind had ever thought of
+her except respectfully. And now here was this happening to her; at
+her age; when she was least able to bear it.</p>
+<p>She sat in silence, staring with sombre eyes at the three
+figures.</p>
+<p>"Mother&mdash;" began Edward again; but was again <a name=
+"Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>interrupted by the twins, who said
+together, as they had now got into the habit of saying when
+confronted by silent and surprised Americans, "We've come."</p>
+<p>It wasn't that they thought it a particularly good
+conversational opening, it was because silence and surprise on the
+part of the other person seemed to call for explanation on theirs,
+and they were constitutionally desirous of giving all the
+information in their power.</p>
+<p>"How do you do," they then repeated, loosening themselves from
+Mr. Twist and advancing down the room with outstretched hands.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist came with them. "Mother," he said, "these are the
+Twinkler girls. Their name's Twinkler. They&mdash;-"</p>
+<p>Freed as he felt he was from his old bonds, determined as he
+felt he was on emulating the perfect candour and simplicity of the
+twins and the perfect candour and simplicity of his comrades in
+France, his mother's dead want of the smallest reaction to this
+announcement tripped him up for a moment and prevented his going
+on.</p>
+<p>But nothing ever prevented the twins going on. If they were
+pleased and excited they went on with cheerful gusto, and if they
+were unnerved and frightened they still went on,&mdash;perhaps even
+more volubly, anxiously seeking cover behind a multitude of
+words.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had not yet unnerved and frightened them, because
+they were too much delighted that they had got to her at all. The
+relief Anna-Rose experienced at having safely piloted that
+difficult craft, the clumsy if adorable Columbus, into a
+respectable Port was so immense that it immediately vented itself
+in words of warmest welcome to the lady in the chair to her own
+home.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>We're <i>so</i> glad to
+see you here," she said, smiling till her dimple seemed to be
+everywhere at once hardly able to refrain from giving the lady a
+welcome hug instead of just inhospitably shaking her hand. She
+couldn't even shake her hand, however, because it still held,
+immovably, the fork. "It would have been too awful," Anna-Rose
+therefore finished, putting the heartiness of the handshake she
+wanted to give into her voice instead, "if <i>you</i> had happened
+to have run away too."</p>
+<p>"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband," Anna-Felicitas
+explained, smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who
+actually having got oyster patties on her plate hadn't bothered to
+eat them. "But of course you couldn't," she went on, remembering in
+time to be tactful and make a Sympathetic reference to the lady's
+weeds; which, indeed, considering Mr. Twist had told her and
+Anna-Rose that his father had died when he was ten, nearly a
+quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their heads up
+astonishingly and stayed very fresh. And true to her German
+training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose
+in her contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's
+right hand, fork and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious
+kiss of a well brought up Junker.</p>
+<p>Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this empty of
+Junkers. She had never even heard of them till the war, and
+pronounced their name, and so did the rest of Clark following her
+lead, as if it had been junket, only with an r instead of a t at
+the end. She didn't therefore recognize the action; but even she,
+outraged as she was, could not but see its grace. And looking up in
+sombre hostility at the little head bent over her hand and at the
+dark line of eyelashes on the <a name="Page_181" id=
+"Page_181"></a>the flushed face, she thought swiftly, "<i>She's</i>
+the one."</p>
+<p>"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously
+and sitting on it with determination, "it's like this. (Sit down,
+you two, and get eating. Start on anything you see in this show
+that hits your fancy. Edith'll be fetching you something hot, I
+expect&mdash;soup, or something&mdash;but meanwhile here's enough
+stuff to go on with.) You see, mother&mdash;" he resumed, turning
+squarely to her, while the twins obeyed him with immense alacrity
+and sat down and began to eat whatever happened to be nearest them,
+"these two girls&mdash;well, to start with they're
+twins&mdash;-"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She couldn't
+conceive why he should lie. Twins the world over matched in size
+and features; it was notorious that they did. Also, it was the
+custom for them to match in age, and the tall one of these was at
+least a year older than the other one. But still, thought Mrs.
+Twist, let that pass. She would suffer whatever it was she had to
+suffer in silence.</p>
+<p>The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating.
+Perfectly at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved
+with an easy naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous.
+But still&mdash;let that too pass. These strangers helped
+themselves and helped each other, as if everything belonged to
+them; and the tall one actually asked her&mdash;her, the mistress
+of the house&mdash;if she could get <i>her</i> anything. Well, let
+that pass too.</p>
+<p>"You see, mother&mdash;" began Mr. Twist again.</p>
+<p>He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous
+hold one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about
+for words; what a deeply <a name="Page_182" id=
+"Page_182"></a>rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking
+in one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her
+quickly wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction
+that they could do what they liked with a man if they had had the
+bringing up of him till he was seven, were pretty near the truth.
+It took a lot of shaking off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of
+obedience of one's childhood.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to
+bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist
+his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how
+warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and
+helped each other. Then he rejected that as priggish.</p>
+<p>"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across
+them&mdash;across these two girls&mdash;they're both called Anna,
+by the way, which seems confusing but isn't really&mdash;I came
+across them on the boat&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He again stopped dead.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed
+on Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of
+oyster patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what
+Mrs. Twist was accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas
+was behaving badly with the patties, and not even attempting to
+conceal, as the decent do, how terribly they interested her.</p>
+<p>"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her
+eyes on her son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he
+had told her that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody
+except men. Another lie. Well, let that pass too ...</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming
+spectacles. He well knew the weakness of <a name="Page_183" id=
+"Page_183"></a>his position from his mother's point of view; but
+why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling, narrow
+one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
+stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the
+old system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious
+to avoid offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive.
+Let her for once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind
+thing. But as he stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't
+very well start moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their
+presence. He couldn't tell her they were orphans, alone in the
+world, helpless, poor, and so unfortunately German, with them
+sitting there. If he did, there would be trouble. The twins seemed
+absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he had no doubt their
+ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of sympathy being
+invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those things he
+was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand. Or,
+if she understood, appreciate.</p>
+<p>He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and
+then ask his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while
+Edith was looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot,
+explain them to his mother, describe their situation, commend them
+to her patience and her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing
+extraordinarily hard that Edith would be quick.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his
+mother's. "Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar
+gentleness, balancing a piece of patty on her fork, "that you
+haven't yet mentioned us to your mother?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>And Anna-Rose, struck in
+her turn at such an omission, paused too with food on the way to
+her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"</p>
+<p>"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.</p>
+<p>"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to
+their mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her
+everything from the beginning."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected
+support, bowed her head&mdash;it could hardly be called a
+nod&mdash;in her son's direction. "You see&mdash;" the movement
+seemed to say, "even these ..."</p>
+<p>"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
+addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last
+night, he has been what I think can be quite accurately described
+as our faithful two-footed companion."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends.
+Practically inseparable."</p>
+<p>"So that it really is <i>very</i> surprising," said
+Anna-Felicitas to Mr. Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother
+about us."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy
+in that room.</p>
+<p>He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very
+wise, you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded,
+"but you may take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother,
+come into the drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these
+girls. I expect I ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he
+led her to the door, "but confound it all, I've only been home
+about a couple of hours."</p>
+<p>"Five," said Mrs. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>Five then. What's five? No
+time at all."</p>
+<p>"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say
+confound, Edward?"</p>
+<p>"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank
+rebellion.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><a name="Page_186"
+id="Page_186"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<p>This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he
+broke loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with
+her in the drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and
+down his bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in
+long white wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale,
+his mouth pulled together as tight as it would go.</p>
+<p>His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only
+simply not understood, but she had said things when at last she did
+speak, after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of
+an incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him.
+If she hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she
+hated him, but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their
+children. It was stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed
+in the fundamental rightness of that which is called nature. She
+had accused him of gross things&mdash;she, his mother, who from her
+conversation since he could remember was unaware, he had judged, of
+the very existence of such things. Those helpless children ... Mr.
+Twist stamped as he strode. Well, he had made her take that back;
+and indeed she had afterwards admitted that she said it in her
+passion of grief and disappointment, and that it was evident these
+girls were not like that.</p>
+<p>But before they reached that stage, for the first time <a name=
+"Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>in his life he had been saying
+straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as if she had
+been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the twins,
+asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them, and
+explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its
+tragedy, as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion
+at that moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in
+candour, he had told his mother that here was her chance of doing a
+fine and beautiful thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist
+suddenly began, on her side, to talk.</p>
+<p>She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only
+started when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came
+to offering her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to
+do something really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing
+nothing else but noble and beautiful things, and doing them with
+the most single-minded devotion to duty and the most consistent
+disregard of inclination, could keep silence no longer. Had she not
+borne her great loss without a murmur? Had she not devoted all her
+years to bringing up her son to be a good man? Had she ever
+considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her efforts to set an
+example of patience in grief, of dignity in misfortune? She began
+to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at the things this
+strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the manner of
+their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
+unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their
+delivery.</p>
+<p>Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because
+for years, away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted
+his mother; for years he had, <a name="Page_188" id=
+"Page_188"></a>shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
+unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he
+had doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her
+honesty, her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately,
+before he went to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was
+cruel. Nevertheless this unexpected naked justification of his
+doubts was shattering to him.</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew
+him inside out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the
+long years of his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and
+rather disposed, also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for
+him, so easy had he been to manage, so ready to do everything she
+wished. Now it appeared that she no more knew Edward than if he had
+been a stranger in the street.</p>
+<p>The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a
+horrible thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of
+the younger generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his
+shoulder and take comfort in the thought that this break between
+them was entirely his mother's fault, for however much he believed
+it to be her fault the belief merely made him wretched; he had none
+of the pitiless black pleasure to be got from telling himself it
+served her right. So naturally kind was he&mdash;weak, soft,
+stupid, his mother shook out at him&mdash;that through all his own
+shame at this naked vision of what had been carefully dressed up
+for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and affection, he was
+actually glad, when he had time in his room to think it over, glad
+she should be so passionately positive that he, and only he, was in
+the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the painful
+things of late <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>Mr. Twist could
+least bear to see a human being humiliated.</p>
+<p>That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding
+about his room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a
+son had fallen, trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to
+see clear about the future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope
+for that yet. The future seemed one confused lump. All he could see
+really clear of it was that he was going, next day, and taking the
+twins. He would take them to the other people they had a letter to,
+the people in California, and then turn his face back to Europe, to
+the real thing, to the greatness of life where death is. Not an
+hour longer than he could help would he or they stay in that house.
+He had told his mother he would go away, and she had said, "I hope
+never to see you again." Who would have thought she had so much of
+passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much of it in
+him?</p>
+<p>Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so
+could fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that
+basis of suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct,
+though not through his brain, shot the conviction that his mother
+was jealous of the twins,&mdash;jealous of the youth of the twins,
+and of their prettiness, and goodness, and of the power, unknown to
+them, that these things gave them. His brain was impervious to such
+a conviction, because it was an innocent brain, and the idea would
+never have entered it that a woman of his mother's age, well over
+sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his instinct knew it.</p>
+<p>The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was,
+"You have killed me. You have <a name="Page_190" id=
+"Page_190"></a>killed your own mother. And just because of those
+girls."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could
+find, search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point
+of view. It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.</p>
+<p>Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she
+didn't try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do,
+faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly,
+as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf
+to her even when she used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of
+authority, she said to herself she must leave her son to God. God
+knew. God would judge. And Clark too would know; and Clark too
+would judge.</p>
+<p>Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her
+second great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful
+to feel, to resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she
+could from Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect
+him; but she would try to protect him even now, as she had always
+protected him, from earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however,
+surely know in time, protect as she might, and judge between her
+and Edward. God knew already, and was already judging. God and
+Clark.... Poor Edward.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<p>The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by
+Edith, in the happy conviction that they had settled down
+comfortably for some time, were surprised to find at breakfast that
+they hadn't.</p>
+<p>They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of
+restfulness on her part that struck them while they were finishing
+their supper, and to which at last they drew her attention. She was
+so kind, and so like Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with
+hospitable eyes and wore an expression of real benevolence, it
+didn't escape their notice that she seemed to be listening to
+something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and to be expecting something
+that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several times to the door
+through which her brother and mother had disappeared, and out into
+whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came back
+after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.</p>
+<p>At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions
+hindered any real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned
+conversation was impossible if one of the parties persisted in not
+being in the room, and inquired of her whether it were peculiar to
+her, or typical of the inhabitants of America, to keep on being
+somewhere else. Edith smiled abstractedly at them, said nothing,
+and went out again.</p>
+<p>She was longer away this time, and the twins having <a name=
+"Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>eaten, among other things, a great
+many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they hadn't eaten
+lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those they
+had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
+and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where
+there weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was
+staring listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like
+having committed murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the
+body long after you were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed,
+and said that she wished now she hadn't committed
+meringues,&mdash;anyhow so many of them.</p>
+<p>Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they
+were very tired after their long day, and suggested their going
+upstairs to their rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the
+baggage had come, and she was sure they would like to have nice hot
+baths and go to bed.</p>
+<p>The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their
+part to seek out her mother and brother first and bid them
+good-night, on the ground that her mother and brother were busy;
+and while the twins were expressing polite regret, and requesting
+her to convey their regret for them to the proper quarter in a flow
+of well-chosen words that astonished Edith, who didn't know how
+naturally Junkers make speeches, she hurried them by the
+drawing-room door through which, shut though it was, came sounds of
+people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy indeed; and
+Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr. Twist's voice
+as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately as she
+knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that
+before.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>Edith said nothing, but
+continued quickly up the stairs.</p>
+<p>They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and
+that each bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with
+admiration and pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle
+Arthur's, and at home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all.
+The baths there had been vessels brought into one's bedroom every
+night, into which servants next morning poured water out of
+buckets, having previously pumped the water into the bucket from
+the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in possession of these
+facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and plaited their
+hair for them, and she was much astonished,&mdash;both at the
+conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in
+other countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should
+hail from Pomerania.</p>
+<p>Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with
+the ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany
+when she went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more
+thoughtful than ever, though she still smiled at them, for how
+could she help it? Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at
+the Twinklers even if they didn't happen to be one's own dear
+brother's <i>protegees</i>. And when they came out, very clean and
+with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath, she not only smiled at
+them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed them
+good-night.</p>
+<p>Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,&mdash;one of
+the satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with
+you. Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little
+things, thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger
+with which, <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>being now
+thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.</p>
+<p>"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas
+sleepily, as Edith tucked her up and kissed her.</p>
+<p>"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose,
+also sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and
+in spite of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance
+and uncritical faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil
+outside the drawing-room door a little surprised.</p>
+<p>At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
+appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing
+was not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's
+lodging and breakfast between, as it were, two trains.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins
+remarked solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced
+the fact.</p>
+<p>"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
+Edith&mdash;Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in
+bed&mdash;"Why, we've unpacked."</p>
+<p>"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>They found difficulty in believing their ears.</p>
+<p>"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an
+astonished pause.</p>
+<p>"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own
+teapot. He had made up his mind to be very short with the Annas
+until they were safely out of the house, and not permit himself to
+be entangled by them in controversy. Also, he didn't want to look
+at them if he could help it. He was afraid that if he did he might
+be unable not to take them both in his arms and beg their pardon
+for the whole horridness of the world.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>But if he didn't look at
+them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly surprised eyes were
+fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.</p>
+<p>"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
+troubled and upset.</p>
+<p>"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for
+at all times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell
+us where you think we're going to."</p>
+<p>"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not
+only at the thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a
+sense of outraged faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have
+observed, is strictly limited."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith,
+whose eyes were red, informed them that they were <i>en route</i>
+for California.</p>
+<p>"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."</p>
+<p>She held her head up straight.</p>
+<p>"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after
+a silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her
+nose, because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or
+Anna-Felicitas, to notice that her eyes had gone and got tears in
+them. She angrily wished she hadn't got such damp eyes. They were
+no better than swamps, she thought&mdash;undrained swamps; and
+directly fate's foot came down a little harder than usual, up oozed
+the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the leader of an expedition
+behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original Christopher. She
+pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle was able to
+leave off looking down her nose.</p>
+<p>But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle
+dignity that he was obviously tired of them.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>Not at all," said Mr.
+Twist.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said
+gently, "I'm afraid your denial carries no weight."</p>
+<p>"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining
+it with care, "are that I'm coming with you."</p>
+<p>"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was
+here that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.</p>
+<p>"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning
+his teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that
+I&mdash;well, I happen to have some business to do in California,
+and I may as well do it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a
+different route or train, so you see your theory <i>is</i> rather
+dished, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if
+you really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off
+somewhere else so soon?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in
+spite of his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said
+shortly, "but you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture
+and stick to facts. I'm going to take you to California, and hand
+you over to your friends. That's all you know, and all you need to
+know."</p>
+<p>"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose</p>
+<p>"And if our friends have run away?" suggested
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot
+down with a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in
+America?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>Thus it was that two hours
+later the twins found themselves at the Clark station once more,
+once more starting into the unknown, just as if they had never done
+it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves to the sudden
+change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth, almost with
+the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left alone on
+the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the mutability
+of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war began
+what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
+Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
+retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since
+the days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their
+home in Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled
+as the pine trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at
+the elusiveness of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be
+caught up with and at the trouble it was giving them.</p>
+<p>They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want
+now to have time to become familiar with some one place and people.
+Already however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and
+each other that after all, since the Sacks had failed them,
+California was their real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had
+never been part of their plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't
+even know it existed. It was a side-show; just a little thing of
+their own, an extra excursion slipped in between the Sacks and the
+Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there some time, perhaps even
+for months,&mdash;anyhow, time to mend their stockings in, which
+were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how new they were;
+but ultimately California was the place they had to go to. <a name=
+"Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>It was only that it was a little
+upsetting to be whisked out of Clark at a moment's notice.</p>
+<p>"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the
+train and have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as
+the car moved away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her
+handkerchief from the doorstep.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent
+her many messages.</p>
+<p>"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.</p>
+<p>But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he
+really began to be himself again. Up to then&mdash;all that first
+day, and the next morning in New York where he took them to the
+bank their &pound;200 was in and saw that they got a cheque-book,
+and all the day after that waiting in the Chicago hotel for the
+train they were to go on in to California&mdash;Mr. Twist was
+taciturn.</p>
+<p>They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening
+with cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in
+their compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that
+their spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till
+breakfast next morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted
+a little; and as the day went on it lifted still more. They were
+going to be three days together in that train, and it would be
+impossible for Mr. Twist, they were sure, to go on being taciturn
+as long as that. It wasn't his nature. His nature was
+conversational. And besides, shut up like that in a train, the
+sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want to
+talk.</p>
+<p>So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
+observation car, though there was nothing to observe except
+limitless flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins
+suggested that he should <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>now
+begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was bound to
+get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that his
+mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
+with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously
+long ago, when they landed in America.</p>
+<p>"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting
+another cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week
+yet."</p>
+<p>And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty
+serious havoc in America considering they had only been in it five
+days. He and his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at
+Clark sitting there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his
+return, with nothing at all that he could see to look forward to
+and live for except the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as
+duty; every plan upset; the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his
+sister and of himself completely altered,&mdash;it was a pretty big
+bag in the time, he thought, flinging the match back towards
+Chicago.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad
+tumble, and is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that
+these great ruptures cannot take place without aches and doubts. He
+ached, and he doubted and he also knew through his aches and doubts
+that he was free at last from what of late years he had so
+grievously writhed under&mdash;the shame of pretence. And the
+immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely, the
+Annas.</p>
+<p>It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had
+happened; and who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark
+and the immediate effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn't
+have lapsed after all, in spite of the feelings and determinations
+he had <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>brought back with him
+from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and
+gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love,
+when he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He
+might have trailed on like that for years&mdash;Mr. Twist didn't
+like the picture of his own weakness, but he was determined to look
+at himself as he was&mdash;trailed along languidly when he was at
+home, living another life when he was away, getting what he
+absolutely must have, the irreducible minimum of personal freedom
+necessary to sanity, by means of small and shabby deceits. My
+goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of the littleness
+of them!</p>
+<p>He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas
+sitting alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him.
+They had on the blue caps again which made them look so bald and
+cherubic, and their eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines
+of rails that went back and back to a point in the distance. The
+dear little things; the dear, dear little things,&mdash;so
+straightforward, so blessedly straight and simple, thought Mr.
+Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this. Fancy
+<i>anybody</i>, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
+opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.</p>
+<p>The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned
+and looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud
+had lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of
+welcome.</p>
+<p>"It's pleasant to see you back again," said Anna-Felicitas
+heartily, who was next to him.</p>
+<p>"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"It hasn't been like the same place, the world hasn't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been away."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>Since you walked out of
+the dining-room that night at Clark," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Of course we know you can't always be with us," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas, "for these
+last few days, I would suggest that we should be happy. As happy as
+we used to be on the <i>St. Luke</i> when we weren't being
+sea-sick." And she thought she might even go so far as to enjoy
+hearing the "Ode to Dooty," now.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three days we shall
+have disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let us be happy
+while we can. Who knows what their maw will be like? But whatever
+it's like," she added firmly, "we're going to stick in it."</p>
+<p>"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that you're a little
+restored to your normal condition, you'll tell us what has been the
+matter."</p>
+<p>"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that something
+<i>has</i> been the matter."</p>
+<p>"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas, "and putting
+two and two together, and perhaps you'll tell us what it was, and
+then we shall know if we're right."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he continued
+benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see&mdash;" He hesitated, and
+pushed his hat off his forehead. "I wonder if you'd
+understand&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas assured him.</p>
+<p>"These caps make us look more stupid than we are," Anna-Rose
+assured him, deducing her own appearance from that of
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>Encouraged, but doubtful of
+their capabilities of comprehension on this particular point, Mr.
+Twist embarked rather gingerly on his explanations. He was going to
+be candid from now on for the rest of his days, but the preliminary
+plunges were, he found, after all a little difficult. Even with the
+pellucidly candid Annas, all ready with ears pricked up attentively
+and benevolently and minds impartial, he found it difficult. It was
+because, on the subject of mothers, he feared he was up against
+their one prejudice. He felt rather than knew that their attitude
+on this one point might be uncompromising,&mdash;mothers were
+mothers, and there was an end of it; that sort of attitude, coupled
+with extreme reprobation of himself for supposing anything
+else.</p>
+<p>He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly
+they got wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was
+very soon for they were giving their minds to it as they promised
+and Mr. Twist's hesitations were illuminating, they
+interrupted.</p>
+<p>"So we were right," they said to each other.</p>
+<p>"But you don't know yet what I'm going to say," said Mr. Twist.
+"I've only started on the preliminaries."</p>
+<p>"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding</p>
+<p>"We didn't think so at the time," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark,"
+said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had
+happened."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only
+say "Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly shocked, I
+suppose."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>Oh no," they said airily
+and together.</p>
+<p>"No?"</p>
+<p>"You see&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You see&mdash;" began Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"You see, as a general principle," said Anna-Felicitas, "it's
+reprehensible to quarrel with one's mother."</p>
+<p>"But we've not been able to escape observing&mdash;" said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"In the course of our brief and inglorious career," put in
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;that there are mothers and mothers," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he presently
+added, "Yes?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily and
+together.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><a name="Page_204"
+id="Page_204"></a>CHAPTER XIX</p>
+<p>After this brief <i>&eacute;claircissement</i> the rest of the
+journey was happy. Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to
+California and not be happy.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up
+or no break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant feeling
+of adventure. Every now and then the realization of this feeling
+gave his conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke. He was
+having the best of it in this business; he was the party in the
+quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of
+battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh
+places and people who had never heard of him. Just being in a
+train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was
+extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there would be gloom and
+stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not
+moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side, naturally
+increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was gone,
+and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel, thought
+Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the desert
+at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
+colours,&mdash;in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the
+best of it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who
+don't know him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are ready
+to be friendly. He must, of course, go far <a name="Page_205" id=
+"Page_205"></a>enough; not stay near at hand in some familiar place
+and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful. Well, he was
+going far enough. Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far as
+he could go. Certainly he was having the best of it in being the
+one in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself
+cynically thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then,
+take care to be the one who did go.</p>
+<p>But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in
+everywhere, and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper
+to one who has been cutting himself off for good and all from his
+early home. For the life of him he couldn't help feeling
+extraordinarily light and free. Edith&mdash;yes, there was Edith,
+but some day he would make up to Edith for everything. There was no
+helping her now: she was fast bound in misery and iron, and didn't
+even seem to know it. So would he have been, he supposed, if he had
+never left home at all. As it was, it was bound to come, this
+upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth would have burst
+the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of course, to have been
+any bands; or, there being bands, he ought long ago to have burst
+them.</p>
+<p>He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked
+determined. Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his
+own weak past. Well, it was done at last, and never
+again&mdash;never, never again, he said to himself, sniffing in
+through his open window the cold air of the desert at sunrise.</p>
+<p>By that route, the Santa F&eacute;, it is not till two or three
+hours before you get to the end of the journey that summer meets
+you. It is waiting for you at a place called San Bernardino. There
+is no trace of it before. Up to then you are still in October; and
+then you get to <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>the top of the
+pass, and with a burst it is June,&mdash;brilliant, windless,
+orange-scented.</p>
+<p>The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when
+the miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer,
+with a great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded
+by the scent of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and
+new and very aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the
+black waiters began to perspire, the passengers called for cold
+things to eat, and the twins pulled off their knitted caps and
+jerseys.</p>
+<p>From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the
+twins could only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light
+that did it, the extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there
+were orchards after orchards of orange trees covered with fruit,
+white houses smothered in flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall
+groups of eucalyptus trees giving an impression of elegant
+nakedness, long lines of pepper trees with frail fern-like
+branches, and these things continued for the rest of the way; but
+they would have been as nothing without that beautiful, great bland
+light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and their
+July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this. Here
+was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
+threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer
+as it might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm,
+and radiant. When the train stopped they could see how not a breath
+of wind stirred the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves
+of the magnolia trees glistened motionless in the sun. The train
+went slowly and stopped often, for there seemed to be one long
+succession of gardens and villages. After the empty, wind-driven
+<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>plains they had come through,
+those vast cold expanses without a house or living creature in
+sight, what a laughing plenty, what a gracious fruitfulness, was
+here. And when they went back to their compartment it too was full
+of summer smells,&mdash;the smell of fruit, and roses, and
+honey.</p>
+<p>For the first time since the war began and with it their
+wanderings, the twins felt completely happy. It was as though the
+loveliness wrapped them round and they stretched themselves in it
+and forgot. No fear of the future, no doubt of it at all, they
+thought, gazing out of the window, the soft air patting their
+faces, could possibly bother them here. They never, for instance,
+could be cold here, or go hungry. A great confidence in life
+invaded them. The Delloggs, sun-soaked and orange-fed for years in
+this place, couldn't but be gentle too, and kind and calm.
+Impossible not to get a sort of refulgence oneself, they thought,
+living here, and absorb it and give it out again. They pictured the
+Delloggs as bland pillars of light coming forward effulgently to
+greet them, and bathing them in the beams of their hospitality. And
+the feeling of responsibility and anxiety that had never left
+Anna-Rose since she last saw Aunt Alice dropped off her in this
+place, and she felt that sun and oranges, backed by &pound;200 in
+the bank, would be difficult things for misfortune to get at.</p>
+<p>As for Mr. Twist, he was even more entranced than the twins as
+he gazed out of the window, for being older he had had time to see
+more ugly things, had got more used to them and to taking them as
+principally making up life. He stared at what he saw, and thought
+with wonder of his mother's drawing-room at Clark, of its gloomy,
+velvet-upholstered discomforts, of the cold <a name="Page_208" id=
+"Page_208"></a>mist creeping round the house, and of that last
+scene in it, with her black figure in the middle of it, tall and
+thin and shaking with bitterness. He had certainly been in that
+drawing-room and heard her so terribly denouncing him, but it was
+very difficult to believe; it seemed so exactly like a nightmare,
+and this the happy normal waking up in the morning.</p>
+<p>They all three were in the highest spirits when they got out at
+Los Angeles and drove across to the Southern Pacific
+station&mdash;the name alone made their hearts leap&mdash;to catch
+the afternoon train on to where the Delloggs lived, and their
+spirits were the kind one can imagine in released souls on their
+first arriving in paradise,&mdash;high, yet subdued; happy, but
+reverential; a sort of rollicking awe. They were subdued, in fact,
+by beauty. And the journey along the edge of the Pacific to
+Acapulco, where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this
+kind of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran
+for miles close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand
+between it and the surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It
+happened to be even in that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually
+wonderful one, and none of the three had ever seen anything in the
+least like it. They could but sit silent and stare. The great sea,
+that little line of lovely islands flung down on it like a chain of
+amethysts, that vast flame of sky, that heaving water passionately
+reflecting it, and on the other side, through the other windows, a
+sharp wall of black mountains,&mdash;it was fantastically
+beautiful, like something in a poem or a dream.</p>
+<p>By the time they got to Acapulco it was dark. Night followed
+upon the sunset with a suddenness that astonished the twins, used
+to the leisurely methods <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>of
+twilight on the Baltic; and the only light in the country outside
+the town as they got near it was the light from myriads of great
+stars.</p>
+<p>No Delloggs were at the station, but the twins were used now to
+not being met and had not particularly expected them; besides, Mr.
+Twist was with them this time, and he would see that if the
+Delloggs didn't come to them they would get safely to the
+Delloggs.</p>
+<p>The usual telegram had been sent announcing their arrival, and
+the taxi-driver, who seemed to know the Dellogg house well when Mr.
+Twist told him where they wanted to go, apparently also thought it
+natural they should want to go exactly there. In him, indeed, there
+did seem to be a trace of expecting them,&mdash;almost as if he had
+been told to look out for them; for hardly had Mr. Twist begun to
+give him the address than glancing at the twins he said, "I guess
+you're wanting Mrs. Dellogg"; and got down and actually opened the
+door for them, an attention so unusual in the taxi-drivers the
+twins had up to then met in America that they were more than ever
+convinced that nothing in the way of unfriendliness or unkindness
+could stand up against sun and oranges.</p>
+<p>"Relations?" he asked them through the window as he shut the
+door gently and carefully, while Mr. Twist went with a porter to
+see about the luggage.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon?" said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Relations of Delloggses?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose. "Friends."</p>
+<p>"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the driver, leaning with both his arms on the
+window-sill in the friendliest possible manner, and chewing gum and
+eyeing them with thoughtful interest.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>Then he said, after a pause
+during which his jaw rolled regularly from side to side and the
+twins watched the rolling with an interest equal to his interest in
+them, "From Los Angeles?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Rose. "From New York."</p>
+<p>"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."</p>
+<p>"Well I call that a real compliment," said the driver slowly and
+deliberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that
+way, and without being relations&mdash;I call that a real
+compliment, and a friendship that's worth something. Anybody can
+come along from Los Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come
+from New York," and he eyed them now with admiration.</p>
+<p>The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
+fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them
+quaint.</p>
+<p>"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.</p>
+<p>"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.</p>
+<p>The twins thought this over.</p>
+<p>The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out
+very white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before
+getting to Los Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in
+what Anna-Felicitas called their favourable-impression-on-arrival
+garments,&mdash;those garments Aunt Alice had bought for them on
+their mother's death, expressing the wave of sympathy in which she
+found herself momentarily engulfed by going to a very good and
+expensive dressmaker; and in the black perfection of these clothes
+the twins looked like two well-got-up and very attractive young
+crows. These were the clothes they had put on on leaving the ship,
+and had been so obviously admired in, <a name="Page_211" id=
+"Page_211"></a>to the uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it
+was in these clothes that they had arrived within range of Mr.
+Sack's distracted but still appreciative vision, and in them that
+they later roused the suspicions and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was
+in these clothes that they were now about to start what they hoped
+would be a lasting friendship with the Delloggs, and remembering
+they had them on they decided that perhaps it wasn't only sun and
+oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but also the effect on
+him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.</p>
+<p>This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old
+friends, then," he remarked, after a period of reflective
+jaw-rolling. "Must be, to come all that way."</p>
+<p>"Well&mdash;not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her
+respect for truth and her gratification at being thought old enough
+to be somebody's old friend.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in
+her respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."</p>
+<p>The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
+observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said,
+"You'll miss Mr. Dellogg."</p>
+<p>"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up her ears, "Shall we?"</p>
+<p>"We don't mind missing Mr. Dellogg," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
+Mrs. Dellogg we wouldn't like to miss."</p>
+<p>The driver looked puzzled.</p>
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that would be too awful," said Anna-Rose, who didn't
+want a repetition of the Sack dilemma. "You did say," she asked
+anxiously, "didn't you, that we were going to miss Mr.
+Dellogg?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>The driver, looking first
+at one of them and then at the other, said, "Well, and who
+wouldn't?"</p>
+<p>And this answer seemed so odd to the twins that they could only
+as they stared at him suppose it was some recondite form of
+American slang, provided with its own particular repartee which,
+being unacquainted with the language, they were not in a position
+to supply. Perhaps, they thought, it was of the same order of
+mysterious idioms as in England such sentences as I don't think,
+and Not half,&mdash;forms of speech whose exact meaning and proper
+use had never been mastered by them.</p>
+<p>"There won't be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many
+a year," said the driver, shaking his head. "Ah no. And that's
+so."</p>
+<p>"Isn't he coming back?" asked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>The driver's jaws ceased for a moment to roll. He stared at
+Anna-Rose with unblinking eyes. Then he turned his head away and
+spat along the station, and then, again fixing his eyes on
+Anna-Rose, he said, "Young gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a
+table-turner, and a psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and
+anything else you please, and get what comfort you can out of your
+coming backs and the rest of the blessed truck, but I know better.
+And what I know, being a Christian, is that once a man's dead he's
+either in heaven or he's in hell, and whichever it is he's in, in
+it he stops."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak. "Are we to understand,"
+she inquired, "that Mr. Dellogg&mdash;" She broke off.</p>
+<p>"That Mr. Dellogg is&mdash;" Anna-Rose continued for her, but
+broke off too.</p>
+<p>"That Mr. Dellogg isn't&mdash;" resumed Anna-Felicitas with
+determination, "well, that he isn't alive?"</p>
+<p>"Alive?" repeated the driver. He let his hand <a name="Page_213"
+id="Page_213"></a>drop heavily on the window-sill. "If that don't
+beat all," he said, staring at her. "What do you come his funeral
+for, then?"</p>
+<p>"His funeral?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, if you don't know that he ain't?"</p>
+<p>"Ain't&mdash;isn't what?"</p>
+<p>"Alive, of course. No, I mean dead. You're getting me all
+tangled up."</p>
+<p>"But we haven't."</p>
+<p>"But we didn't."</p>
+<p>"We had a letter from him only last month."</p>
+<p>"At least, an uncle we've got had."</p>
+<p>"And he didn't say a word in it about being dead&mdash;I mean,
+there was no sign of his being going to be&mdash;I mean, he wasn't
+a bit ill or anything in his letter&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice,
+"it ain't exactly usual is it&mdash;I put it to you squarely, and
+say it ain't <i>exactly</i> usual (there may be exceptions, but it
+ain't exactly <i>usual</i>) to come to a gentleman's funeral, and
+especially not all the way from New York, without some sort of an
+idea that he's dead. Some sort of a <i>general</i> idea, anyhow,"
+he added still more sarcastically; for his admiration for the twins
+had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a suspicion was growing
+on him that with incredible and horrible levity, seeing what the
+moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up the time
+waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
+wreaths, by making game of him.</p>
+<p>"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his
+voice aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got
+down from his seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired
+white faces and helped them into his taxi,&mdash;only for genuine
+mourners, <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>real sorry ones,
+going to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg,
+would he, a free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls,
+well-cared for gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all
+this way, I guess sent by your parents to represent them properly,
+and properly fitted out in nice black clothes and all, and you
+start making fun. Pretending. Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me
+about the funeral. Messing me up in a lot of words. I don't like
+it. I'm a father myself, and I don't like it. I don't like to see
+daughters going on like this when their father ain't looking. It
+don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you Easterners&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at
+each other in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way
+Uncle Arthur's friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's
+mere approach. People who had been living with their husbands all
+their lives ran away just as the twins came on the scene; people
+who had been alive all their lives went and died, also at that very
+moment. It almost seemed as if directly anybody knew that they, the
+Twinklers, were coming to stay with them they became bent on
+escape. They could only look at each other in stricken astonishment
+at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of what the driver
+said. They could only sit and look at each other.</p>
+<p>And then Mr. Twist came hurrying across from the baggage office,
+wiping his forehead, for the night was hot. Behind him came the
+porter, ruefully balancing the piled-up grips on his truck.</p>
+<p>"I'm sorry to have been so&mdash;" began Mr. Twist, smiling
+cheerfully: but he stopped short in his sentence and left off
+smiling when he saw the expression in the <a name="Page_215" id=
+"Page_215"></a>four eyes fixed on him. "What has happened?" he
+asked quickly.</p>
+<p>"Only what we might have expected," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg's dead," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"You don't say," said Mr. Twist; and after a pause he said
+again, "You don't say."</p>
+<p>Then he recovered himself. "I'm very sorry to hear it, of
+course," he said briskly, picking himself up, as it were, from this
+sudden and unexpected tumble, "but I don't see that it matters to
+you so long as Mrs. Dellogg isn't dead too."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but&mdash;" began Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg isn't <i>very</i> dead, you see," said
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked from them to the driver, but finding no
+elucidation there and only disapproval, looked back again.</p>
+<p>"He isn't dead and settled <i>down</i>," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Not <i>that</i> sort of being dead," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's
+<i>just</i> dead."</p>
+<p>"Just got to the stage when he has a funeral," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"His funeral, it seems, is imminent," said Anna-Felicitas. "Did
+you not give us to understand," she asked, turning to the driver,
+"that it was imminent?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know about imminent," said the driver, who wasn't going
+to waste valuable time with words like that, "but it's
+to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"And you see what that means for us," said Anna-Felicitas,
+turning to Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist did.</p>
+<p>He again wiped his forehead, but not this time because the night
+was hot.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a><a name="Page_216" id=
+"Page_216"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<p>Manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into a house where
+there is going to be a funeral next day, even if one has come all
+the way from New York and has nowhere else to go. Equally
+manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into it after the
+funeral till a decent interval has elapsed. But what the devil, Mr.
+Twist asked himself in language become regrettably natural to him
+since his sojourn at the front, is a decent interval?</p>
+<p>This Mr. Twist asked himself late that night, pacing up and down
+the sea-shore in the warm and tranquil darkness in front of the
+Cosmopolitan Hotel, while the twins, utterly tired out by their
+journey and the emotions at the end of it, crept silently into
+bed.</p>
+<p>How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover,
+that is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning
+is it legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations
+incurred before she was a widow,&mdash;with, in fact, the
+Twinklers? Delicacy itself would shrink from doing it under a week
+thought Mr. Twist, or even under a fortnight, or even if you came
+to that, under a month; and meanwhile what was he to do with the
+Twinklers?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he
+wouldn't have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he
+so passionately did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on
+to the tablecloth&mdash;was sometimes swept by brief but
+tempestuous <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>revulsions of
+feeling, and though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment
+describe them mentally and without knowing it in the very words of
+Uncle Arthur, as those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he
+knew. They couldn't help the death of the man Dellogg. They were
+the victims, from first to last, of a cruel and pursuing fate; but
+it is natural to turn on victims, and Mr. Twist was for an instant,
+out of the very depth of his helpless sympathy, impatient with the
+Twinklers.</p>
+<p>He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth
+together, while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet.
+Across the road the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced
+by a thousand lights. Very few people were about and no one at all
+was on the sands. There was an immense noise of what sounded like
+grasshoppers or crickets, and also at intervals distant choruses of
+frogs, but these sounds seemed altogether beneficent,&mdash;so
+warm, and southern, and far away from less happy places where in
+October cold winds perpetually torment the world. Even in the dark
+Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was beautiful. He could
+imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed over the twins
+safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this place and
+seeing them every day,&mdash;perhaps even, as he had pictured to
+himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs.
+Now all that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg
+couldn't help being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help
+resenting it. It was so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was
+so like what one of that creature Uncle Arthur's friends would
+do.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frankly unreasonable, <a name=
+"Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>but then he was very much taken aback
+and annoyed. What was he to do with the Annas? He was obviously not
+a relation of theirs&mdash;and indeed no profiles could have been
+less alike&mdash;and he didn't suppose Acapulco was behind other
+parts of America in curiosity and gossip. If he stayed on at the
+Cosmopolitan with the twins till Mrs. Dellogg was approachable
+again, whenever that might be, every sort of question would be
+being asked in whispers about who they were and what was their
+relationship, and presently whenever they sat down anywhere the
+chairs all round them would empty. Mr. Twist had seen the kind of
+thing happening in hotels before to other people,&mdash;never to
+himself; never had he been in any situation till now that was not
+luminously regular. And quite soon after this with the chairs had
+begun to happen, the people who created these vacancies were told
+by the manager&mdash;firmly in America, politely in England, and
+sympathetically in France&mdash;that their rooms had been engaged a
+long time ago for the very next day, and no others were
+available.</p>
+<p>The Cosmopolitan was clearly an hotel frequented by the virtuous
+rich. Mr. Twist felt that he and the Annas wouldn't, in their eyes,
+come under this heading, not, that is, when the other guests became
+aware of the entire absence of any relationship between him and the
+twins. Well, for a day or two nothing could happen; for a day or
+two, before his party had had time to sink into the hotel
+consciousness and the manager appeared to tell him the rooms were
+engaged, he could think things out and talk them over with his
+companions. Perhaps he might even see Mrs. Dellogg. The funeral, he
+had heard on inquiring of the hall porter was next day. It was to
+be a brilliant affair, said the porter. Mr. Dellogg had been a
+prominent inhabitant, <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>free
+with his money, a supporter of anything there was to support. The
+porter talked of him as the taxi-driver had done, regretfully and
+respectfully; and Mr. Twist went to bed angrier than ever with a
+man who, being so valuable and so necessary, should have neglected
+at such a moment to go on living.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't sleep very well that night. He lay in his rosy
+room, under a pink silk quilt, and most of the time stared out
+through the open French windows with their pink brocade curtains at
+the great starry night, thinking.</p>
+<p>In that soft bed, so rosy and so silken as to have been worthy
+of the relaxations of, at least, a prima donna, he looked like some
+lean and alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business
+to. He hadn't thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of
+his teapot put him in the right position for doing so, because his
+soul was too simple for him to desire or think of anything less
+candid to wear in bed than flannel, and he still wore the blue
+flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In that beautiful bed his
+pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head, so frugal of hair,
+didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow prepared for
+the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And finding he
+couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
+spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as
+nobody was there to see him,&mdash;which, Mr. Twist sometimes
+thought when he caught sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time,
+is one of the comforts of being virtuously unmarried,&mdash;nobody
+minded.</p>
+<p>His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with
+and contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a
+difficult position who have Mr. <a name="Page_220" id=
+"Page_220"></a>Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
+dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer
+emotions, Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a
+detached and concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do
+with it; faced by the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness
+got in the ways of any clear vision.</p>
+<p>About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and
+strewn with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he
+suddenly had an idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real
+good one. He would place the Annas in a school.</p>
+<p>Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
+answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school
+would give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought
+never to have left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and
+overflowing natures like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing
+as a finishing school for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas
+should go, and once in it there they should stay put, thought Mr.
+Twist in vigorous American, gathering up his mouth defiantly.</p>
+<p>Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily.
+He would seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his
+position to the twins by turning himself into their guardian, and
+then get them at once into the best school there was. As their
+guardian he could then pay all their expenses, and faced by this
+legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon persuaded of the propriety
+of his paying whatever there was to pay.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go
+to sleep after that. Even three months' school&mdash;the period he
+gave Mrs. Dellogg for her acutest <a name="Page_221" id=
+"Page_221"></a>grief&mdash;would do. Tide them over. Give them room
+to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his
+spectacles, snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with
+the instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.</p>
+<p>But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure.
+The twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to
+school. They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one
+of the trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in
+honour of the heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of
+heliotrope that was in the warm air, had put on white summer
+frocks.</p>
+<p>Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and
+more angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out
+on to the great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at
+breakfast. They instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr.
+Twist had thought this wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now
+perceived his mistake. Not a head that wasn't turned to look at
+them, not a newspaper that wasn't lowered. They were immediate
+objects of interest and curiosity, entirely benevolent interest and
+curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about them, and the
+wives of the rich husbands&mdash;those halves of the virtuous-rich
+unions which provided the virtuousness&mdash;smiled as they passed,
+and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins'
+chairs for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so
+respectful, and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done
+it that night in New York at supper, and at all the <a name=
+"Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>meals in the train in spite of the
+train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes
+one have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this
+agreeable practice in private.</p>
+<p>They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the
+properly treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous
+politeness on a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept.
+They themselves had obviously slept well, for their faces were
+cherubic in their bland placidity, and already after one night wore
+what Mr. Twist later came to recognize as the Californian look, a
+look of complete unworriedness.</p>
+<p>Yet they ought to have been worried. Mr. Twist had been terribly
+worried up to the moment in the night when he got his great idea,
+and he was worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts.
+They didn't look as though they would easily be put to school. His
+idea still seemed to him magnificent, a great solution, but would
+the Annas be able to see it? They might turn out impervious to it;
+not rejecting it, but simply non-absorbent. As they slowly and
+contentedly ate their grape-fruit, gazing out between the spoonfuls
+at the sea shining across the road through palm trees, and looking
+unruffled itself, he felt it was going to be rather like suggesting
+to two cherubs to leave their serene occupation of adoring eternal
+beauty and learn lessons instead. Still, it was the one way out, as
+far as Mr. Twist could see, of the situation produced by the death
+of the man Dellogg. "When you've done breakfast," he said, pulling
+himself together on their reaching the waffle stage, "we must have
+a talk."</p>
+<p>"When we've done breakfast," said Anna-Rose, "we must have a
+walk."</p>
+<p>"Down there," said Anna-Felicitas, pointing with <a name=
+"Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>her spoon. "On the sands. Round the
+curve to where the pink hills begin."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Dellogg's death," said Mr. Twist, deciding it was necessary
+at once to wake them up out of the kind of happy somnolescence they
+seemed to be falling into, "has of course completely
+changed&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"How unfortunate," interrupted Anna-Rose, her eyes on the palms
+and the sea and the exquisite distant mountains along the back of
+the bay, "to have to be dead on a day like this."</p>
+<p>"It's not only his missing the fine weather that makes it
+unfortunate," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"You mean," said Anna-Rose, "it's our missing him."</p>
+<p>"Precisely," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Well, we know that," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.</p>
+<p>"We knew it last night, and it worried us," said Anna-Rose.
+"Then we went to sleep and it didn't worry us. And this morning it
+still doesn't."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist dryly. "You don't look particularly
+worried, I must say."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're not. People who find they've
+got to heaven aren't usually worried, are they."</p>
+<p>"And having got to heaven," said Anna-Rose, "we've thought of a
+plan to enable us to stay in it."</p>
+<p>"Oh have you," said Mr. Twist, pricking up his ears.</p>
+<p>"The plan seemed to think of us rather than we of it," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "It came and inserted itself, as it were, into our
+minds while we were dressing."</p>
+<p>"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist firmly,
+feeling sure that the twins' plan would be the sort that ought to
+be instantly nipped in the bud.</p>
+<p>He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have
+you? Is it about schools?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>He stared at her in
+silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was very much
+surprised. "It is."</p>
+<p>"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it
+will tide us over."</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect
+harmony of ideas.</p>
+<p>"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is&mdash;-" began Anna-Rose in
+her clear little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables
+round them.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of
+doors," he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the
+other tables, and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say
+next.</p>
+<p>"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.</p>
+<p>On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the
+harmony of ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed,
+something very like heated argument began almost as soon as they
+were seated on some rocks round the corner of the shore to the west
+of the hotel and they became aware, through conversation, of the
+vital difference in the two plans.</p>
+<p>The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with
+a profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a
+school in the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go
+to it for three months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs.
+Dellogg wanted to recover in.</p>
+<p>Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could
+only nod approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared
+that the twins didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity
+except as teachers. Professors, they said; professors of languages
+and literatures. <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>They could
+speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most
+people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an
+extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English
+and German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot
+about Heine, for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by
+heart and whose sad life in Paris&mdash;</p>
+<p>"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist.
+"You're not old enough."</p>
+<p>Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked
+at each other in surprised indignation.</p>
+<p>"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I
+don't see how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't
+grown up. And there can be no doubt as to which we are."</p>
+<p>And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their
+chairs for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things
+like that for children.</p>
+<p>"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing
+his hand down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words.
+"Nobody would take you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the
+pair of you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Perambulator&mdash;?"</p>
+<p>"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the
+same thing, anyway?"</p>
+<p>And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation
+became so heated that for a time it was molten.</p>
+<p>The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were
+outraged. Go to school? To a place they had never been to even in
+their suitable years? They, two independent grown-ups with
+&pound;200 in the bank and <a name="Page_226" id=
+"Page_226"></a>nobody with any right to stop their doing anything
+they wanted to? Go to school now, like a couple of little
+suck-a-thumbs?</p>
+<p>It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
+expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
+perambulator faces if he liked&mdash;they didn't care, but they did
+desire him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they
+would be now taking their proper place in society, that they had
+already done a course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not
+open to any but adults, and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not
+given them all that money to fritter away on paying for belated
+schooling.</p>
+<p>"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the
+discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how
+completely she had been stirred.</p>
+<p>"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose
+icily.</p>
+<p>"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and
+undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting
+chronologically confused as well?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the
+Twinklers when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his
+rock, his face supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while
+the twins watched him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he
+pushed his hat back and began slowly to rub his ear.</p>
+<p>"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said,
+continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.</p>
+<p>The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest
+against any necessity for such knowledge <a name="Page_227" id=
+"Page_227"></a>on his part, but he interrupted them. "If you don't
+mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when you're
+both a little more composed."</p>
+<p>"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Less ruffled, then."</p>
+<p>"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as
+this is important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say,
+to-morrow. I suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood
+and steadying our minds&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."</p>
+<p>"&mdash;and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I
+haven't told you all my plan yet"&mdash;Mr. Twist hadn't had time
+to inform them of his wish to become their guardian, owing to the
+swiftness with which he had been engulfed in their
+indignation,&mdash;"but whether you approve of it or not, what is
+quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much
+longer."</p>
+<p>"Because it's so dear?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it isn't so much <i>that</i>,&mdash;the proprietor is a
+friend of mine, or anyhow he very well might be&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid
+bedroom and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in
+silken beds, and the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be
+pure gold.</p>
+<p>"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending
+money," said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find
+a salaried position in a school without loss of time."</p>
+<p>"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we
+ought to start looking for such a situation at once" said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>Not to-day," said Mr.
+Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope of getting them,
+once they were used to it, to come round to his plan. "To-day, this
+one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us all
+good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And
+it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."</p>
+<p>He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off
+theirs.</p>
+<p>"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he
+added artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those
+hills."</p>
+<p>And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having
+spent the whole day exploring the charming environs of
+Acapulco,&mdash;having been seen at different periods going over
+the Old Mission in tow of a monk who wouldn't look at them but kept
+his eyes carefully fixed on the ground, sitting on high stools
+eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in the town that has
+the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at the foot of a
+cliff along the top of which a great hedge of rose-coloured
+geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove of ilexes
+on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from somewhere in
+the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through eucalyptus
+woods across the fields towards the foot of the
+mountains,&mdash;they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking
+of tea, to a delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round
+a restaurant and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one
+of the many American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people
+not living in the cottages can come and have meals at the
+restaurant, so we'll go right in and have tea."</p>
+<p>And it was just because they couldn't get tea&mdash;any <a name=
+"Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>other meal, the proprietress said, but
+no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help Eight Hours Bill
+which obliged her to do without domestics during the afternoon
+hours&mdash;that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><a name="Page_230"
+id="Page_230"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<p>But she didn't come by it at once.</p>
+<p>They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the
+scented road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and
+they got into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for
+tea, and her brain was still unvisited by inspiration.</p>
+<p>They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being
+thwarted in their desire to sit at a little green table under
+whispering trees and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish
+to have it at the Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been
+corrupted by Europe, and the twins, who had the habits of their
+mother, couldn't imagine doing without it in the afternoon, and
+they would have it in the hotel sooner than not have it at all. It
+was brought to them after a long time of waiting. Nobody else was
+having any at that hour, and the waiter, when at last one was
+found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they were
+serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
+and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been
+breakfast.</p>
+<p>Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and
+distaste, as well as the place they were sitting in and its
+rocking-chairs and marble and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly
+smitten by her idea.</p>
+<p>It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were,
+between the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in
+the middle of a piece of toast <a name="Page_231" id=
+"Page_231"></a>and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
+eating and looked at her.</p>
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come
+off?"</p>
+<p>At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away,
+for experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came
+undone.</p>
+<p>"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said,
+mildly sarcastic.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ich gratuliere</i>," said Anna-Rose, also mildly
+sarcastic.</p>
+<p>"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous,"
+she said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of
+course. That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering
+about schools."</p>
+<p>There was a new expression on her face that silenced the
+comments rising to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of
+whom had tired feet and were therefore disposed to sarcasm.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her
+face continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as
+if a curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in
+her usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight.
+She reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind,
+of Moses when he came down from receiving the Law on the
+mountain.</p>
+<p>"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking
+of Moses, "if it's only more commandments."</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding
+in her fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the
+rocks," she said getting up&mdash;"where we sat this morning." And
+she marched out, <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>followed by
+the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any
+one who is thoroughly determined.</p>
+<p>It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
+Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock
+she had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and
+expounded her idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and
+listless, for once was shaken into burning activity. She threw off
+her hat directly she got on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if
+it were a pulpit, and with her hands clasped round her knees poured
+out her plan, the long shafts of the setting sun bathing her in
+bright flames and making her more like Moses than ever,&mdash;if,
+that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as Anna-F., thought
+Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and beard.</p>
+<p>It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration was.
+It reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of
+course, a far more complicated matter than that little device of
+his, and would have to be thought out very carefully and approached
+very judiciously, but the wealth of detail she was already ready
+with immensely impressed him. She even had a name for the thing;
+and it was when he heard this name, when it flashed into her talk
+with the unpremeditatedness of an inspiration, that Mr. Twist
+became definitely enthusiastic.</p>
+<p>He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in
+his blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the
+name. He saw what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it
+on hoarding-on signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching
+the public attention and sticking there.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>The idea, of course, was
+fantastic, unconventional, definitely outside what his mother and
+that man Uncle Arthur would consider proper, but it was outside the
+standards of such people that life and fruitfulness and interest
+and joy began. He had escaped from the death-like grip of his
+mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself forcibly expulsed the Annas
+from his, and now that they were all so far away, instead of still
+timorously trying to go on living up to those distant sterile ideas
+why shouldn't they boldly go out into the light and colour that was
+waiting everywhere for the free of spirit?</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to
+be said for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with
+no perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm,
+himself taking the very opposite view as to the proper thing for
+the twins to do from the one he had taken in the night and on the
+rocks that morning. School? Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright
+shoots of everlastingness&mdash;this is what they looked like to
+him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting sun&mdash;in such a
+place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of the Annas,
+were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by giving a
+big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He
+himself would hover beneficently in the background over the
+undertaking.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas's idea was to use Uncle Arthur's &pound;200 in
+renting one of the little wooden cottages that seemed to be
+plentiful, preferably one about five miles out in the country, make
+it look inside like an English cottage, all pewter and chintz and
+valances, make it look outside like the more innocent type of
+German wayside inn, with green tables and spreading trees, get
+<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>a cook who would concentrate
+on cakes, real lovely ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and
+start an inn for tea alone that should become the fashion. It ought
+to be so arranged that it became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose
+would do the waiting. The prices would be very high, indeed
+exorbitant&mdash;this Mr. Twist regarded as another
+inspiration,&mdash;so that it should be a distinction, give people
+a <i>cachet</i>, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a
+prominent position in the road in front of it, where every
+motor-car would be bound to see it, there would be a real wayside
+inn signboard, such as inns in England always have, with its name
+on it.</p>
+<p>"If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial
+arms of Germany and England emblazoned on it," interrupted Mr.
+Twist, "just to show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality."</p>
+<p>"We might call it The Christopher and Columbus," interrupted
+Anna-Rose, who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on
+Anna-Felicitas's words.</p>
+<p>"Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer," said Mr. Twist, "and
+have a big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on
+it&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "It is The Open Arms. That is its
+name."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed
+his head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.</p>
+<p>He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it
+that not a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a
+name. The whole thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while
+Anna-Felicitas still talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay
+little assault on the purses of millionaires, in whom <a name=
+"Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>the district abounded judging from the
+beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day,&mdash;but a
+joke and a gay assault that would at the same time employ and
+support the Annas; solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day
+long had been regarding them much as one does a difficult
+mathematical problem.</p>
+<p>It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to
+Anna-Felicitas's many, when at last she paused for want of breath.
+The inn, he said, should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was
+over after the expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved
+by the Annas as interest on their invested capital&mdash;they
+listened with eager respect to these business-like
+expressions&mdash;would be handed over to the American Red Cross.
+"That," explained Mr. Twist, "would seal the inn as both
+respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to
+make it."</p>
+<p>And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or
+questioning in the general excitement, that he would have himself
+appointed their legal guardian.</p>
+<p>They didn't go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there
+was so much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had
+to suppress them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting
+through into their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the
+tables round them were obviously trying to hear, they went out once
+again on to the sea-front and walked up and down till late
+continuing the discussion, mostly simultaneously as regards the
+twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in with practical suggestions
+whenever they stopped to take breath.</p>
+<p>He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were
+going out one by one in the Cosmopolitan <a name="Page_236" id=
+"Page_236"></a>bedroom windows, where the virtuous rich, exhausted
+by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with boredom and
+respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he stayed
+alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the
+next day.</p>
+<p>There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be
+found, and the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed,
+must be secured at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan
+and preside over the twins until they all proceeded in due season
+to The Open Arms. She must be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided
+Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled in managing a cook, business-like,
+intellectual, and obedient. Her feminine tact would enable her to
+appear to preside while she was in reality obeying. She must
+understand that she was there for the Annas, and that the Annas
+were not there for her. She must approach the situation in the
+spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country, who
+receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight
+of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr.
+Twist didn't want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those
+blessed little girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon
+in their hands of being able to give her notice, and it would
+considerably dim the reputation of The Open Arms if there were a
+too frequent departure from it of middle-aged ladies.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as
+he paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself.
+That youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament,
+which leaped about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy
+lamb when the sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great
+fun; and the business side of him was feeling <a name="Page_237"
+id="Page_237"></a>that it was not only great fun but probably an
+extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.</p>
+<p>The ignorant Annas&mdash;bless their little hearts, he thought,
+he who only the night before on that very spot had been calling
+them accursed&mdash;believed that their &pound;200 was easily going
+to do everything. This was lucky, for otherwise there would have
+been some thorny paths of argument and convincing to be got through
+before they would have allowed him to help finance the undertaking;
+probably they never would have, in their scrupulous independence.
+Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on the usefulness of his
+teapot. At last he was going to be able to do something, thanks to
+it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to France&mdash;that
+was duty. His lavishness to his mother&mdash;that again was duty.
+But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
+always longed for,&mdash;a chance to help and make happy, and be
+with and watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet
+kind women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....</p>
+<p>It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by
+Nature to be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through
+him, forgot and turned him into a man.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><a name="Page_238"
+id="Page_238"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<p>The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days
+later they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted
+of course, for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing
+ever is <i>exactly</i>, but full of possibilities to the eye of
+imagination, and there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the
+little house.</p>
+<p>It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists
+because of its beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a
+slope of green fields scattered over with live oaks that gently
+descended down towards the sea. Its back windows, and those parts
+of it that a house is ashamed of, were close up to a thick grove of
+eucalyptus which continued to the foot of the mountains. It had an
+overrun little garden in front, separated from the fields by a
+riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few orange, and lemon, and
+peach trees on its west side, the survivors of what had once been
+intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees on the other,
+between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge wistaria
+clambered over its dilapidated face. Somebody had once planted
+syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of
+pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an
+impenetrable screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from
+the road.</p>
+<p>It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay,
+being made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open
+Arms. Every motorist coming <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>up
+that road would see the signboard outside the pepper trees, and
+would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and pass
+through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas,
+and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher
+class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the
+house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A
+farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of
+confining himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was
+the only appropriate drink for a farmer the agent
+maintained&mdash;he was the president of the local
+Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League&mdash;he put his money as he
+earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a bit
+was done for.</p>
+<p>The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in
+every way except situation; but situation being the first
+consideration, Mr. Twist agreed with the twins, who had fallen in
+love with the neglected little house whose shabbiness was being so
+industriously hidden by roses, that this was the place, and a week
+later it and its garden had been bought&mdash;Mr. Twist didn't tell
+the twins he had bought it, in order to avoid argument, but it was
+manifestly the simple thing to do&mdash;and over and round and
+through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many diligent and
+determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the middle-aged
+lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the matter
+of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide what
+it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.
+"And everything so cheap too!" exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose
+&pound;200 was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow's
+cruse.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>This belief, however,
+received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist, who was too busy
+now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy chintzes, and it
+was finally shattered when the various middle-aged ladies who
+responded to Mr. Twist's cry for help in the advertising columns of
+the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as salary
+more than the whole Twinkler capital.</p>
+<p>The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then
+once more were saved by an inspiration,&mdash;this time
+Anna-Rose's.</p>
+<p>"I know," she exclaimed, her face clearing. "We'll make it
+Co-operative."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to
+think out a way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly
+with his money, for in spite of his going to be their guardian they
+remained difficult on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn't,
+of course, tell what in Anna-Rose's mind the word co-operative
+stood for, but felt confident that whatever it stood for he could
+manipulate it into covering his difficulties.</p>
+<p>"What is co-operative?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect
+for a sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that
+and seem to know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but
+it sat very loosely in her head, at no point touching anything
+else.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you heard of Co-operative Stores?" inquired
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Yes but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, then."</p>
+<p>"Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?" persisted
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"One run on co-operative lines, of course," said Anna-<a name=
+"Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>Rose grandly. "Everybody pays for
+everything, so that nobody particular pays for anything."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I mean," said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be
+clearer, "it's when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes
+and things out of what you get."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas. "And will they wait quite quietly
+till we've got it?"</p>
+<p>"Of course, if we're all co-operative."</p>
+<p>"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but
+knew of old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.</p>
+<p>"See here now," said Mr. Twist weightily, "if that isn't an
+idea. Only you've got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is
+profit-sharing. And as this undertaking is going to be a big
+success there will be big profits, and any amount of cakes and
+salaries will be paid for as glibly and easily as you can say your
+ABC."</p>
+<p>And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going
+to stay in California, and that he intended during this time to be
+book-keeper, secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides
+Advertiser-in-Chief, which was, he said, the most important post of
+all; and if they would be so good as to leave this side of it
+unquestioningly to him, who had had a business training, he would
+undertake that the Red Cross, American or British, whichever they
+decided to support, should profit handsomely.</p>
+<p>Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial
+backer of The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the
+twins admirable. It <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>cleared
+away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought chintzes
+and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even ceased
+to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their
+background,&mdash;indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for
+it gave them confidence that she must at such a price be the right
+one, because nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the
+right one would have the face to demand so much.</p>
+<p>This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of
+course, she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard&mdash;the Miss
+Twinklers blushed and felt ashamed of themselves because they
+hadn't, and indistinctly murmured something about having heard of
+Cornelius K. Vanderbilt, though, and wouldn't he do&mdash;had a
+great deal of very beautiful snow-white hair, while at the same
+time she was only middle-aged. She firmly announced, when she
+perceived Mr. Twist's spectacles dwelling on her hair, that she
+wasn't yet forty, and her one fear was that she mightn't be
+middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly mentioned
+middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and fingers
+and feet couldn't possibly be described as coming under that
+heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be
+regarded as having overshot the mark. But its turning white had
+nothing to do with age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed
+over. No hair could have stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton
+took that final step. She had been considering the question of age,
+she informed Mr. Twist, from every aspect before coming to the
+interview, for she didn't want to make a mistake herself nor allow
+the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she had arrived at the
+conclusion that what with her hair being too old <a name="Page_243"
+id="Page_243"></a>and the rest of her being too young, taken
+altogether she struck an absolute average and perfectly fulfilled
+the condition required; and as she wished to live in the country,
+town life disturbing her psychically too much, she was willing to
+give up her home and her circle&mdash;it was a real
+sacrifice&mdash;and accept the position offered by the Miss
+Twinklers. She was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time
+she was very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she
+liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for
+equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper
+alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise,&mdash;she
+was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her.
+Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans.
+Especially if they were war ones.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took
+quite a long time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause
+in which one could do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to
+which Mr. Twist had motored the twins, starting at daybreak that
+morning in order to see this lady, that the personal interview took
+place, and by lunch-time they had been personally interviewing her
+for three hours without stopping. It seemed years. The twins longed
+to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton's
+spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it
+affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation
+and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one
+might have dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be
+interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the
+Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be
+<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>interviewed directly after
+lunch, and they were dying for some food.</p>
+<p>The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he
+knew she was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and
+must have; that hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it,
+would be a shield through which no breath of misunderstanding as to
+the singleness of purpose with which the inn was run would ever
+penetrate. He would have settled it with her in five minutes if she
+could have been got to listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to
+listen; and when it became clear that no amount of patient waiting
+would bring him any nearer the end of what she had to say Mr. Twist
+was forced to take off his coat, as it were, and plunge abruptly
+into the very middle of her flow of words and convey to her as
+quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life against the
+stream, that she was engaged. "Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,"&mdash;he
+called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton's
+rushing words, "engaged." She would be expected at the
+Cosmopolitan, swiftly continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly
+anxious to have her at the Cosmopolitan as the twins were
+particularly anxious not to,&mdash;for for the life of them they
+couldn't see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up before they
+started inhabiting the cottage,&mdash;within three days&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist, it can't be done," broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and
+mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist's head. "It
+absolutely&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Within a week, then," he called out quickly, holding up the
+breaking of the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened
+the door. "And good<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>morning
+Mrs. Bilton&mdash;my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we have
+to hurry away&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The cook was engaged that afternoon. Mr. Twist appeared to have
+mixed up the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying
+the luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room,
+he found them waiting for him in the passage outside the door
+looking excited.</p>
+<p>"The cook's come," whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards
+the shut door. "She's a man."</p>
+<p>"She's a Chinaman," whispered Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was surprised. He thought he had an appointment with a
+woman,&mdash;a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a
+specialist in pastries and had immaculate references, but the
+Chinaman assured him that he hadn't, and that his appointment was
+with him alone, with him, Li Koo. In proof of it, he said,
+spreading out his hands, here he was. "We make cakies&mdash;li'l
+cakies&mdash;many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo, observing
+doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his person he
+whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit out of
+a hat, and offered them to the twins.</p>
+<p>They ate. He was engaged. It took five minutes.</p>
+<p>After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her
+appointment, an over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that
+she was the coloured lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman
+had written.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been
+clever. Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his
+cakes. Besides, they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently
+out of flowers and honey and cream,&mdash;cakes which, combined
+with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>Mrs. Bilton's hair, would
+make the fortune of The Open Arms.</p>
+<p>The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in
+spite of the <i>douceur</i> and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and
+she was so much disappointed that they could hear her being it out
+loud all the way along the passage and down the stairs, and the
+nature of her expression of her disappointment was such that Mr.
+Twist, as he tried by animated conversation to prevent it reaching
+the twins' ears, could only be thankful after all that Li Koo had
+been so clever. It did, however, reach the twins' ears, but they
+didn't turn a hair because of Uncle Arthur. They merely expressed
+surprise at its redness, seeing that it came out of somebody so
+black.</p>
+<p>Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to
+creep over the countryside. They crept along the roads where
+motorists were frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners
+and over hedges. They were taciturn advertisements, and just said
+three words in big, straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue
+ground:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS</h3>
+<p>People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it
+must be the name of a book. They had better get it. Other people
+would have got it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat,
+and was probably a religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were
+usually religious. A few considered it sounded a little improper,
+and as though the book, far from being religious, would not be
+altogether nice; but only very proper people who distrusted
+everything, even arms took this view.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>After a week the same
+advertisements appeared with three lines added:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS<br />
+YES<br />
+BUT<br />
+WHY? WHERE? WHAT?</h3>
+<p>and then ten days after that came fresh ones:</p>
+<h3>THE OPEN ARMS<br />
+WILL OPEN<br />
+WIDE</h3>
+<p>On November 20th at Four P.M.</p>
+<h3>N.B. WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.</h3>
+<p>And while the countryside&mdash;an idle countryside, engaged
+almost wholly in holiday-making and glad of any new
+distraction&mdash;began to be interested and asked questions, Mr.
+Twist was working day and night at getting the thing ready.</p>
+<p>All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging,
+hurrying, criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing. His
+heart and soul and brain was in this, his business instincts and
+his soft domestic side. His brain, after working at top speed
+during the day with the architect, the painter and decorator, the
+furnisher, the garden expert, the plumbing expert, the
+electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate agent, and numberless
+other persons, during the night meditated and evolved
+advertisements. There was to be a continual stream week by week
+after the inn was <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>opened of
+ingenious advertisements. Altogether Mr. Twist had his hands
+full.</p>
+<p>The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually
+being the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort. It was to
+be as like an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be
+got to be going on his own and the twins' recollections and the
+sensationally coloured Elizabethan pictures in the architect's
+portfolio. It didn't disturb Mr. Twist's unprejudiced American mind
+that an English inn embowered in heliotrope and arum lilies and
+eucalyptus trees would be odd and unnatural, and it wouldn't
+disturb anybody else there either. Were not Swiss mountain chalets
+to be found in the fertile plains along the Pacific, complete with
+fir trees specially imported and uprooted in their maturity and
+brought down with tons of their own earth attached to their roots
+and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss rocks, so
+that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves was
+the next a bit of frowning northern landscape? And were there not
+Italian villas dotted about also? But these looked happier and more
+at home than the chalets. And there were buildings too, like small
+Gothic cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a
+woman who has come to a party in the wrong clothes. But no matter.
+Nobody minded. So that an English inn added to this company, with a
+little German beer-garden&mdash;only there wasn't to be any
+beer&mdash;wouldn't cause the least surprise or discomfort to
+anybody.</p>
+<p>In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English
+inn was the signboard out in the road. With the best will in the
+world, and the liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist,
+the architect couldn't <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>in
+three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient
+red-brick Elizabethan pothouse. He got a thatched roof on to it by
+a miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a
+real antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads
+in a San Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a
+basis for any wished-for hark-back later on when there was more
+time to the old girl's epoch&mdash;thus did he refer to Great Eliza
+and her spacious days&mdash;and meanwhile it gave the building, he
+alleged, a considerable air; but as this door in that fine climate
+was hooked open all day long it didn't disturb the gay, the almost
+jocose appearance of the place when everything was finished.</p>
+<p>Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very
+much as people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the
+opening, as he sat astride a green chair at the bottom of the
+little garden, where a hedge of sweetbriar beautifully separated
+the Twinkler domain from the rolling fields that lay between it and
+the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork; and the conclusion was
+forced upon him&mdash;reluctantly, for it was the last thing he had
+wanted The Open Arms to do&mdash;that the thing looked as if it
+were winking at him.</p>
+<p>Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head,
+staring, that was what it seemed to be doing. How was that? He
+studied it profoundly, his head on one side. Was it that it was so
+very gay? He hadn't meant it to be gay like that. He had intended a
+restrained and disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness,
+with those sweet maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest
+doves in and out among its tea-tables; but one small thing had been
+added to another small thing at their suggestion, each small thing
+<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>taken separately apparently
+not mattering at all and here it was almost&mdash;he hoped it was
+only his imagination&mdash;winking at him. It looked a familiar
+little house; jocular; very open indeed about the arms.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<p>Various things had happened, however, before this morning of the
+great day was reached, and Mr. Twist had had some harassing
+experiences.</p>
+<p>One of the first things he had done after the visit to Los
+Angeles was to take steps in the matter of the guardianship. He had
+written to Mrs. Bilton that he was the Miss Twinklers' guardian,
+though it was not at that moment true. It was clear, he thought,
+that it should be made true as quickly as possible, and he
+therefore sought out a lawyer in Acapulco the morning after the
+interview. This was not the same lawyer who did his estate business
+for him; Mr. Twist thought it best to have a separate one for more
+personal affairs.</p>
+<p>On hearing Mr. Twist's name announced, the lawyer greeted him as
+an old friend. He knew, of course, all about the teapot, for the
+Non-Trickler was as frequent in American families as the Bible and
+much more regularly used; but he also knew about the cottage at the
+foot of the hills, what it had cost&mdash;which was
+little&mdash;and what it would cost&mdash;which was
+enormous&mdash;before it was fit to live in. The only thing he
+didn't know was that it was to be used for anything except an
+ordinary <i>pied-&agrave;-terre</i>. He had heard, too, of the
+presence at the Cosmopolitan of the twins, and on this point, like
+the rest of Acapulco, was a little curious.</p>
+<p>The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been able
+to give any accurate description of the relationship of the
+Twinklers to Mr. Twist. Its <a name="Page_252" id=
+"Page_252"></a>paragraph announcing his arrival had been obliged
+merely to say, while awaiting more detailed information, that Mr.
+Edward A. Twist, the well-known Breakfast Table Benefactor and
+gifted inventor of the famous Non-Trickler Teapot, had arrived from
+New York and was staying at the Cosmopolitan Hotel with
+<i>entourage</i>; and the day after this the lawyer, who got about
+a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging climate, happening
+to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a friend, had
+seen the <i>entourage</i>.</p>
+<p>It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way
+upstairs, followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even
+without the boy and the canary it was a conspicuous object. The
+lawyer asked his friend who the cute little girls were, and was
+interested to hear he was beholding Mr. Edward A. Twist's
+<i>entourage</i>. His friend told him that opinion in the hotel was
+divided about the precise nature of this <i>entourage</i> and its
+relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally
+supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by
+parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put
+to one of the young ladies' finishing schools in that agreeable
+district. The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the
+Cosmopolitan mind with the Twinklers. Houses were always being
+taken in that paradise by wealthy persons from unkinder climates.
+He would live in it three months in the year, thought the
+Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep in this way an occasional
+eye on his charges. The hotel guests regarded the Twinklers at this
+stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill, for they had up to
+then only been seen and not heard; and as one of their leading
+characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if anybody
+<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>looked a little surprised,
+which everybody usually did quite early in conversation with them,
+this was at that moment, the delicate moment before Mrs. Bilton's
+arrival, fortunate.</p>
+<p>The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much
+as other honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly
+congratulating him, when he heard what he had come for, on his
+taste in wards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a
+matter of taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans,
+and he had been asked&mdash;he cleared his throat&mdash;asked by
+their relatives, by, in fact, their uncle in England, to take over
+their guardianship and see that they came to no harm.</p>
+<p>The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had
+wards at all they might as well be cute wards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he had
+had no choice.</p>
+<p>The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued to look at
+him intelligently.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as
+might have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the
+purchase of the cottage because this was a private and personal
+matter&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with really almost
+too much intelligence.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified,
+but the lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness
+was natural to him when visited for the first time by a new client,
+and that there should be frankness between lawyers and clients he
+considered essential. If, he held, the client wouldn't <a name=
+"Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>be frank, then the lawyer must be; and
+he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the
+lawyer cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that
+the <i>entourage</i> must have some very weak spots about it
+somewhere.</p>
+<p>"There's another way out of it of course, Mr. Twist," he said,
+when he had done rapidly describing the different steps to be
+taken. There were not many steps. The process of turning oneself
+into a guardian was surprisingly simple and swift.</p>
+<p>"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking very big and
+astonished. "Out of what?"</p>
+<p>"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't occurred to
+you. Upon my word now, I do wonder."</p>
+<p>"But I'm not in any little diff&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"The elder of these two girls, now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for him to be
+sensible.</p>
+<p>"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist, "They're twins."</p>
+<p>"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our
+twins better than that over here. But come now&mdash;hasn't it
+occurred to you you might marry one of them, and so become quite
+naturally related to them both?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.</p>
+<p>"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly
+opening.</p>
+<p>"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in
+free-and-easiness.</p>
+<p>"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his <a name=
+"Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>mouth together, "cut that line of joke
+out. I'm here on serious business. I haven't come to be facetious.
+Least of all about those children&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer pleasantly.
+"Children, you call them. How old are they? Seventeen? My wife was
+sixteen when we married. Oh quite so, quite so. Certainly. By all
+means. Well then, they're to be your wards. And you don't want it
+known how recently they've become your wards&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it. The
+relationship is to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I shall
+be dumb of course, but most things get into the press here. Let me
+see&mdash;" He pulled a sheet of paper towards him and took up his
+fountain pen. "Just oblige me with particulars. Date of birth.
+Place of birth. Parentage&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.</p>
+<p>None came.</p>
+<p>"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist presently, his
+forehead puckered.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen. "Quite so. Not known
+your young friends long enough yet."</p>
+<p>"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr. Twist stiffly,
+"but we happen to have found more alive topics of conversation than
+dates and parents."</p>
+<p>"Ah. Parents not alive."</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor children
+wouldn't be knocking about in a strange country."</p>
+<p>"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his pen
+across his forefinger.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly <a name=
+"Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>he remembered his mother's peculiar
+horror when he told her the girls he was throwing away his home
+life for and breaking her heart over were Germans. It had acted
+upon her like the last straw. And since then he had felt
+everywhere, with every one he talked to, in every newspaper he
+read, the same strong hostility to Germans, so much stronger than
+when he left America the year before.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this
+matter of the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He
+suddenly saw innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The
+Open Arms if it was known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the
+guardianship idea than that such difficulties should arise. He
+hadn't thought; he hadn't had time properly to think; he had been
+so hustled and busy the last few days....</p>
+<p>"They come from England," he said, looking at the lawyer very
+straight.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely, by
+evading, he hoped to put off the day when their nationality would
+be known. Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known later
+on when everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved them for
+themselves and accordingly wouldn't care.</p>
+<p>"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I asked because I
+overheard them talking the other day as they passed through the
+hall of your hotel. They were talking about a canary. The r in the
+word seemed a little rough. Not quite English, Mr. Twist? Not quite
+American?"</p>
+<p>"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been a good deal
+abroad."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>Quite so. At school, no
+doubt."</p>
+<p>He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
+forefinger.</p>
+<p>"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at Mr.
+Twist,&mdash;"could you let me have them soon? I tell you what.
+You're in a hurry to fix this. I'll call round to-night at the
+hotel, and get them direct from your young friends. Save time. And
+make me acquainted with a pair of charming girls."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held out his
+hand. "Not to-night. We're engaged to-night. To-morrow will be soon
+enough. I'll send round. I'll let you know. I believe I'm going to
+think it over a bit. There isn't any such terrible hurry,
+anyhow."</p>
+<p>"There isn't? I understood&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in
+the long run."</p>
+<p>"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well,
+I'm always at your service, at any time." And he shook hands
+heartily with Mr. Twist and politely opened the door for him.</p>
+<p>Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever
+that there was something very weak somewhere about the
+<i>entourage</i>.</p>
+<p>As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he
+gone to the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the
+world that he was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would
+have believed it if he had come in one day and said it was settled,
+and nobody outside would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After
+all, you couldn't see if a man was a guardian or not just by
+looking at him. Well, he would do no more about it, it was much too
+<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs.
+Bilton go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges.
+Anyway he had all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had
+been to go to the lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however
+distinctly and frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the
+Twinkler guardian, that he wasn't.</p>
+<p>It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with
+clearness, that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told
+them that evening that owing to technical difficulties, with the
+details of which he wouldn't trouble them, the guardianship was
+off, were pleased.</p>
+<p>"We want to be bound to you," said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very
+soft and her voice very gentle, "only by ties of affection and
+gratitude."</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were
+going to say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable
+after all to get it out, and only said, rather inaudibly,
+"Yes."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><a name="Page_259"
+id="Page_259"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<p>Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the
+end of that week.</p>
+<p>It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing
+should occur at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud;
+yet it did get under a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too,
+before Mrs. Bilton's arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her
+snowy-haired respectability would have spread over the twins like a
+white whig. They would have been safe. His party would have been
+unassailable. But no; those Twinklers, in spite of his exhortation
+whenever he had a minute left to exhort in, couldn't, it seemed,
+refrain from twinkling,&mdash;the word in Mr. Twist's mind covered
+the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of language, their
+affable desire to explain.</p>
+<p>He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the
+excited interest they took in the progress of the inn made them
+happy to hang about it most of the time of the delicate and
+dangerous week before Mrs. Bilton came; but they too had things to
+do,&mdash;shopping in Acapulco choosing the sea-blue linen frocks
+and muslin caps and aprons in which they were to wait at tea, and
+buying the cushions and flower-pots and canary that came under the
+general heading, in Anna-Rose's speech, of feminine touches. So
+they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go without a
+qualm.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>Mind and not say anything
+to anybody about this, won't you," he would say hastily, making a
+comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they went.</p>
+<p>"Of course we won't."</p>
+<p>"I meant, nobody is to know what it's really going to be.
+They're to think it's just a <i>pied-&agrave;-terre.</i> It would
+most ruin my advertisement scheme if they&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But of <i>course</i> we won't. Have we ever?" the twins would
+answer, looking very smug and sure of themselves.</p>
+<p>"No. Not yet. But&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with
+whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as
+he needs must, to God and their own discretion.</p>
+<p>Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler
+characteristic. But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton's arrival grew
+near, and nothing had happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr.
+Twist, from the pleasant looks of the other guests when the twins
+went in and out of the restaurant to meals, that nothing had
+happened. His heart grew lighter. On the last afternoon, when Mrs.
+Bilton was actually due next day, his heart was quite light, and he
+saw them leave him to go back and rest at the hotel, because they
+were tired by the accumulated standing about of the week,
+altogether unconcernedly.</p>
+<p>The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was,
+indeed, one of complete benevolence. They didn't even mind the
+canary. Who would not be indulgent towards two such sweet little
+girls and their pet bird, even if it did sing all day and most of
+the night without stopping? The Twinkler girls were like two little
+bits of snapped-off sunlight, or bits of white <a name="Page_261"
+id="Page_261"></a>blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their
+shining youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently.
+But if the guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive.
+Everybody knew who Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers?
+Were they relations of his? <i>Prot&eacute;g&eacute;es</i>?
+Charges?</p>
+<p>The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which
+information as to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in
+its embarrassment at being ignorant to take refuge in French,
+because French may so easily be supposed to mean something. The
+paper had little knowledge of, but much confidence in, French.
+<i>Entourage</i> had seemed to it as good a word as any other, as
+indeed did <i>client&egrave;le</i>. It had hesitated between the
+two, but finally chose <i>entourage</i> because there happened to
+be no accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were
+amused at the word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable;
+and, until the last afternoon, only the manager didn't like the
+Twinklers. He didn't like them because of the canary. His
+sympathies had been alienated from the Miss Twinklers the moment he
+heard through the chambermaid that they had tied the heavy canary
+cage on to the hanging electric light in their bedroom. He said
+nothing, of course. One doesn't say anything if one is an hotel
+manager, until the unique and final moment when one says
+everything.</p>
+<p>On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton's advent the twins,
+tired of standing about for days at the cottage and in shops,
+appeared in the hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn't
+go to their room to rest because they didn't feel inclined for the
+canary, and they sat down very happily in the comfortable
+rocking-chairs with which the big hall abounded, and, propping
+<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>their dusty feet on the lower
+bar of a small table, with friendly and interested eyes they
+observed the other guests.</p>
+<p>The other guests also observed them.</p>
+<p>It was the first time the <i>entourage</i> had appeared without
+its companion, and the other guests were dying to know details
+about it. It hadn't been sitting in the hall five minutes before a
+genial old gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas's friendly eye and
+instantly drew up his chair.</p>
+<p>"Uncle gone off by himself to-day?" he asked; for he was of the
+party in the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked
+difference in profiles, to the relationship theory, and he made a
+shot at the relationship being that of uncle.</p>
+<p>"We haven't got an uncle nearer than England," said
+Anna-Felicitas affably.</p>
+<p>"And we only got him by accident," said Anna-Rose, equally
+affably.</p>
+<p>"It was an unfortunate accident," said Anna-Felicitas,
+considering her memories.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed. How was that?"</p>
+<p>"By the usual method, if an uncle isn't a blood uncle," said
+Anna-Rose. "We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married
+her. So we have to have him."</p>
+<p>"It was sheer bad luck," said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on
+that distant image.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Just bad luck. He might so easily have
+married some one else's aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs
+go and fall on ours."</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated on
+this, with an affectionate eye&mdash;he was
+affectionate&mdash;resting in turn on each Anna.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>Then Mr. Twist," he went
+on presently&mdash;"we all know him of course&mdash;a public
+benefactor&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, <i>isn't</i> he," said Anna-Rose radiantly.</p>
+<p>"A boon to the breakfast-table&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, <i>isn't</i> he," said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. "He
+<i>is</i> so pleasant at breakfast."</p>
+<p>"Then he&mdash;Mr. Twist&mdash;Teapot Twist we call him where I
+live&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Teapot Twist?" said Anna-Rose. "I think that's irreverent."</p>
+<p>"Not at all. It's a pet name. A sign of our affection and
+gratitude. Then he isn't your uncle?"</p>
+<p>"We haven't got a real uncle nearer than heaven," said
+Anna-Felicitas, her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the
+image of Onkel Col.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated, on
+this too, his thirsty heart&mdash;he had a thirsty heart, and found
+difficulty in slaking it because of his wife&mdash;very indulgent
+toward the twins.</p>
+<p>Then he said: "That's a long way off."</p>
+<p>"What is?" asked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The place your uncle's in."</p>
+<p>"Not too far really," said Anna-Felicitas softly. "He's safe
+there. He was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he
+got there at last through his own carelessness."</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Sheer carelessness," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "How was that?"</p>
+<p>"Well, you see where we lived they didn't have electric light,"
+began Anna-Rose, "and one night&mdash;the the night he went to
+heaven&mdash;he put the petroleum lamp&mdash;"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>And she was about to relate
+that dreadful story of Onkle Col's end which has already been
+described in these pages as unfit for anywhere but an appendix for
+time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas put out a
+beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't bear to remember Onkle Col's end. It had
+haunted her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping
+tongues of flame. And it wasn't only tongues of flame. There were
+circumstances connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the
+war had damped down lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She
+could at least now talk of him calmly, and also speculate with
+pleasure on the probable aspect of Onkle Col in glory, but she
+still couldn't bear to hear the details of his end.</p>
+<p>At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very
+upright and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce,
+came down the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old
+gentleman, crossed straight over and sat down briskly next to them
+smiling benevolently.</p>
+<p>"Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I," she
+said, pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and
+smiling at the group.</p>
+<p>She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next
+winter, but it being warm just then in California they were cotton
+socks because wool made her hands too hot.</p>
+<p>The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.</p>
+<p>"I'm just crazy to hear about you," said the brisk lady,
+knitting with incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over
+everybody. "You're fresh from Europe, aren't you? What say? Quite
+fresh? My, aren't you cute little things. Thinking of making a long
+stay in the <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>States? What say?
+For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid.
+Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I
+guess they won't let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist
+looking after you meanwhile? What say? There isn't any meanwhile?
+Well, I don't quite&mdash;Mr. Twist your uncle, or cousin? What
+say? No relation at all? H'm, h'm. No relation at all, is he. Well,
+I guess he's an old friend of your parents, then. What say? They
+didn't know him? H'm, h'm. They didn't know him, didn't they. Well,
+I don't quite&mdash;What say? But you know him? Yes, yes, so I see.
+H'm, h'm. I don't quite&mdash;" Her needles flew in and out, and
+her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old
+gentleman, who was gazing with thirsty appreciation at
+Anna-Felicitas, could struggle out of his chair.</p>
+<p>"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the
+silence that had fallen on the lady, "Mr. Twist, regarded as a man,
+is old, but regarded as a friend he is new."</p>
+<p>"Brand new," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"H'm, h'm," said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and
+looking first at one twin and then at the other. "H'm, h'm, h'm.
+Brand new, is he. Well, I don't quite&mdash;" Her smiles had now to
+struggle with the uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening
+visibly.</p>
+<p>"Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?" asked the old
+gentleman, who was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent
+owing to his affectionate heart and his not being a lady.</p>
+<p>"We met Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of
+alluding to him, "on the steamer."</p>
+<p>"Not before? You didn't meet Mr. Twist before the <a name=
+"Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>steamer?" exclaimed the lady, the last
+of her smiles flickering out. "Not before the steamer, didn't you.
+Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen him. H'm, h'm,
+h'm."</p>
+<p>"We would have met him before if we could," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.</p>
+<p>"I should think so," said Anna-Rose. "It has been the great
+retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them."</p>
+<p>"Why now," said the old gentleman smiling, "I shouldn't call it
+so particularly late in them."</p>
+<p>But the knitting lady didn't smile at all, and sat up very
+straight and said "H'm, h'm, h'm" to her flashing needles as they
+flew in and out; for not only was she in doubt now about the cute
+little things, but she also regretted, on behalf of the old
+gentleman's wife who was a friend of hers, the alert interest of
+his manner. He sat there so very much awake. With his wife he never
+seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not seen him except with his
+wife.</p>
+<p>"You mustn't run away with the idea that we're younger than we
+really are," Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Why no, I won't," he answered with a liveliness that deepened
+the knitting lady's regret on behalf of his wife. "When I run away
+you bet it won't be with an idea."</p>
+<p>And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he
+whom she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And
+wasn't what he had just said very like what the French call a
+<i>double entendre?</i> She hadn't a husband herself, but if she
+had she would wish him to be at least as quiet when away from her
+as when with her, and at least as free from <i>double
+entendres</i>. <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>At least.
+Really more. "H'm, h'm, h'm," she said, clicking her needles and
+looking first at the twins and then at the old gentleman.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you
+two?" she asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these
+remarkable and unusual lines of <i>badinage</i>.</p>
+<p>"Quite," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Once we had got him," amended Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes," said the knitting lady, "so you say. H'm, h'm, h'm.
+Once you had got him. I don't quite&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the
+old gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can
+say is I wish I had been on that boat."</p>
+<p>"Here's Mrs. Ridding," said the knitting lady quickly, relief in
+her voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. "My, Mrs. Ridding,"
+she added when the lady drew within speaking distance, "you do look
+as though you needed a rest."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had
+been approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out
+on the verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was
+the one drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so
+much recovering from; and the nicer they were the longer it took.
+The meals at the Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really
+all one's time was taken up getting over them.</p>
+<p>She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old
+gentleman had married her in her youth, when <a name="Page_268" id=
+"Page_268"></a>she hadn't had time to have had so many. He and she
+were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone on being the
+same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of his wife
+to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife, and
+the older he got in years&mdash;his heart very awkwardly retained
+its early freshness&mdash;the younger he wanted her; and, instead,
+the older he got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The
+old gentleman felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why
+should he have to be married to this old lady? Never in his life
+had he wanted to marry old ladies; and he thought it very hard that
+at an age when he most appreciated bright youth he should be forced
+to spend his precious years, his crowning years when his mind had
+attained wisdom while his heart retained freshness, stranded with
+an old lady of costly habits and inordinate bulk just because years
+ago he had fallen in love with a chance pretty girl.</p>
+<p>He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
+impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.</p>
+<p>"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back
+again," said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself
+down carefully and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair
+that didn't rock, and fanning herself with a small fan she carried
+on the end of a massive gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the
+twins while she spoke.</p>
+<p>"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as
+young as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but
+with her eyes continuing to explore the twins.</p>
+<p>They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and
+Anna-Felicitas said politely, "Really?" and Anna-<a name="Page_269"
+id="Page_269"></a>Rose, feeling she too ought to make some comment,
+said, "Isn't that very unusual?"</p>
+<p>Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she
+didn't know what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because
+then the other person launched into affirmations or denials with
+the reasons for them, and was quite happy.</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in
+silence.</p>
+<p>"Because," explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn't
+quite follow, "nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to
+remember it."</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It
+was quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was
+constantly reminding him. "Old stranger," he thought resentfully,
+as he carefully arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn't like
+her back. Why should he have to pay bills for putting expensive
+clothes on it? He didn't want to. It was all a dreadful
+mistake.</p>
+<p>"You're the Twinkler girls," said the old lady abruptly.</p>
+<p>They made polite gestures of agreement.</p>
+<p>The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight
+and saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every
+responsibility.</p>
+<p>"Where does your family come from?" was the next question.</p>
+<p>This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of
+Pomerania. They hadn't wanted to talk about Pomerania once since
+the war began; and they felt very distinctly in their bones that
+America, though she was a neutral, didn't like Germany any more
+than the belligerents did. It had been their intention to arrange
+<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>together the line they would
+take if asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and
+so exciting since their arrival that they had forgotten to.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all.
+Anna-Felicitas, therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved,
+plunged in.</p>
+<p>"Our family," she said gently, "can hardly be said to come so
+much as to have been."</p>
+<p>The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on
+Anna-Felicitas's face.</p>
+<p>The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the
+management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.</p>
+<p>"How's that?" asked the old lady, finally deciding that she
+hadn't understood.</p>
+<p>"It's extinct," said Anna-Felicitas. "Except us. That is, in the
+direct line."</p>
+<p>The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not
+being so numerous or so clear in America as in some other
+countries.</p>
+<p>"You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"The only ones left that matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "There
+are branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they're so
+unimportant that we don't know them."</p>
+<p>"Mere twigs," said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing
+Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose
+unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you got any parents?" asked the old lady.</p>
+<p>"We used to have," said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her
+darling mother was going to be asked about.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>The old gentleman gave a
+sudden chuckle. "Why yes," he said, forgetting his wife's presence
+for an instant, "I guess you had them once, or I don't see
+how&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Albert," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of
+Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give
+Columbus a hand. "There's just us. And we&mdash;" she paused a
+moment, and then plunged&mdash;"we come from England."</p>
+<p>"Do you?" said the old lady. "Now I shouldn't have said that. I
+can't say just why, but I shouldn't. Should you, Miss Heap?"</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss
+Heap enigmatically, her needles flying.</p>
+<p>"It's because we've been abroad a great deal with our parents, I
+expect," said Anna-Rose rather quickly. "I daresay it has left its
+mark on us."</p>
+<p>"Everything leaves its mark on one," observed Anna-Felicitas
+pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said the old lady. "I know what it is now. It's the
+foreign r. You've picked it up. Haven't they, Miss Heap."</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't like to say what they haven't picked up, Mrs.
+Ridding," said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid we have," said Anna-Rose, turning red. "We've been
+told that before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it
+up."</p>
+<p>And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one
+had picked it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.</p>
+<p>She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a
+moment.</p>
+<p>"Albert, if you talk so much you won't be able to <a name=
+"Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>sleep to-night," she said. "I can't
+get Mr. Ridding to remember we've got to be careful at our age,"
+she added to the knitting lady.</p>
+<p>"You seem to be bothered by your memory," said Anna-Rose
+politely, addressing the old gentleman "Have you ever tried making
+notes on little bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I
+think you would probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do
+that. Or rather he made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them
+where he would see them."</p>
+<p>"Uncle Arthur," explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, "is an
+uncle of ours. The one," she said turning to the old gentleman, "we
+were just telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on
+marrying our aunt. Uncle, that is, by courtesy," she added, turning
+to the old lady, "not by blood."</p>
+<p>The old lady's eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one
+spoke, but she said nothing.</p>
+<p>"But Aunt Alice," said Anna-Rose, "is our genuine aunt. Well, I
+was going to tell you," she continued briskly, addressing the old
+gentleman. "There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every
+day and every week, but still he had to be reminded of them each
+time, and Aunt Alice had a whole set of the regular ones written
+out on bits of cardboard, and brought them out in turn. The Monday
+morning one was: Wind the Clock, and the Sunday morning one was:
+Take your Hot Bath, and the Saturday evening one was: Remember your
+Pill. And there was one brought in regularly every morning with his
+shaving water and stuck in his looking-glass: Put on your
+Abdominable Belt."</p>
+<p>The knitting needles paused an instant.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these
+recollections, her long limbs sunk in her chair in a position
+<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>of great ease and comfort,
+"and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put
+on what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we
+wrote a slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table:
+Don't forget your Trousers."</p>
+<p>The knitting needles paused again.</p>
+<p>"But the results of that were dreadful," added Anna-Felicitas,
+her face sobering at the thought of them.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done
+it, in a fit of high spirits, though she never had high
+spirits&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And wouldn't have been allowed to if she had," explained
+Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"And he thought she was laughing at him," said Anna-Rose,
+"though we have never seen her laugh&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And I don't believe he has either," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"So there was trouble, because he couldn't bear the idea of her
+laughing at him, and we had to confess."</p>
+<p>"But that didn't make it any better for Aunt Alice."</p>
+<p>"No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not
+keeping us stricter."</p>
+<p>"So," said Anna-Felicitas, "after the house had been steeped in
+a sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we
+were being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by
+writing a final one&mdash;a nice one&mdash;and leaving it on his
+plate at breakfast: Kiss your Wife. But instead of kissing her
+he&mdash;" She broke off, and then finished a little vaguely: "Oh
+well, he didn't."</p>
+<p>"Still," remarked Anna-Rose, "it must be pleasant not to be
+kissed by a husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to
+say, which is why we reminded him of it. He used to forget that
+more regularly <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>than almost
+anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were
+just the opposite&mdash;the husband was for ever trying to kiss the
+person who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Like the people on Keats's Grecian
+Urn."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "And that sort of husband, must be even
+worse.</p>
+<p>"Oh, much worse," agreed Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the
+chairs. "I shall refrain altogether from husbands," she said
+placidly. "I shall take something that doesn't kiss."</p>
+<p>And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek
+resting on her hand, what he, or it, would look like.</p>
+<p>There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a
+creature Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it
+would have; and the other three were, as before, silent.</p>
+<p>Then the old lady said, "Albert," and put out her hand to be
+helped on to her feet.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up.
+His face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty
+keeping back things he wanted to say.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into
+her brocaded bag.</p>
+<p>"Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert," said the old
+lady. "It's time we went and had our nap."</p>
+<p>"I ain't going to," said the old gentleman suddenly.</p>
+<p>"What say? What ain't you going to, Albert?" said the old lady,
+turning her slow eyes round to him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>Nap," said the old
+gentleman, his face very red.</p>
+<p>It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay
+where he was and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap
+because somebody else wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an
+old lady, anyway? Never in his life had he wanted to nap with old
+ladies. It was all a dreadful mistake.</p>
+<p>"Albert," said his wife looking at him.</p>
+<p>He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.</p>
+<p>"You're quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding," said
+Miss Heap, walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit
+hers. "I should say it was essential that he should be kept quiet
+in the afternoons. You should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than
+he does. <i>Much</i> more," she added significantly.</p>
+<p>"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of
+us&mdash;"</p>
+<p>This was the last the twins heard.</p>
+<p>They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady
+began to heave into activity, and they stood watching the three
+departing figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had
+all been in the middle of an interesting conversation?</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it's American to go away in the middle," remarked
+Anna-Rose, following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the
+lift.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it is," said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two
+ladies had their backs to him while preceding him into the lift,
+turned quickly round on his heels and waved his hand before he
+himself went in.</p>
+<p>The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such
+goodwill that the old gentleman couldn't <a name="Page_276" id=
+"Page_276"></a>resist giving one more wave. He was seen doing it by
+the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as she let
+herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he mustn't
+exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his drops
+again.</p>
+<p>That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she
+had got her breath again, she said, "Albert, there's just one thing
+in the world I hate worse than a fool, and that's an old fool."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><a name="Page_277"
+id="Page_277"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<p>That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up
+from the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss
+Twinklers' canary wouldn't sing.</p>
+<p>"But it can't help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of
+door she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't
+either if you were a canary," she added, reasoning with the
+messenger.</p>
+<p>"It's just got to help it," said he.</p>
+<p>"But why shouldn't it sing?"</p>
+<p>"Complaints."</p>
+<p>"But it always has sung."</p>
+<p>"That is so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in
+this hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while.
+Take it easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think."</p>
+<p>"But it won't sit quiet and think."</p>
+<p>"Well, I've told you," he said, going away.</p>
+<p>This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the
+Cosmopolitan about a week before by the lawyer, and it had
+piercingly sung ever since. It sang, that is, as long as there was
+any light, real or artificial, to sing by. The boy who carried it
+from the shop for the twins said its cage was to be hung in a
+window in the sun, or it couldn't do itself justice. But electric
+light also enabled it to do itself justice, the twins discovered,
+and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too, singing as
+loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn't been a real <a name=
+"Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>canary at all, but something clever
+and American with a machine inside it.</p>
+<p>Secretly the twins didn't like it. Shocked at its loud
+behaviour, they had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but
+Anna-Rose was determined to have it at The Open Arms because of her
+conviction that no house showing the trail of a woman's hand was
+without a canary. That, and a workbag. She bought them both the
+same day. The workbag didn't matter, because it kept quiet; but the
+canary was a very big, very yellow bird, much bigger and yellower
+than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted civilization, and
+quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping quiet for a
+minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great many
+lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and
+similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that
+they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones
+on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She
+thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and
+all of them of the biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.</p>
+<p>The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive
+from the first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent
+toward its owners, those cute little relations or charges or
+whatever they were of Teapot Twist's, that they bore its singing
+without complaint. But on the evening of the day the Annas had the
+interesting conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap,
+two definite complaints were lodged in the office, and one was from
+Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss Heap.</p>
+<p>The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the
+canary. Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its
+food, assiduously administered in <a name="Page_279" id=
+"Page_279"></a>quantities exceeding its capacity, littered the
+expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent
+up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss
+Heap, who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing
+the Twist and Twinkler party.</p>
+<p>She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one
+of the questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he
+could answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew
+about Mr. Twist, and it wasn't likely he would choose an hotel of
+so high a class to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers
+were anything but regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was
+joining the party shortly; and besides, there was the house being
+got ready, a permanent place of residence he gathered, in which the
+party would settle down, and experience had taught him that genuine
+illicitness was never permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn't
+really cared about the Twinklers since the canary came. He could
+fill the hotel very easily, and there was no need to accommodate
+people who spoilt carpets. Also, the moment the least doubt or
+question arose among his guests, all of whom he knew and most of
+whom came back regularly every year, as to the social or moral
+status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go. Miss Heap
+evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost
+impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs.
+Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in
+an hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like
+measles. The time had come for him to act.</p>
+<p>Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist's room
+as he was pulling on his boots, and cheer<a name="Page_280" id=
+"Page_280"></a>fully hoped he was bearing in mind what he had been
+told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged for the date
+of the month now arrived at.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. "I'm not bearing it in
+mind," he said, "because you didn't tell me."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist," said the manager briskly. "It isn't
+likely I'd make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every
+year for this date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this
+one, and Mr. and Mrs.&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in
+silence. What he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and
+the twins had got under a cloud.</p>
+<p>The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they
+had made some friends. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned
+them. But it appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle
+Arthur. Well, damnable as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe
+enough as a topic of conversation. He was English. He was known to
+people in America like the Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now
+clear they must have said things besides that. Probably they had
+expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some point of view undesirable to
+American ears. The American ear was very susceptible. He hadn't
+been born in New England without becoming aware of that.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got
+them into knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a
+big hotel. Yet lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn't that
+white-haired gasbag, Mrs. Bilton&mdash;Mr. Twist's thoughts were
+sometimes unjust&mdash;joined them sooner? Why had that <a name=
+"Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>shirker Dellogg died? He got his
+bootlaces hopelessly into knots.</p>
+<p>"I'd like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr.
+Twist," said the manager pleasantly. "Mrs. Hart of Boston is
+very&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning
+the full light of his big spectacles on to him, "I don't care a
+curse for Mrs. Hart of Boston."</p>
+<p>The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a
+curse with a lady. It wasn't American to do that. Mrs.
+Hart&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Damn Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of
+speech while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.</p>
+<p>The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist
+and the twins.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what you've been saying," he said in an extremely
+exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their
+grips, considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was
+singing, piled up round him.</p>
+<p>"Saying?" echoed the twins, their eyes very round.</p>
+<p>"But whatever it was you'd have done better to say something
+else. Confound that bird. Doesn't it ever stop screeching?"</p>
+<p>It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much
+confounded by what they considered his unjust severity that they
+didn't attempt to defend themselves, but sat looking at him with
+proud hurt eyes.</p>
+<p>By this time they both had become very fond of Mr. Twist, and
+accordingly he was able to hurt them. Anna-Rose, indeed, was so
+fond of him that she actually thought him handsome. She had boldly
+said so to the <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>astonished
+Anna-Felicitas about a week before; and when Anna-Felicitas was
+silent, being unable to agree, Anna-Rose had heatedly explained
+that there was handsomeness, and there was the higher handsomeness,
+and that that was the one Mr. Twist had. It was infinitely better
+than mere handsomeness, said Anna-Rose&mdash;curly hair and a
+straight nose and the rest of the silly stuff&mdash;because it was
+real and lasting; and it was real and lasting because it lay in the
+play of the features and not in their exact position and shape.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas couldn't see that Mr. Twist's features played.
+She looked at him now in the taxi while he angrily stared out of
+the window, and even though he was evidently greatly stirred his
+features weren't playing. She didn't particularly want them to
+play. She was fond of and trusted Mr. Twist, and would never even
+have thought whether he had features or not ii Anna-Rose hadn't
+taken lately to talking so much about them. And she couldn't help
+remembering how this very Christopher, so voluble now on the higher
+handsomeness, had said on board the <i>St. Luke</i> when first
+commenting on Mr. Twist that God must have got tired of making him
+by the time his head was reached. Well, Christopher had always been
+an idealist. When she was eleven she had violently loved the
+coachman. Anna-Felicitas hadn't ever violently loved anybody yet,
+and seeing Anna-Rose like this now about Mr. Twist made her wonder
+when she too was going to begin. Surely it was time. She hoped her
+inability to begin wasn't perhaps because she had no heart. Still,
+she couldn't begin if she didn't see anybody to begin on.</p>
+<p>She sat silent in the taxi, with Christopher equally silent
+beside her, both of them observing Mr. Twist <a name="Page_283" id=
+"Page_283"></a>through lowered eyelashes. Anna-Rose watched him
+with hurt and anxious eyes like a devoted dog who has been kicked
+without cause. Anna-Felicitas watched him in a more detached
+spirit. She had a real affection for him, but it was not, she was
+sure and rather regretted, an affection that would ever be likely
+to get the better of her reason. It wasn't because he was so old,
+of course, she thought, for one could love the oldest people,
+beginning with that standard example of age, the <i>liebe Gott</i>;
+it was because she liked him so much.</p>
+<p>How could one get sentimental over and love somebody one so
+thoroughly liked? The two things on reflection didn't seem to
+combine well. She was sure, for instance, that Aunt Alice had loved
+Uncle Arthur, amazing as it seemed, but she was equally sure she
+hadn't liked him. And look at the <i>liebe Gott</i>. One loves the
+<i>liebe Gott</i>, but it would be going too far, she thought, to
+say that one likes him.</p>
+<p>These were the reflections of Anna-Felicitas in the taxi, as she
+observed through her eyelashes the object of Anna-Rose's
+idealization. She envied Anna-Rose; for here she had been steadily
+expanding every day more and more like a flower under the influence
+of her own power of idealization. She used to sparkle and grow rosy
+like that for the coachman. Perhaps after all it didn't much matter
+what you loved, so long as you loved immensely. It was, perhaps,
+thought Anna-Felicitas approaching this subject with some caution
+and diffidence, the quantity of one's love that mattered rather
+than the quality of its object. Not that Mr. Twist wasn't of the
+very first quality, except to look at; but what after all were
+faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing else but face, so
+handsome was he and so without any other recommendation. <a name=
+"Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>He couldn't even drive; and her father
+had very soon kicked him out with the vigour and absence of
+hesitation peculiar to Junkers when it comes to kicking and
+Anna-Rose had wept all over her bread and butter at tea that day,
+and was understood to say that she knew at last what it must be
+like to be a widow.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window
+with an angry and worried face, his attention irritably
+concentrated, so it seemed, on the objects passing in the road,
+very well knew he was being observed. He wouldn't, however, allow
+his eye to be caught. He wasn't going to become entangled at this
+juncture in argument with the Annas. He was hastily making up his
+mind, and there wasn't much time to do it in. He had had no
+explanation with the twins since the manager's visit to his room,
+and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders to them,
+told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got them
+safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
+were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train
+from Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind.
+The station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage
+in till she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the
+parcel-room as easily as he could their grips&mdash;neatly
+labelled, put away safely on a shelf till called for.</p>
+<p>Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at
+decisions. He would leave the twins in the waiting room at the
+station till Mrs. Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find
+lodgings for them and her. He himself would get a room in another
+and less critical hotel, and stay in it till the cottage was
+habitable. So <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>would
+unassailable respectability once more descend like a white garment
+upon the party and cover it up.</p>
+<p>But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the <i>contretemps</i>
+that had occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so
+nearly there; nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the
+twins to be happy, to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and
+sweetness he felt was their due, that he was furious with them for
+doing anything to make it difficult. And, jerkily, his angry
+thoughts pounced, as they so often did, on Uncle Arthur. Fancy
+kicking two little things like that out into the world, two little
+breakable things like that, made to be cherished and watched over.
+Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard the female as
+an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a charming
+setting and kept brightly free from dust. If Uncle Arthur had had a
+shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would
+have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling
+was against aliens. Never would a decent man have chucked them
+out.</p>
+<p>He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins.
+Their eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face. With
+the quick change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose
+hearts are warm, a flood of love for them gushed up within him and
+put out his anger. After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he,
+Edward A. Twist, never would have met these blessed children. He
+would now have been at Clark; leading lightless days; hopelessly
+involved with his mother.</p>
+<p>His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile. Instantly the
+two faces opposite cleared into something shining.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>Oh dear," said
+Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, "it <i>is</i> refreshing when
+you leave off being cross."</p>
+<p>"We're fearfully sorry if we've said anything we oughtn't to
+have," said Anna-Rose, "and if you tell us what it is we won't say
+it again."</p>
+<p>"I can't tell you, because I don't know what it was," said Mr.
+Twist, in his usual kind voice. "I only see the results. And the
+results are that the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we've got to
+find lodgings."</p>
+<p>"Lodgings?"</p>
+<p>"Till we can move into the cottage. I'm going to put you and
+Mrs. Bilton in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some
+hotel."</p>
+<p>The twins stared at him a moment in silence. Then Anna-Rose said
+with sudden passion, "You're not."</p>
+<p>"How's that?" asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering
+by the arrival of the taxi at the station.</p>
+<p>There followed ten minutes' tangle and confusion, at the end of
+which the twins found themselves free of their grips and being
+piloted into the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"There," he said. "You sit here quiet and good. I'll come back
+about one o'clock with sandwiches and candy for your dinner, and
+maybe a story-book or two. You mustn't leave this, do you hear? I'm
+going to hunt for those lodgings."</p>
+<p>And he was in the act of taking off his hat valedictorily when
+Anna-Rose again said with the same passion, "You're not."</p>
+<p>"Not what?" inquired Mr. Twist, pausing with his hat in
+mid-air.</p>
+<p>"Going to hunt for lodgings. We won't go to them."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>Of course we won't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, with no passion but with an infinitely rock-like
+determination.</p>
+<p>"And pray&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Go into lodgings alone with Mrs. Bilton?" interrupted Anna-Rose
+her face scarlet, her whole small body giving the impression of
+indignant feathers standing up on end. "While you're somewhere
+else? Away from us? We won't."</p>
+<p>"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost
+placid quality in her determination, it was so final and so
+unshakable. "Would you?"</p>
+<p>"See here&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"We won't see anywhere," said Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Would you," inquired Anna-Felicitas, again reasoning with him,
+"like being alone in lodgings with Mrs. Bilton?"</p>
+<p>"This is no time for conversation," said Mr. Twist, making for
+the door. "You've got to do what I think best on this occasion. And
+that's all about it."</p>
+<p>"We won't," repeated Anna-Rose, on the verge of those tears
+which always with her so quickly followed any sort of emotion.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused on his way to the door. "Well now what the
+devil's the matter with lodgings?" he asked angrily.</p>
+<p>"It isn't the devil, it's Mrs. Bilton," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"Would you yourself like&mdash;"</p>
+<p>'But you've got to have Mrs. Bilton with you anyhow from to-day
+on."</p>
+<p>"But not unadulterated Mrs. Bilton. You were to have been with
+us too. We can't be drowned all by ourselves in Mrs. Bilton.
+<i>You</i> wouldn't like it."</p>
+<p>"Of course I wouldn't. But it's only for a few days anyhow,"
+said Mr. Twist, who had been quite unprepared <a name="Page_288"
+id="Page_288"></a>for opposition to his very sensible
+arrangement.</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if it's only a few days now before we can
+all squeeze into some part of the cottage. If you don't mind dust
+and noise and workmen about all day long."</p>
+<p>A light pierced the gloom that had gathered round
+Anna-Felicitas's soul.</p>
+<p>"We'll go into it to-day," she said firmly, "Why not? We can
+camp out. We can live in those little rooms at the back over the
+kitchen,&mdash;the ones you got ready for Li Koo. We'd be on the
+spot. We wouldn't mind anything. It would just be a picnic."</p>
+<p>"And we&mdash;we wouldn't be&mdash;sep&mdash;separated," said
+Anna-Rose, getting it out with a gasp.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stood looking at them.</p>
+<p>"Well, of all the&mdash;" he began, pushing his hat back. "Are
+you aware," he went on more calmly, "that there are only two rooms
+over that kitchen, and that you and Mrs. Bilton will have to be all
+together in one of them?"</p>
+<p>"We don't mind that as long as you're in the other one," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Of course," suggested Anna-Felicitas, "if you were to happen to
+marry Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's spectacles stared enormously at her.</p>
+<p>"No, no," said Anna-Rose quickly. "Marriage is a sacred thing,
+and you can't just marry so as to be more comfortable."</p>
+<p>"I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I'd be more uncomfortable,"
+remarked Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.</p>
+<p>He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he
+fixed his hat properly on his head and <a name="Page_289" id=
+"Page_289"></a>said, sobriety in his voice and manner, "Come along,
+then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at the
+rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've
+done with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>don't</i> say that," said the twins together, with all
+and more of their usual urbanity.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><a name="Page_290"
+id="Page_290"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<p>By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the
+rooms Li Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by
+the time Mrs. Bilton arrived. They were in an outbuilding at the
+back of the house, and consisted of a living-room with a
+cooking-stove in it, a bedroom behind it, and up a narrow and curly
+staircase a larger room running the whole length and width of the
+shanty. This sounds spacious, but it wasn't. The amount of length
+and width was small, and it was only just possible to get three
+camp-beds into it and a washstand. The beds nearly touched each
+other. Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going to be
+regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr.
+Twist's consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the
+room by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that
+there was lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the
+camp life so extensively practised in America, would thoroughly
+enjoy herself.</p>
+<p>They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making
+the little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains
+intended for the other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in
+great bunches of the pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled
+about everywhere in the garden and hiding the worst places in the
+rooms with them. Mr. Twist was in Acapulco most of the time,
+getting together the necessary temporary <a name="Page_291" id=
+"Page_291"></a>furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't
+miss him, for they were helped with zeal by the architect, the
+electrical expert, the garden expert and the chief plumber.</p>
+<p>These young men&mdash;they were all young, and very
+go-ahead&mdash;abandoned the main building that day to the
+undirected labours of the workmen they were supposed to control,
+and turned to on the shanty as soon as they realized what it was to
+be used for with a joyous energy that delighted the twins. They
+swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the windows and
+the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with the
+curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
+packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted
+various other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,&mdash;a rug
+or two, an easy chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They
+screwed in hooks behind the doors for clothes to be hung on, and
+they tied the canary to a neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it
+could be seen and hardly heard. The chief plumber found buckets and
+filled them with water, and the electrical expert rigged up a
+series of lanterns inside the shanty, even illuminating its
+tortuous staircase. There was much <i>badinage</i>, but as it was
+all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able to
+apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant
+smiles. But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so
+engaging that the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed
+when Mr. Twist came back.</p>
+<p>He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins,
+whom he had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with
+nothing at all to eat; and he found them looking particularly
+comfortable and well-<a name="Page_292" id=
+"Page_292"></a>nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they
+refused his sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.</p>
+<p>They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived,
+resting from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted
+with the four experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and
+the experts who were smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they
+were saying. It wouldn't have added to his comfort if he had heard,
+for they were giving the experts an account of their attempt to go
+and live with the Sacks, and interweaving with it some general
+reflections of a philosophical nature suggested by the Sack
+<i>m&eacute;nage</i>. The experts were keenly interested, and
+everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly
+if the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't
+directing the workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist
+perceived a drawback to the twins living on the spot while the
+place was being finished; another drawback. He had perceived
+several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs. Bilton would soon be
+there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He positively
+longed for her.</p>
+<p>When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the
+boss," they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up
+quickly and departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the
+Twinkler family, but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of
+the country to wink, and they wondered whether they ought to have
+winked back. The young men were certainly deserving of every
+friendliness in return for all they had done. They decided they
+would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could wink at them if
+necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>Mr. Twist took them with
+him when he went down to the station to meet the Los Angeles train.
+It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home by then, but the
+experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished at the
+amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
+they explained to him how very active the experts had been,
+whereupon he said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them
+they would go with him to the station.</p>
+<p>"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
+finishing touches if we stayed here."</p>
+<p>"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She
+supposed she was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she
+originally was, and all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was
+trying to tell her she wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say
+about her journey, and her last days among her friends, and all the
+pleasant new acquaintances she had made on the train, and her
+speech was so very close-knit, that he felt he was like a rabbit on
+the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running desperately up and down
+searching for a gap to get through. It was nothing short of amazing
+how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there wasn't at any moment the
+smallest pause in the flow.</p>
+<p>"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she
+wanted to say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.</p>
+<p>"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas,
+also a little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.</p>
+<p>"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought
+Mr. Twist, consoling himself.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>This hotel we're going to
+seems to be located at some distance from the station," said Mrs.
+Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages of rapid
+unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely&mdash;" and off she went
+again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
+explain at last.</p>
+<p>She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change
+in her fate.</p>
+<p>Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who
+has been deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a
+husband. She had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the
+Cosmopolitan, its bath, its soft bed and good food, with frank
+satisfaction. She thought it admirable that before embarking on
+active duties she should for a space rest luxuriously in an
+excellent hotel, with no care in regard to expense, and exchange
+ideas while she rested with the interesting people she would be
+sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles, Mr. Twist
+had explained to her by letter and under the seal of confidence the
+philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss Twinklers were
+engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the very
+considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
+unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days
+in Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular
+pleasure to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots
+for which she had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of
+grit; and she possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a
+redoubtable psyche, a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so
+that when, talking ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each
+other as they streamed through her brain to get first to the exit
+of her tongue, she caught her foot in some builder's d&eacute;bris
+<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>carelessly left on the path up
+to the cottage and received in this way positively her first
+intimation that this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as
+a more timid female soul well might have, become alarmed and
+suppose that Mr. Twist, whom after all she didn't know, had brought
+her to this solitary place for purposes of assassination, but
+stopped firmly just where she was, and turning her head in the
+darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll stand right here
+till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to what's at my
+feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm not going
+any further with this promenade till I can say. And when you've
+thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
+information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming
+to."</p>
+<p>"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give
+it you ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your
+getting out of the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been
+trying to offer you my arm along the path&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.</p>
+<p>"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking
+up and down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the
+electrical expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be
+about.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him
+first examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave
+it back to him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to
+whatever it is has been substituted without my knowledge for that
+hotel," she said; and while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal
+with her grips, she walked carefully toward <a name="Page_296" id=
+"Page_296"></a>the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
+immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's
+not having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from
+her itinerary.</p>
+<p>The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without
+further struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without
+answering to the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept
+her in the dark, raised her voice at last and called out, "But he
+wanted to&mdash;he wanted to all the time&mdash;you wouldn't
+listen&mdash;you wouldn't stop&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her
+tongue and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert
+had lit all the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its
+lighted windows gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no
+amount of light and bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its
+discomforts, its dreadful smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which
+the twins were accustomed to regard as precious, as things brought
+up lovingly in pots, were nothing but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's
+experienced Californian eye.</p>
+<p>She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet fell on the
+twins with a great sense of refreshment. Standing in the
+doorway&mdash;for Mrs. Bilton and the electrical expert between
+them filled up most of the kitchen&mdash;they heaved a deep sigh.
+"And see how beautiful the stars are," whispered Anna-Felicitas in
+Anna-Rose's ear; she hadn't been able to see them before somehow,
+Mrs. Bilton's voice had so much ruffled the night.</p>
+<p>"Do you think she talks in her sleep?" Anna-Rose anxiously
+whispered back.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist, arriving with his hands full, was staggered
+<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>to find Mrs. Bilton not
+talking. An icy fear seized his heart. She was going to refuse to
+stay with them. And she would be within her rights if she did, for
+certainly what she called her itinerary had promised her a
+first-rate hotel, in which she was to continue till a finished and
+comfortable house was stepped into.</p>
+<p>"I wish you'd say something," he said, plumping down the bags he
+was carrying on the kitchen floor.</p>
+<p>The twins from the doorway looked at him and then at each other
+in great surprise. Fancy <i>asking</i> Mrs. Bilton to say
+something.</p>
+<p>"They would come," said Mr. Twist, resentfully, jerking his head
+toward the Annas in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"It's worse upstairs," he went on desperately as Mrs. Bilton
+still was dumb.</p>
+<p>"Worse upstairs?" cried the twins, as one woman.</p>
+<p>"It's perfect upstairs," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"It's like camping out without <i>being</i> out," said
+Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The only drawback is that there are rather a lot of beds in our
+room," said Anna-Felicitas, "but that of course"&mdash;she turned
+to Mr. Twist&mdash;"might easily be arranged&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I wish you'd <i>say</i> something, Mrs. Bilton," he interrupted
+quickly and loud.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton drew a deep breath and looked round her. She looked
+round the room, and she looked up at the ceiling, which the upright
+feather in her hat was tickling, and she looked at the faces of the
+twins, lit flickeringly by the uncertain light of the lanterns.
+Then, woman of grit, wife who had never failed him of Bruce D.
+Bilton, widow who had remained poised and indomitable on a small
+income in a circle of well-off friends, she spoke; and she
+said:</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>Mr. Twist, I can't say
+what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt with information,
+but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to a plough and
+then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been good
+enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had
+to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good
+enough for me. You've conducted me to a shack instead of the hotel
+I was promised, and I await your explanation. Meanwhile, is there
+any supper?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><a name=
+"Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<p>It was only a fortnight after this that the inn was ready to be
+opened, and it was only during the first days of this fortnight
+that the party in the shanty had to endure any serious discomfort.
+The twins didn't mind the physical discomfort at all; what they
+minded, and began to mind almost immediately, was the spiritual
+discomfort of being at such close quarters with Mrs. Bilton. They
+hardly noticed the physical side of that close association in such
+a lovely climate, where the whole of out-of-doors can be used as
+one's living-room; and their morning dressing, a difficult business
+in the shanty for anybody less young and more needing to be
+careful, was rather like the getting up of a dog after its night's
+sleep&mdash;they seemed just to shake themselves, and there they
+were.</p>
+<p>They got up before Mrs. Bilton, who was, however, always awake
+and talking to them while they dressed, and they went to bed before
+she did, though she came up with them after the first night and
+read aloud to them while they undressed; so that as regarded the
+mysteries of Mrs. Bilton's toilette they were not, after all, much
+in her way. It was like caravaning or camping out: you managed your
+movements and moments skilfully, and if you were Mrs. Bilton you
+had a curtain slung across your part of the room, in case your
+younger charges shouldn't always be asleep when they looked as if
+they were.</p>
+<p>Gradually one alleviation was added to another, and <a name=
+"Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>Mrs. Bilton forgot the rigours of the
+beginning. Li Koo arrived, for instance, fetched by a telegram, and
+under a tent in the eucalyptus grove at the back of the house set
+up an old iron stove and produced, with no apparent exertion,
+extraordinarily interesting and amusing food. He went into Acapulco
+at daylight every morning and did the marketing. He began almost
+immediately to do everything else in the way of housekeeping. He
+was exquisitely clean, and saw to it that the shanty matched him in
+cleanliness. To the surprise and gratification of the twins, who
+had supposed it would be their lot to go on doing the housework of
+the shanty, he took it over as a matter of course, dusting,
+sweeping, and tidying like a practised and very excellent
+housemaid. The only thing he refused to do was to touch the three
+beds in the upper chamber. "Me no make lady-beds," he said
+briefly.</p>
+<p>Li Koo's salary was enormous, but Mr. Twist, with a sound
+instinct, cared nothing what he paid so long as he got the right
+man. He was, indeed, much satisfied with his two employees, and
+congratulated himself on his luck. It is true in regard to Mrs.
+Bilton his satisfaction was rather of the sorrowful sort that a
+fresh ache in a different part of one's body from the first ache
+gives: it relieved him from one by substituting another. Mrs.
+Bilton overwhelmed him; but so had the Annas begun to. Her
+overwhelming, however, was different, and freed him from that other
+worse one. He felt safe now about the Annas, and after all there
+were parts of the building in which Mrs. Bilton wasn't. There was
+his bedroom, for instance. Thank God for bedrooms, thought Mr.
+Twist. He grew to love his. What a haven that poky and silent place
+was; what a blessing the conventions were, and the proprieties.
+Supposing <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>civilization were so
+far advanced that people could no longer see the harm there is in a
+bedroom, what would have become of him? Mr. Twist could perfectly
+account for Bruce D. Bilton's death. It wasn't diabetes, as Mrs.
+Bilton said; it was just bedroom.</p>
+<p>Still, Mrs. Bilton was an undoubted find, and did immediately in
+those rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them
+with her in the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did
+to Mrs. Bilton they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the
+peculiar ease of the Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans
+approach with care. Never would they be able to tell her things
+about Uncle Arthur, the kind of things that had caused the
+Cosmopolitan to grow so suddenly cool. There was, most happily for
+this particular case, no arguing with Mrs. Bilton. The twins
+couldn't draw her out because she was already, as it were, so
+completely out. This was a great thing, Mr. Twist felt, and made up
+for any personal suffocation he had to bear; and when on the
+afternoon of Mrs. Bilton's first day the twins appeared without her
+in the main building in search of him, having obviously given her
+the slip, and said they were sorry to disturb him but they wanted
+his advice, for though they had been trying hard all day,
+remembering they were ladies and practically hostesses, they hadn't
+yet succeeded in saying anything at all to Mrs. Bilton and doubted
+whether they ever would, he merely smiled happily at them and said
+to Anna-Rose, "See how good comes out of evil"&mdash;a remark that
+they didn't like when they had had time to think over it.</p>
+<p>But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all
+alone all day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never
+left their side, regarding it as <a name="Page_302" id=
+"Page_302"></a>proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
+bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for
+ladies to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at
+apparently producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly
+acquainted with her young charges. This she did by imparting to
+them intimate and meticulous information about her own life, with
+the whole of the various uplifts, as she put it, her psyche had
+during its unfolding experienced. There was so much to tell about
+herself that she never got to inquiring about the twins. She knew
+they were orphans, and that this was a good work, and for the
+moment had no time for more.</p>
+<p>The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because
+they didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking
+for she didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her
+concrete experiences, and especially to the experiences connected
+with Mr. Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about
+Mr. Bilton, and find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton
+was lavish in her details of what she had thought herself, but Mr.
+Bilton's thoughts remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins
+that he must have thought a lot, and have come to the conclusion
+that there was much to be said for death.</p>
+<p>The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the
+Clouston-Sacks, and had never been separated for a single day
+during the whole of their married life. This seemed to the twins
+very strange, and needing a great deal of explanation. In order to
+get light thrown on it the first thing they wanted to find out was
+how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs. Bilton was deaf to their
+inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's last moments <a name=
+"Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>and obsequies&mdash;obsequies
+scheduled by her, she said, with so tender a regard for his memory
+that she insisted on a horse-drawn hearse instead of the more
+fashionable automobile conveyance, on the ground that a motor
+hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first speed&mdash;she
+washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the dreadfulness
+of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps on
+catching in everything&mdash;chairs, overhanging branches, and
+passers-by, including it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She
+inquired of the twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow
+in a wind. Chicago, she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton
+passed in its windiest month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down
+the streets on the daily constitutional she considered it her duty
+toward the living to take, for one owes it to one's friends to keep
+oneself fit and not give way, was blown hither and thither in the
+buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy climate, and her walk in
+the busier streets was a series of entanglements. Embarrassing
+entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately the persons she got
+caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often, indeed, seeming
+quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the situation, covered
+with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the wind would
+cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above her head
+in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
+moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of
+any one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once
+about the body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose
+side she had paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before
+it could be unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the
+track of a sensation, had caused <a name="Page_304" id=
+"Page_304"></a>her friends much painful if only short-lived
+amazement by coming out with huge equivocal headlines:</p>
+<p>WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER</p>
+<p>and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing
+her name in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends
+were a prey to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on
+discovering there was nothing in it after all.</p>
+<p>The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped
+round their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet,
+occasionally felt as they followed her narrative that they were
+somehow out of their depth and didn't quite understand. It was
+extraordinarily exasperating to them to be so completely muzzled.
+They were accustomed to elucidate points they didn't understand by
+immediate inquiry; they had a habit of asking for information, and
+then delivering comments on it.</p>
+<p>This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The
+ilex tree in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton
+shepherded them each morning and afternoon for the first three
+days, became to them, in spite of its beauty with the view from
+under its dark shade across the sunny fields to the sea and the
+delicate distant islands, a painful spot. The beauty all round them
+was under these conditions exasperating. Only once did Mrs. Bilton
+leave them, and that was the first afternoon, when they instantly
+fled to seek out Mr. Twist; and she only left them then&mdash;for
+it wasn't just her sense of duty that was strong, but also her
+dislike of being alone&mdash;because something unexpectedly gave
+<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>way in the upper part of her
+dress, she being of a tight well-held-in figure, depending much on
+its buttons; and she had very hastily to go in search of a
+needle.</p>
+<p>After that they didn't see Mr. Twist alone for several days.
+They hardly indeed saw him at all. The only meal he shared with
+them was supper, and on finding the first evening that Mrs. Bilton
+read aloud to people after supper, he made the excuse of accounts
+to go through and went into his bedroom, repeating this each
+night.</p>
+<p>The twins watched him go with agonized eyes. They considered
+themselves deserted; shamefully abandoned to a miserable fate.</p>
+<p>"And it isn't as if he didn't <i>like</i> reading aloud,"
+whispered Anna-Rose, bewildered and indignant as she remembered the
+"Ode to Dooty."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps he's one of those people who only like it if they do it
+themselves," Anna-Felicitas whispered back, trying to explain his
+base behaviour.</p>
+<p>And while they whispered, Mrs. Bilton with great enjoyment
+declaimed&mdash;she had had a course of elocution lessons during
+Mr. Bilton's life so as to be able to place the best literature
+advantageously before him&mdash;the diary of a young girl written
+in prison. The young girl had been wrongfully incarcerated, Mrs.
+Bilton explained, and her pure soul only found release by the
+demise of her body. The twins hated the young girl from the first
+paragraph. She wrote her diary every day till her demise stopped
+her. As nothing happens in prisons that hasn't happened the day
+before, she could only write her reflections; and the twins hated
+her reflections, because they were so very like what in their
+secret moments of slush they were apt to reflect themselves. Their
+mother had had a horror of slush. There had <a name="Page_306" id=
+"Page_306"></a>been none anywhere about her; but it is in the air
+in Germany, in people's blood, everywhere; and though the twins,
+owing to the English part of them, had a horror of it too, there it
+was in them, and they knew it,&mdash;genuine German slush.</p>
+<p>They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they
+would write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings
+they had to listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why
+didn't he come out and save them? What happy, what glorious
+evenings they used to have at the Cosmopolitan, spent in
+intelligent conversation, in a decent give and take&mdash;not this
+button-holing business, this being got into a corner and held down;
+and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to get
+sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
+now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled
+with impatience in their seats beneath the
+<i>&eacute;panchements</i> of the young girl, the strangely and
+distressingly familiar <i>&eacute;panchements</i>. The diary was
+published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs.
+Bilton on laying it down announced she would go on with it while
+they were dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs.
+Bilton was awake and crept out and hid it.</p>
+<p>But Li Koo found it and restored it.</p>
+<p>Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes
+the third morning, although the twins had hidden them most
+carefully. Their idea was that while she, rendered immobile, waited
+indoors, they would zealously look for them in all the places where
+they well knew that they weren't, and perhaps get some conversation
+with Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the
+fourth morning, when, unable any <a name="Page_307" id=
+"Page_307"></a>longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran into
+the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
+at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled
+ditch.</p>
+<p>In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out
+that they were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though
+the ditch had nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no
+comment. He never did make comments; and his silence and his
+ubiquitous efficiency made the twins as fidgety with him as they
+were with Mrs. Bilton for the opposite reason. They had an
+uncomfortable feeling that he was rather like the <i>liebe
+Gott</i>,&mdash;he saw everything, knew everything, and said
+nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times,
+to pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo&mdash;again,
+they silently reflected, like the <i>liebe Gott</i>&mdash;had a
+different sense of geniality from theirs; he couldn't apparently
+smile; they doubted if he even ever wanted to. Their genialities
+faltered and froze on their lips.</p>
+<p>Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found
+hiding, and were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in
+this manner to conciliate Li Koo. Their dignity on the walk back to
+the shanty seemed painfully shrunk. They ought never to have
+condescended to do the childish things they had been doing during
+the last three days. If they hadn't been found out it would, of
+course, have remained a private matter between them and their
+Maker, and then one doesn't mind so much; but they had been found
+out, and by Li Koo, their own servant. It was intolerable. All the
+blood of all the Twinklers, Junkers from time immemorial and
+properly sensitive to humiliation, surged within them. They hadn't
+felt so naughty and so young for <a name="Page_308" id=
+"Page_308"></a>years. They were sure Li Koo didn't believe them
+about the ditch. They had a dreadful sensation of being led back to
+Mrs. Bilton by the ear.</p>
+<p>If only they could sack Mrs. Bilton!</p>
+<p>This thought, immense and startling, came to Anna-Rose, who far
+more than Anna-Felicitas resented being cut off from Mr. Twist,
+besides being more naturally impetuous; and as they walked in
+silence side by side, with Li Koo a little ahead of them, she
+turned her head and looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Let's give her
+notice," she murmured, under her breath.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas was so much taken aback that she stopped in her
+walk and stared at Anna-Rose's flushed face.</p>
+<p>She too hardly breathed it. The suggestion seemed fantastic in
+its monstrousness. How could they give anybody so old, so sure of
+herself, so determined as Mrs. Bilton, notice?</p>
+<p>"Give her notice?" she repeated.</p>
+<p>A chill ran down Anna-Felicitas's spine. Give Mrs. Bilton
+notice! It was a great, a breath-taking idea, magnificent in its
+assertion of independence, of rights; but it needed, she felt, to
+be approached with caution. They had never given anybody notice in
+their lives, and they had always thought it must be a most painful
+thing to do&mdash;far, far worse than tipping. Uncle Arthur usedn't
+to mind it a bit; did it, indeed, with gusto. But Aunt Alice hadn't
+liked it at all, and came out in a cold perspiration and bewailed
+her lot to them and wished that people would behave and not place
+her in such a painful position.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton couldn't be said not to have behaved. Quite the
+contrary. She had behaved too persistently; and they had to endure
+it the whole twenty-four hours. <a name="Page_309" id=
+"Page_309"></a>For Mrs. Bilton had no turn, it appeared, in spite
+of what she had said at Los Angeles, for solitary contemplation,
+and after the confusion of the first night, when once she had had
+time to envisage the situation thoroughly, as she said, she had
+found that to sit alone downstairs in the uncertain light of the
+lanterns while the twins went to bed and Mr. Twist wouldn't come
+out of his room, was not good for her psyche; so she had followed
+the twins upstairs, and continued to read the young girl's diary to
+them during their undressing and till the noises coming from their
+beds convinced her that it was useless to go on any longer. And
+that morning, the morning they hid in the ditch, she had even done
+this while they were getting up.</p>
+<p>"It isn't to be borne," said Anna-Rose under her breath, one eye
+on Li Koo's ear which, a little in front of her, seemed slightly
+slanted backward and sideways in the direction of her voice. "And
+why should it be? We're not in her power."</p>
+<p>"No," said Anna-Felicitas, also under her breath and also
+watching Li Koo's ear, "but it feels extraordinarily as if we
+were."</p>
+<p>"Yes. And that's intolerable. And it forces us to do silly baby
+things, wholly unsuited either to our age or our position. Who
+would have thought we'd ever hide from somebody in a ditch again!"
+Anna-Rose's voice was almost a sob at the humiliation.</p>
+<p>"It all comes from sleeping in the same room," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "Nobody can stand a thing that doesn't end at night
+either."</p>
+<p>"Of course they can't," said Anna-Rose. "It isn't fair. If you
+have to have a person all day you oughtn't to have to have the same
+person all night. Some one <a name="Page_310" id=
+"Page_310"></a>else should step in and relieve you then. Just as
+they do in hospitals."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Mr. Twist ought to. He ought to
+remove her forcibly from our room by marriage.</p>
+<p>"No he oughtn't," said Anna-Rose hastily, "because we can remove
+her ourselves by the simple process of giving her notice."</p>
+<p>"I don't believe it's simple," said Anna-Felicia again feeling a
+chill trickling down her spine.</p>
+<p>"Of course it is. We just go to her very politely and inform her
+that the engagement is terminated on a basis of mutual esteem but
+inflexible determination."</p>
+<p>"And suppose she doesn't stop talking enough to hear?"</p>
+<p>"Then we'll hand it to her in writing."</p>
+<p>The rest of the way they walked in silence, Anna-Rose with her
+chin thrust out in defiance, Anna-Felicitas dragging her feet along
+with a certain reluctance and doubt.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton had finished her breakfast when they got back,
+having seen no sense in letting good food get cold, and was ready
+to sit and chat to them while they had theirs. She was so busy
+telling them what she had supposed they were probably doing, that
+she was unable to listen to their attempted account of what they
+had done. Thus they were saved from telling humiliating and
+youthful fibs; but they were also prevented, as by a wall of rock,
+from getting the speech through to her ear that Anna-Rose,
+trembling in spite of her defiance, had ready to launch at her. It
+was impossible to shout at Mrs. Bilton in the way Mr. Twist, when
+in extremity of necessity, had done. Ladies didn't shout;
+especially not when they were giving other ladies notice.
+Anna-<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>Rose, who was quite cold
+and clammy at the prospect of her speech, couldn't help feeling
+relieved when breakfast was over and no opportunity for it had been
+given.</p>
+<p>"We'll write it," she whispered to Anna-Felicitas beneath the
+cover of a lively account Mrs. Bilton was giving them, <i>&agrave;
+propos</i> of their being late for breakfast, of the time it took
+her, after Mr. Bilton's passing, to get used to his unpunctuality
+at meals.</p>
+<p>That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily
+for years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly
+astonished her every day, she said. The clock struck, yet Mr.
+Bilton continued late. It was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way
+of being reminded of her loss. Each day she would instinctively
+expect; each day would come the stab of recollection. The vacancy
+these non-appearances had made in her life was beyond any words of
+hers. In fact she didn't possess such words, and doubted if the
+completest dictionary did either. Everything went just vacant, she
+said. No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as to be
+behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr.
+Bilton simultaneously appeared. No need any more to think of him
+when ordering meals. No need any more to eat the dish he had been
+so fond of and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked
+beans and bacon; yet she found herself ordering it continually
+after his departure, and choking memorially over the
+mouthfuls&mdash;"And people in Europe," cried Mrs Bilton, herself
+struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, "say that American
+women are incapable of passion!"</p>
+<p>"We'll write it," whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Write what?" asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, <a name=
+"Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>who as usual when Mrs. Bilton narrated
+her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and trying to
+get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.</p>
+<p>But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to
+the recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth
+pulled out. The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being
+free from it charmed and thrilled her, but how painful, how
+alarming was the prospect of pulling it out!</p>
+<p>There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton's talk, and
+that was that under its voluminous cover they could themselves
+whisper occasionally to each other. Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs.
+Bilton didn't notice that they whispered neither probably would she
+notice if she wrote. She therefore under Mrs. Bilton's very nose
+got a pencil and a piece of paper, and with many pauses and an
+unsteady hand wrote the following:</p>
+<p>DEAR MRS. BILTON&mdash;For some time past my sister and I have
+felt that we aren't suited to you, and if you don't mind would you
+mind regarding the engagement as terminated? We hope you won't
+think this abrupt, because it isn't really, for we seem to have
+lived ages since you came, and we've been thinking this over ripely
+ever since. And we hope you won't take it as anything personal
+either, because it isn't really. It's only that we feel we're
+unsuitable, and we're sure we'll go on getting more and more
+unsuitable. Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we're fearfully
+sorry. But on the other hand we're inflexible.&mdash;Yours
+affectionately,</p>
+<p>ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER</p>
+<p>With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the
+table under cover of the breakfast <i>d&eacute;bris</i> to
+Anna-Felicitas, who read it with a beating heart and cautiously
+pushed it back.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas felt sure Christopher was being terribly
+impetuous, and she felt sure she ought to stop her. <a name=
+"Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>But what a joy to be without Mrs.
+Bilton! The thought of going to bed in the placid sluggishness dear
+to her heart, without having to listen, to be attentive, to
+remember to be tidy because if she weren't there would be no room
+for Mrs. Bilton's things, was too much for her. Authority pursuing
+her into her bedroom was what she had found most difficult to bear.
+There must be respite. There must be intervals in every activity or
+endurance. Even the <i>liebe Gott</i>, otherwise so indefatigable,
+had felt this and arranged for the relaxation of Sundays.</p>
+<p>She pushed the letter back with a beating heart, and told
+herself that she couldn't and never had been able to stop
+Christopher when she was in this mood of her chin sticking out.
+What could she do in face of such a chin? And besides, Mrs.
+Bilton's friends must be missing her very much and ought to have
+her back. One should always live only with one's own sort of
+people. Every other way of living, Anna-Felicitas was sure even at
+this early stage of her existence, was bound to come to a bad end.
+One could be fond of almost anybody, she held, if they were
+somewhere else. Even of Uncle Arthur. Even he somehow seemed
+softened by distance. But for living-together purposes there was
+only one kind of people possible, and that was one's own kind.
+Unexpected and various were the exteriors of one's own kind and the
+places one found them in, but one always knew them. One felt
+comfortable with them at once; comfortable and placid. Whatever
+else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't feeling placid. That
+was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with her own kind.
+With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was talking on
+happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above manner
+as she pushed <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>back the letter,
+instead of, as at the back of her mind she felt she ought to have
+done, tearing it up.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose folded it and addressed it to Mrs. Bilton. Then she
+got up and held it out to her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas got up too, her inside feeling strangely unsteady
+and stirred round and round.</p>
+<p>"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs.
+Bilton, who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand
+without apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she
+was saying.</p>
+<p>"We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then
+said, making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who
+still stood hesitating.</p>
+<p>She slipped out; and Anna-Felicitas, suddenly panic-stricken
+lest she should be buttonholed all by herself fled after her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<p>Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was
+to be the tea-room. It was full of scattered fittings and the noise
+of hammering, but even so anybody could see what a delightful place
+it would presently turn into.</p>
+<p>The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days. Those were
+the days, those consecutive days of downpour that came in the
+winter and lasted without interruption for a fortnight at a time,
+when visitors in the hotels were bored beyond expression and ready
+to welcome anything that could distract them for an hour from the
+dripping of the rain on the windows. Bridge was their one solace,
+and they played it from after breakfast till bedtime; but on the
+fourth or fifth day of doing this, just the mere steady sitting
+became grievous to them. They ached with weariness. They wilted
+with boredom. All their natural kindness got damped out of them,
+and they were cross. Even when they won they were cross, and when
+they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of course, have
+been in California at all at such a time if it were possible to
+know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never did know,
+and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond Christmas.
+And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and warmth to
+be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
+blizzards.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon
+for these victims of the rain. He would come <a name="Page_316" id=
+"Page_316"></a>to their rescue. He made up his mind, clear and firm
+on such matters, that it should become the habit of these unhappy
+people during the bad weather to motor out to The Open Arms for
+tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way made, by
+which one could get out of a car and into the house without being
+touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
+made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze
+a welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes,
+at all times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful.
+Li Koo had a secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for
+cakes of a quite peculiar and original charm, and these were to be
+reserved for the rainy season only, and be made its specialty. They
+were to become known and endeared to the public under the brief
+designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr. Twist felt there was something
+thoroughly American about this name&mdash;plain and business-like,
+and attractively in contrast to the subtle, the almost immoral
+exquisiteness of the article itself. This cake had been one of
+those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his garments the day in
+Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the one of his party
+who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he decided to
+call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.</p>
+<p>The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace
+so as to be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in
+their shirt sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs.
+There was such a hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the
+latticed windows, and such a crackling being made by the logs Mr.
+Twist and the architect kept on throwing on the fire, that only
+from the sudden broad smile on the <a name="Page_317" id=
+"Page_317"></a>architect's face as he turned to pick up another log
+did Mr. Twist realize that something that hadn't to do with work
+was happening behind his back.</p>
+<p>He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him.
+They seemed in a hurry.</p>
+<p>"Hello," he called out.</p>
+<p>They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick
+their way among the obstacles in their path. They appeared to be
+much perturbed. What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton?
+He soon knew.</p>
+<p>"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," panted Anna-Rose as soon as
+she got near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the
+prevailing noise.</p>
+<p>Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet,
+her eyes looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.</p>
+<p>"We simply can't stand it any longer," she went on as Mr. Twist
+only stared at her.</p>
+<p>"And you wouldn't either if you were us," she continued, the
+more passionately as he still didn't say anything.</p>
+<p>"Of course," said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her
+heart was full of doubt, "it's your fault really. We could have
+borne it if we hadn't had to have her at night."</p>
+<p>"Come outside," said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led
+on to the verandah.</p>
+<p>They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement,
+Anna-Felicitas trying to persuade herself that they had acted in
+the only way consistent with real wisdom.</p>
+<p>The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them
+and smiling all by himself. There was <a name="Page_318" id=
+"Page_318"></a>something about the Twinklers that lightened his
+heart whenever he caught sight of them. He and his fellow experts
+had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came of
+developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them
+on their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and
+respectful familiarity as The Cutes.</p>
+<p>"Now," said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and
+led the twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced
+them, "perhaps you'll tell me exactly what you've done."</p>
+<p>"You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done," said
+Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she
+would go. She couldn't but perceive that the excess of
+Christopher's emotion was putting her at a disadvantage in the
+matter of dignity.</p>
+<p>"I can guess pretty much what she has done," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"You can't&mdash;you can't," burst out Anna-Rose. "Nobody
+could&mdash;nobody ever could&mdash;who hadn't been with her day
+and night."</p>
+<p>"She's just been Mrs. Bilton," said Mr. Twist, lighting a
+cigarette to give himself an appearance of calm.</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said Anna-Felicitas. "So you won't be surprised at
+our having just been Twinklers."</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord," groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, "oh,
+Lord."</p>
+<p>"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," continued Anna-Felicitas,
+making a gesture of great dignity with her hand, "because we find
+with regret that she and we are incompatible."</p>
+<p>"Was she aware that you were giving it her?" asked Mr. Twist,
+endeavouring to keep calm.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>We wrote it."</p>
+<p>"Has she read it?"</p>
+<p>"We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should
+have an opportunity of quietly considering it."</p>
+<p>"You shouldn't have left us alone with her like this," burst out
+Anna-Rose again, "you shouldn't really. It was cruel, it was wrong,
+leaving us high and dry&mdash;never seeing you&mdash;leaving us to
+be talked to day and night&mdash;to be read to&mdash;would
+<i>you</i> like to be read to while you're undressing by somebody
+still in all their clothes? We've never been able to open our
+mouths. We've been taken into the field for our airing and brought
+in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams, or flocks and
+herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape. We haven't had
+a minute to ourselves day or night. There hasn't been a single
+exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we're grown up.
+We've been followed, watched, talked to&mdash;oh, oh, how awful it
+has been! Oh, oh, how awful! Forced to be dumb for
+days&mdash;losing our power of speech&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose Twinkler," interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, "you
+haven't lost it. And you not only haven't, but that power of yours
+has increased tenfold during its days of rest."</p>
+<p>He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had
+already heard several times since they landed in America. Each time
+it took them aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds
+as the kindest and gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings
+of his each time astonished them.</p>
+<p>On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished.
+Anna-Felicitas all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the
+depth of her heart that Mr. <a name="Page_320" id=
+"Page_320"></a>Twist wouldn't like what they had done. He would be
+upset, she felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search
+of him. He would be, she was afraid very much upset. And so he was.
+He was appalled by what had happened. Lose Mrs. Bilton? Lose the
+very foundation of the party's respectability? And how could he
+find somebody else at the eleventh hour and where and how could the
+twins and he live, unchaperoned as they would be, till he had? What
+a peculiar talent these Annas had for getting themselves and him
+into impossible situations! Of course at their age they ought to be
+safe under the wing of a wise and unusually determined mother.
+Well, poor little wretches, they couldn't help not being under it;
+but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to them&mdash;faced up
+to her husband, and stuck to them.</p>
+<p>"I suppose," he said angrily, "being you and not being able to
+see farther than the ends of your noses, you haven't got any sort
+of an idea of what you've done."</p>
+<p>"We&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And I don't suppose it's much use my trying to explain, either.
+Hasn't it ever occurred to you, though I'd be real grateful if
+you'd give me information on this point&mdash;that maybe you don't
+know everything?"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"We&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And that till you do know everything, which I take it won't be
+for some time yet, judging from the samples I've had of your
+perspicacity, you'd do well not to act without first asking some
+one's advice? Mine, for instance?"</p>
+<p>"She&mdash;" began Anna-Rose again; but her voice <a name=
+"Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>was trembling, for she couldn't bear
+Mr. Twist's anger. She was too fond of him. When he looked at her
+like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and
+she could only look back at him piteously.</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in
+adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher's
+feelings put her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist's attention from
+her by saying with gentleness, "But why add to the general
+discomfort by being bitter?"</p>
+<p>"Bitter!" cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Do you dispute that God made us?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+placing herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist's
+wrathful concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young
+person's emotion.</p>
+<p>"See here," said Mr. Twist turning on her, "I'm not going to
+argue with you&mdash;not about <i>anything</i>. Least of all about
+God."</p>
+<p>"I only wanted to point out to you," said Anna-Felicitas mildly,
+"that that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little
+use in being bitter with us because we're not different. In regard
+to anything fundamental about us that you deplore I'm afraid we
+must refer you to Providence."</p>
+<p>"Say," said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this
+reasoning but, as Anna-Felicitas couldn't but notice, quite the
+contrary, "used you to talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of
+yours? Because if you did, upon my word I don't wonder&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But what Mr. Twist didn't wonder was fortunately concealed from
+the twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who,
+emerging from the shades of the verandah and looking about her,
+caught sight of them and came rapidly down the garden.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>There was no escape.</p>
+<p>They watched her bearing down on them without a word. It was a
+most unpleasant moment. Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give
+himself a countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton
+would probably say was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn't help
+shaking a little. Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink
+behind him. Anna-Felicitas stood motionless, awaiting the deluge.
+All Mr. Twist's sympathies were with Mrs. Bilton, and he was
+ashamed that she should have been treated so. He felt that nothing
+she could say would be severe enough, and he was extraordinarily
+angry with the Annas. Yet when he saw the injured lady bearing down
+on them, if he only could he would have picked up an Anna under
+each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did he
+prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this
+moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn't.</p>
+<p>There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching
+figure, and the letter in Mrs. Bilton's hand bobbed up and down as
+she walked, white and conspicuous in the sun against her black
+dress. What was their amazement to see as she drew nearer that she
+was looking just as pleasant as ever. They stared at her with
+mouths falling open. Was it possible, thought the twins, that she
+was longing to leave but hadn't liked to say so, and the letter had
+come as a release? Was it possible, thought Mr. Twist with a leap
+of hope in his heart, that she was taking the letter from a
+non-serious point of view?</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right. For Mrs.
+Bilton, woman of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of
+allowing herself to be dislodged or even discouraged. This was the
+opening sentence of her re<a name="Page_323" id=
+"Page_323"></a>marks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst.
+Had she not explained the first night that she was one who, having
+put her hand to the plough, held on to it however lively the
+movements of the plough might be? She would not conceal from them,
+she said, that even Mr Bilton had not, especially, at first, been
+entirely without such movements. He had settled down, however on
+finding he could trust her to know better than he did what he
+wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And the result had
+been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he was alive,
+or a more devoted widow after he wasn't. She had told him one day,
+when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was
+conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills,
+and he said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could
+see she would be left a widow and that was about all she would be
+left&mdash;she had told him that if it was any comfort to him to
+know it, he might rely on it that he would have the most devoted
+widow any man had ever had, and he said&mdash;Mr. Bilton had odd
+fancies, especially toward the end&mdash;that a widow was the one
+thing a man never could have because he wasn't there by the time he
+had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies. And if she had
+managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he
+being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that
+encountering odd fancies in two very young and unformed
+girls&mdash;oh, it wasn't their fault that they were unformed, it
+was merely because they hadn't had time enough yet&mdash;she would
+be unable, experienced as she was, to steer among them too?
+Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb animals
+always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist," Mrs.
+Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on <a name=
+"Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>Anna-Rose's shoulder as a more
+convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young charges aren't
+going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I don't
+undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting
+affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days
+in intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh
+young chatter."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><a name="Page_325"
+id="Page_325"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<p>This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening
+day.</p>
+<p>Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear
+Mrs. Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how
+near his shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his
+meals with the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He
+was immensely grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He
+esteemed and respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then
+and there at the end of her speech, and told her he did, and the
+least he could do after that was to come to dinner. But this very
+genuine appreciation didn't prevent his finding her at close
+quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now only called
+temperately "a little much," and the result was a really frantic
+hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four days
+of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to
+finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense
+of having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had
+considerably slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs.
+Bilton they hurried up again, and after forty-eight of her the
+speed was headlong. At the end of forty-eight hours it seemed to
+Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he had ever known that he
+should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere with space in it,
+and sound-proof walls&mdash;lots of walls&mdash;and long passages
+between people's doors; and before the rooms in <a name="Page_326"
+id="Page_326"></a>the inn were anything like finished he insisted
+on moving in.</p>
+<p>"You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he
+said to the twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you
+must just take off your coats to it and not mind."</p>
+<p>Mind? Turn to? It was what they were languishing for. It was
+what, in the arid hours under the ilex tree, collected so
+ignominiously round Mrs. Bilton's knee they had been panting for,
+like thirsty dogs with their tongues out. And such is the peculiar
+blessedness of work that instantly, the moment there was any to be
+done, everything that was tangled and irritating fell quite
+naturally into its proper place. Magically life straightened itself
+out smooth, and left off being difficult. <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>,
+as their mother used to say, dropping into German whenever a
+sentence seemed to her to sound better that way&mdash;<i>Arbeit und
+Liebe</i>: these were the two great things of life; the two great
+angels, as she assured them, under whose spread-out wings lay
+happiness.</p>
+<p>With a hungry zeal, with the violent energy of reaction, the
+Annas fell upon work. They started unpacking. All the things they
+had bought in Acapulco, the linen, the china, the teaspoons, the
+feminine touches that had been piled up waiting in the barn, were
+pulled out and undone and carried indoors. They sorted, and they
+counted, and they arranged on shelves. Anna-Rose flew in and out
+with her arms full. Anna-Felicitas slouched zealously after her,
+her arms full too when she started, but not nearly so full when she
+got there owing to the way things had of slipping through them and
+dropping on to the floor. They were in a blissful, busy confusion.
+Their faces shone with heat and happiness. <a name="Page_327" id=
+"Page_327"></a>Here was liberty; here was freedom; here was true
+dignity&mdash;<i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>....</p>
+<p>When Mr. Twist, as he did whenever he could, came and looked on
+for a moment in his shirt sleeves, with his hat on the back of his
+head and his big, benevolent spectacles so kind, Anna-Rose's cup
+seemed full. Her dimple never disappeared for a moment. It was
+there all day long now; and even when she was asleep it still
+lurked in the corner of her mouth. <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>.</p>
+<p>Immense was the reaction of self-respect that took hold of the
+twins. They couldn't believe they were the people who had been so
+crude and ill-conditioned as to hide Mrs. Bilton's belongings, and
+actually finally to hide themselves. How absurd. How like children.
+How unpardonably undignified. Anna-Rose held forth volubly to this
+effect while she arranged the china, and Anna-Felicitas listened
+assentingly, with a kind of grave, ashamed sheepishness.</p>
+<p>The result of this reaction was that Mrs. Bilton, whose pressure
+on them was relieved by the necessity of her too being in several
+places at once, and who was displaying her customary grit, now
+became the definite object of their courtesy. They were the
+mistresses of a house, they began to realize, and as such owed her
+every consideration. This bland attitude was greatly helped by
+their not having to sleep with her any more, and they found that
+the mere coming fresh to her each morning made them feel polite and
+well-disposed. Besides, they were thoroughly and finally grown-up
+now, Anna-Rose declared&mdash;never, never to lapse again. They had
+had their lesson, she said, gone through a crisis, and done that
+which Aunt Alice used to say people did after severe trials, aged
+considerably.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas wasn't quite so sure. Her own recent <a name=
+"Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>behaviour had shaken and shocked her
+too much. Who would have thought she would have gone like that?
+Gone all to pieces, back to sheer naughtiness, on the first
+provocation? It was quite easy, she reflected while she worked, and
+cups kept on detaching themselves mysteriously from her fingers,
+and tables tumbling over at her approach, to be polite and
+considerate to somebody you saw very little of, and even, as she
+found herself doing, to get fond of the person; but suppose
+circumstances threw one again into the person's continual society,
+made one again have to sleep in the same room? Anna-Felicitas
+doubted whether it would be possible for her to stand such a test,
+in spite of her earnest desire to behave; she doubted, indeed,
+whether anybody ever did stand that test successfully. Look at
+husbands.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile there seemed no likelihood of its being applied again.
+Each of them had now a separate bedroom, and Mrs. Bilton had, in
+the lavish American fashion, her own bathroom, so that even at that
+point there was no collision. The twins' rooms were connected by a
+bathroom all to themselves, with no other door into it except the
+doors from their bedrooms, and Mr. Twist, who dwelt discreetly at
+the other end of the house, also had a bathroom of his own. It
+seemed as natural for American architects to drop bathrooms about,
+thought Anna-Rose, as for the little clouds in the psalms to drop
+fatness. They shed them just as easily, and the results were just
+as refreshing. To persons hailing from Pomerania, a place arid of
+bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to have one's
+own. Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from childhood to
+these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out to him,
+he hadn't lived in <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>Pomerania,
+where nothing stood between you and being dirty except the
+pump.</p>
+<p>But it wasn't only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by
+Mr. Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the
+most wonderful magic little house in the world: the intelligent
+American spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever,
+simple devices for saving labour&mdash;so full that it almost
+seemed to the Annas as if it would get up quite unaided at six
+every morning and do itself; and they were sure that if the
+smallest encouragement were given to the kitchen-stove it would
+cook and dish up a dinner all alone. Everything in the house was on
+these lines. The arrangements for serving innumerable teas with
+ease were admirable. They were marvels of economy and clever
+thinking-out. The architect was surprised at the attention and
+thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the
+future housekeeping. "You seem sheer crazy on teas," he remarked;
+to which Mr. Twist merely replied that he was.</p>
+<p>The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy
+and promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a
+happy betrothal. They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in
+April, those enchanting days she had always loved the best, when
+the bees get busy for the first time, and suddenly there are
+wallflowers and a flowering currant bush and the sound of the lawn
+being mown and the smell of cut grass. How one's heart leaps up to
+greet them, she thought. What a thrill of delight rushes through
+one's body, of new hope, of delicious expectation.</p>
+<p>Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech
+seemed to feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be
+heard in the evenings singing <a name="Page_330" id=
+"Page_330"></a>strange songs among his pots. And what he was
+singing, only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of
+the two white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose
+eyes were deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the
+shores of his father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive
+and inarticulate, in secret seethed with passion. Which was why his
+cakes were so wonderful. He had to express himself somehow.</p>
+<p>But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr.
+Twist and his party&mdash;he always thought of them as his
+party&mdash;were innocently and happily busy full of hopefulness
+and mutual goodwill, down in the town and in the houses scattered
+over the lovely country round the town, people were talking.
+Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was doing up, for the
+daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had bought the
+long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt's, and was
+converting it into a little <i>ventre-&agrave;-terre</i> for his
+widowed mother&mdash;launching once more into French, as though
+there were something about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language.
+Everybody knew this, and it was perfectly natural for a well-off
+Easterner to have a little place out West, even if the choice of
+the little place was whimsical. But what about the Miss Twinklers?
+Who and what were they? And also, Why?</p>
+<p>There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party
+from the Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time
+much had been done in the way of conjecture. The first waves of it
+flowed out from the Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by
+waves flowing in from the town. Good-natured curiosity gave place
+to excited curiosity when the rumour <a name="Page_331" id=
+"Page_331"></a>got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to
+ask Mr. Twist to take his <i>entourage</i> somewhere else. Was it
+possible the cute little girls, so well known by sight on Main
+Street going from shop to shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed
+almost unbelievable, but luckily nothing was really
+unbelievable.</p>
+<p>The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest
+after the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen
+from the local press, was not to be drawn. His reserve was most
+interesting. Miss Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently
+enigmatic. Her silence was most exciting. On the other hand, Mrs.
+Ridding's attitude was merely one of contempt, dismissing the
+Twinklers with a heavy gesture. Why think or trouble about a pair
+of chits like that? They had gone; Albert was quiet again; and
+wasn't that the gong for dinner?</p>
+<p>But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist
+<i>entourage</i> presently were superseded by much graver and more
+perturbing doubts. Nobody knew when exactly this development took
+place. Acapulco had been enjoying the first set of doubts. There
+was no denying that doubts about somebody else's morals were not
+unpleasant. They did give one, if one examined one's sensations
+carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add the kick to
+lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time like
+the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the
+life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat. But from the doubts that
+presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got
+nothing but genuine discomfort and uneasiness. Nobody knew how or
+when they started. Quite suddenly they were there.</p>
+<p>This was in the November before America's coming <a name=
+"Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>into the war. The feeling in Acapulco
+was violently anti-German. The great majority of the inhabitants,
+permanent and temporary, were deeply concerned at the conduct of
+their country in not having, immediately after the torpedoing of
+the <i>Lusitania</i>, joined the Allies. They found it difficult to
+understand, and were puzzled and suspicious, as well as humiliated
+in their national pride. Germans who lived in the neighbourhood, or
+who came across from the East for the winter, were politely
+tolerated, but the attitude toward them was one of growing
+watchfulness and distrust; and week by week the whispered stories
+of spies and gun-emplacements and secret stores of arms in these
+people's cellars or back gardens, grew more insistent and detailed.
+There certainly had been at least one spy, a real authentic one,
+afterward shot in England, who had stayed near-by, and the nerves
+of the inhabitants had that jumpiness on this subject with which
+the inhabitants of other countries have long been familiar. All the
+customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary
+mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered
+speeds along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the
+customary signalling out to sea was observed and passionately sworn
+to by otherwise calm people. It was possible, the inhabitants
+found, to believe with ease things about Germans&mdash;those who
+were having difficulty with religion wished it were equally easy to
+believe things about God. There was nothing Germans wouldn't think
+of in the way of plotting, and nothing they wouldn't, having
+thought of it, carry out with deadly thoroughness and patience.</p>
+<p>And into this uneasy hotbed of readiness to believe the worst,
+arrived the Twinkler twins, rolling their r's about.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>It needed but a few
+inquiries to discover that none of the young ladies' schools in the
+neighbourhood had been approached on their behalf; hardly
+inquiries,&mdash;mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary chatting
+with the principals of these establishments when one met them at
+the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of
+the community organized and supported. Not many of the winter
+visitors went to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap had a
+restless soul. It was restless because it was worried by perpetual
+thirst,&mdash;she couldn't herself tell after what; it wasn't
+righteousness, for she knew she was still worldly, so perhaps it
+was culture. Anyhow she would give culture a chance, and
+accordingly she went to the instructive evenings. Here she met that
+other side of Acapulco which doesn't play bridge and is proud to
+know nothing of polo, which believes in education, and goes in for
+mind training and welfare work; which isn't, that is, well off.</p>
+<p>Nobody here had been asked to educate the Twinklers. No classes
+had been joined by them.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap was so enigmatic, she who was naturally of an unquiet
+and exercise-loving tongue, that this graver, more occupied section
+of the inhabitants was instantly as much pervaded by suspicions as
+the idlest of the visitors in the hotels and country houses. It
+waved aside the innocent appearance and obvious extreme youth of
+the suspects. Useless to look like cherubs if it were German
+cherubs you looked like. Useless being very nearly children if it
+were German children you very nearly were. Why, precisely these
+qualities would be selected by those terribly clever Germans for
+the furtherance of their nefarious schemes. It would be quite in
+keeping with the German national character, <a name="Page_334" id=
+"Page_334"></a>that character of bottomless artfulness, to pick out
+two such young girls with just that type of empty, baby face, and
+send them over to help weave the gigantic invisible web with which
+America was presently to be choked dead.</p>
+<p>The serious section of Acapulco, the section that thought, hit
+on this explanation of the Twinklers with no difficulty whatever
+once its suspicions were roused because it was used to being able
+to explain everything instantly. It was proud of its explanation,
+and presented it to the town with much the same air of deprecating
+but conscious achievement with which one presents
+drinking-fountains.</p>
+<p>Then there was the lawyer to whom Mr. Twist had gone about the
+guardianship. He said nothing, but he was clear in his mind that
+the girls were German and that Mr. Twist wanted to hide it. He had
+thought more highly of Mr. Twist's intelligence than this. Why hide
+it? America was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and
+Germans could come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set
+tongues wagging? He did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness
+himself, a continuous wide-awakeness and minute consideration of
+consequences, realize, and if he had he wouldn't have believed, the
+affectionate simplicity and unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had
+been pointed out to him he would have dismissed it as a pose; for a
+man who makes money in any quantity worth handling isn't
+affectionately simple and unworldly&mdash;he is calculating and
+steely.</p>
+<p>The lawyer was puzzled. How did Mr. Twist manage to have a
+forehead and a fortune like that, and yet be a fool? True, he had a
+funny sort of face on him once you got down to the nose part and
+what came after,&mdash;<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>a
+family sort of face, thought the lawyer; a sort of rice pudding,
+wet-nurse face. The lawyer listened intently to all the talk and
+rumours, while himself saying nothing. In spite of being a married
+man, his scruples about honour hadn't been blunted by the urge to
+personal freedom and the necessity for daily self-defence that
+sometimes afflicts those who have wives. He remained honourably
+silent, as he had said he would, but he listened; and he came to
+the conclusion that either there was a quite incredible amount of
+stupidity about the Twist party, or that there was something
+queer.</p>
+<p>What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house
+being got ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest
+of the world, took the newspapers <i>ventre-&agrave;-terre</i>
+theory of the house for granted, and it was only the expectation of
+the arrival of that respectable lady, the widowed Mrs. Twist, which
+kept the suspicions a little damped down. They smouldered,
+hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot Twist's family
+life had been voluminously described in the entire American press
+when first his invention caught on, and it was known to be pure.
+There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
+born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would
+die&mdash;Mr. Twist read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish
+was to die in the old home&mdash;of the corner in the Clark
+churchyard where he would probably be entombed, with an inset
+showing his father's gravestone on which would clearly be read the
+announcement that he was the Resurrection and the Life. And there
+was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols of
+ungluttable grief,&mdash;a most creditable mother. And there were
+accounts of the activities of another near relative, that <a name=
+"Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>Uncle Charles who presided over the
+Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a snapshot of his
+macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,&mdash;a most
+creditable uncle.</p>
+<p>These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the
+impression survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents
+were unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his
+mother and she was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd
+and unintelligible, it was probable that his being there now with
+the two Germans was after all capable of explanation. Not much of
+an explanation, though. Even the moderates who took this view felt
+this. One wasn't with Germans these days if one could help it.
+There was no getting away from that simple fact. The inevitable
+deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why couldn't he help
+it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a passion
+cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which was
+known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
+with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
+exactly informed of their movements? He had met the Twinklers, so
+it was reported, on a steamer coming over from England. Of course.
+All arranged by the German Government. That was the peculiar evil
+greatness of this dangerous people, announced the serious section
+of Acapulco, again with the drinking-fountain-presentation air,
+that nothing was too private or too petty to escape their
+attention, to be turned to their own wicked uses. They were as
+economical of the smallest scraps of possible usefulness as a
+French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food. Everything
+was turned to account. Nothing was wasted. Even the mosquitoes in
+Germany were <a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>not wasted. They
+contained juices, Germans had discovered, especially after having
+been in contact with human beings, and with these juices the
+talented but unscrupulous Germans made explosives. Could one
+sufficiently distrust a nation that did things like that? asked the
+serious section of Acapulco.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><a name="Page_338"
+id="Page_338"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+<p>People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that
+they were less interested than they otherwise would have been in
+the sea-blue advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing
+that The Open Arms would open wide on the 29th of the month and
+exhorting the public to watch the signposts, they merely remarked
+that it wasn't, then, the title of a book after all. Mr. Twist
+would have been surprised and nettled if he had known how little
+curiosity his advertisements were exciting; he would have been
+horrified if he had known the reason. As it was, he didn't know
+anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to be vulnerable to
+rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe from it inside
+their magic circle of <i>Arbeit und Liebe</i>.</p>
+<p>Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco
+through which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning,
+looking as though he had a great deal to do and very little time to
+do it in; and once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also
+apparently very busy, but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton,
+the lady from Los Angeles&mdash;Acapulco knew all about her and
+admitted she was a lady of strictest integrity and unimpeachable
+character, but this only made the Twinkler problem more
+obscure&mdash;came too, and seemed, judging from the animation of
+her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.</p>
+<p>But once an idea has got into people's heads, re<a name=
+"Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>marked the lawyer, who was nudged by
+the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were seen
+approaching,&mdash;Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy
+hair setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in
+their clean white frocks and shining youth,&mdash;once an idea has
+got into people's heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and
+impossible to get out. Yet on the face of it, was it likely that
+Mrs. Bilton&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up
+with the water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"</p>
+<p>And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him
+from using the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance
+in the East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was
+staying with some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon
+after the departure&mdash;she didn't see why she shouldn't call it
+by its proper name and say right out expulsion&mdash;of the Twist
+party from the Cosmopolitan, but letters take a long time to get
+East and answers take the same long time to come back in, and
+messages are sometimes slow in being delivered if the other person
+doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous interests that
+are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest, and one
+more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
+morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
+machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
+uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
+sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that
+his mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt
+unable to believe <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>it. "Do tell
+your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how <i>delighted</i> we all are
+to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us in our sunny
+refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her. Her son is
+working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
+indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."</p>
+<p>She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time
+she got it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts
+as to the exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in
+the German secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the
+invasion of America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter
+Miss Heap found she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath
+her.</p>
+<p>It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till
+Miss Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two
+girls mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very
+morning after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe.
+That was all his mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the
+top of all her other sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a
+fearful, perhaps a finishing blow, but she was such a good woman
+that she still prayed for him. Clark was horrified. His mother had
+decided at first she would try to shield him and say nothing, but
+when she found that nobody had the least idea of what he had done
+she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and have no secrets
+from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and humiliation she
+would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up false
+appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
+a splendid woman. The girls&mdash;poor Mrs. Twist&mdash;were
+Germans.</p>
+<p>On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her <a name=
+"Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>worst suspicions hadn't been half bad
+enough. Here was everything just about as black as it could be; and
+Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected American citizen,
+had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon weaknesses
+she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe, from
+books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
+part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the
+German Government.</p>
+<p>What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go?
+Which was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to
+her that the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a
+real menace to its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of
+them? And if they were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some
+other part of America, less watchful, less perhaps able to take
+care of itself, to the ripening and furtherance of their schemes,
+whatever their schemes might be? Even at that moment. Miss Heap
+unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go would be to lose
+thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with excitement
+and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years. She
+wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
+thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone
+in her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her
+chair, her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft
+carpet, hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding
+her knowledge meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether
+to herself, her very own, shared as yet by no one,&mdash;it was
+while she sat there, that people out of doors in Acapulco itself,
+along the main roads, out in the country towards Zamora on the
+north and San <a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>Blas on the
+south, became suddenly aware of new signposts.</p>
+<p>They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards
+the spot at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They
+all pointed, with a long white finger, in that direction. And on
+them all was written in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the
+distance in miles or fractions of a mile was clearly marked, <i>To
+The Open Arms</i>.</p>
+<p>Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main
+Street stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what
+they were, and decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in
+their cars and track them down. They made up parties to go and
+track together. It would be a relief to have something a little
+different to do. What on earth could The Open Arms be? Hopes were
+expressed that they weren't something religious. Awful to follow
+signposts out into the country only to find they landed you in a
+meeting-house.</p>
+<p>At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were
+together, the signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being
+discussed from her solitary table, but was so much taken up with
+her own exciting thoughts that she hardly noticed. After lunch,
+however, as she was passing out of the restaurant, still full of
+her unshared news and still uncertain as to whom she should tell it
+first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table and said he supposed
+she was going too.</p>
+<p>They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon
+of the conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called
+out to any one at that moment He was sitting waiting while Mrs.
+Ridding finished her lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and
+was in the <a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>condition of
+muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of
+Mrs. Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this
+happened, that Mr. Ridding got through his meal first by at least
+twenty minutes and then sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She
+wasn't aware of these efforts. They would greatly have shocked her;
+for to try not to mind one's wife surely isn't what decent, loving
+husbands ever have to do.</p>
+<p>"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon
+Mr. Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.</p>
+<p>"Following these new signposts that are all over the place,"
+said Mr. Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."</p>
+<p>"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs.
+Ridding?"</p>
+<p>"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take
+you. Car at four o'clock, Albert."</p>
+<p>She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well
+knew that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals
+and as she had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her
+thanks and pleasure, and temporarily left them.</p>
+<p>This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big
+limousine&mdash;symbol of Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding
+couldn't for the life of him see why he should have to provide a
+strange old lady with cars, and yet did so on an increasing scale
+of splendour&mdash;arrived at the turn on the main road to San Blas
+which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the final
+signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
+Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's <a name="Page_344" id=
+"Page_344"></a>mind in company. So too did they enter Mr. Ridding's
+mind; and they only remained outside Mrs. Ridding's because of her
+profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged in aspic. That was
+the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at the
+Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
+and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it
+afterwards.</p>
+<p>The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was
+in Pepper Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should
+happen to be there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very
+straight and alert, her eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said
+nothing either. Not for worlds would he have mentioned the word
+Twist, which so instantly and inevitably suggested that other and
+highly controversial word Twinkler. But he too sat all eyes; for
+anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of the place containing
+those cunning little bits of youngness, the Twinkler sisters, and
+even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.</p>
+<p>Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in
+front of it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was
+lovely, there was no polo, and nobody happened to be giving a
+party. All the way out from Acapulco they had only had to follow
+other cars. Cars were going, and cars were coming back. The cars
+going were full of solemn people, pathetically anxious to be
+interested. The cars coming back were full of animated people who
+evidently had achieved interest.</p>
+<p>Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend
+in the lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been
+there before, making <a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>a point
+of getting a friend to motor her past it in order to see what she
+could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of his desire to go
+and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to, found Mrs.
+Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where it
+was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
+putting his head out&mdash;he was sitting backwards&mdash;- he saw
+a great, old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in
+pictures of ancient English village greens, with</p>
+<p><b>The Open Arms</b></p>
+<p>in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've
+run it to earth."</p>
+<p>Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding,
+her mind blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed
+with heavy eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many
+cars. All stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of
+fathomless fatigue she dimly wondered at them.</p>
+<p>"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who
+remembered his Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at
+the signboard, on which through a gap in the branches of the pepper
+trees a shaft of brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't
+see one, though."</p>
+<p>He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he
+said.</p>
+<p>Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.</p>
+<p>A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said
+quickly. "Don't, Mr. Ridding."</p>
+<p>There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that <a name=
+"Page_346" id="Page_346"></a>grew behind the pepper trees, and some
+people he knew, who had been in the car in front, were walking up
+to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it, and were
+standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in their
+hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on to
+one of the gate-posts, with the words <i>Won't you take one</i>?
+painted on it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was
+Miss Heap laying hold of him and saying "Don't."</p>
+<p>"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the
+door.</p>
+<p>"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good
+getting out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in
+to-day. Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."</p>
+<p>And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and
+came over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.</p>
+<p>"Say&mdash;" he said,&mdash;"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs.
+Ridding, your humble servant&mdash;say, look at this. Teapot Twist
+wasn't born yesterday when it comes to keeping things dark. No
+mention of his name on this book of words, but it's the house he
+was doing up all right, and it is to be used as an inn.
+Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American Red Cross. Price
+per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea. Wonder
+where those Twinkler girls come in. Here&mdash;you have this,
+Ridding, and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a
+second time to the ladies he went back to his friends.</p>
+<p>In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
+galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly
+heaving itself free of <a name="Page_347" id="Page_347"></a>aspic.
+"Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs Ridding," said Miss
+Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish particularly to
+tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly I knew,
+but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at the
+signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.</p>
+<p>"Albert&mdash;hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.</p>
+<p>And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
+suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
+speaking-tube to the chauffeur.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a><a name="Page_348"
+id="Page_348"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+<p>"It's <i>perfect</i>," said the twins, looking round the
+tea-room.</p>
+<p>This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking
+round saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each
+time they finished getting another of the little tables ready, each
+time they brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they
+stood back and gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one
+voice, "It's <i>perfect</i>."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as
+sober, quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was
+obliged to admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the
+Annas. Especially the Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue
+frocks and little Dutch caps and big muslin aprons that he took off
+his spectacles and cleaned them carefully so as to have a
+thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as they stood at a quarter to
+four gazing round the room, he stood gazing at them, and when they
+said "It's <i>perfect</i>," he said, indicating them with his
+thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all
+very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had
+pictured her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair
+beautifully brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave
+each of them a hearty kiss&mdash;for luck, she said&mdash;which Mr.
+Twist watched with an odd feeling of jealousy.</p>
+<p>"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden <a name=
+"Page_349" id="Page_349"></a>desire to hug. Then he said it out
+loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And added, "As it's
+the opening day."</p>
+<p>"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction,"
+said Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained,
+we think, by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs.
+Bilton, "we like it very much as an expression of esteem."</p>
+<p>"Then why not in that spirit&mdash;" began Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning
+very red. Intolerable to be kissed <i>en famille</i>. If it had to
+be done at all, kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But
+she and Anna-Felicitas didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To
+her amazement she found tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid
+idiots.... It must be that she was so happy. She had never been so
+happy. Where on earth had her handkerchief got to....</p>
+<p>"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.</p>
+<p>"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her
+beautiful new muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We
+are, you know," she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist,
+so that the corner of her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at
+Christopher's perfectly tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily
+happy, and all through you. Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued,
+addressing her with firmness while she finished her eyes and began
+her nose, "You may like to be reminded that there's only ten
+minutes left now before all those cars that were here yesterday
+come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your career as a
+waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350"></a>But half an hour later no
+cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty. The long shadows lay
+across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in the grass
+chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something was
+coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts&mdash;Li Koo to the
+boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the
+room, and the twins to the door&mdash;but the sounds passed on
+along the road and died away round the next corner.</p>
+<p>At half-past four the <i>personnel</i> of The Open Arms was
+sitting about silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when
+Mr. Ridding walked in.</p>
+<p>There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked
+in mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to
+the nearest point and had done the last mile on his own
+out-of-condition feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters
+in the smoking-room. She herself was in a big chair on the
+verandah, and with Miss Heap and most of the other guests was
+discussing The Open Arms in all its probable significance. He
+hadn't been able to get away sooner because of the nap. He had gone
+through with the nap from start to finish so as not to rouse
+suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of dare-devil
+running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew that he
+would cool down again presently and that then the consequences of
+his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile
+his blood was up.</p>
+<p>He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,&mdash;most
+gratifying sensation. The <i>personnel</i>, after a moment's
+open-mouthed surprise, rushed to greet him. Never was a man more
+welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding been so warmly welcomed anywhere in
+his life.</p>
+<p>"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at <a name=
+"Page_351" id="Page_351"></a>Anna-Rose who took his stick. "Wish
+I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had something
+to look forward to."</p>
+<p>"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to
+look very solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering
+with eagerness. "Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate?
+Each of these beverages can be provided either hot or
+iced&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in
+spite of also trying to look like a family butler. "<i>I'd</i> have
+ice-cream if I were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious
+body. And you look so hot. Hot things should always as soon as
+possible be united to cold things, so as to restore the proper
+balance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And there's some heavenly stuff called
+cinnamon-toast&mdash;hot, you know, but if you have ice-cream at
+the same time it won't matter," said Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his
+hat for him. "I don't know whether you've studied the leaflets,"
+she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I oughtn't to
+conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you
+have."</p>
+<p>"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to
+save, for you can't."</p>
+<p>"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said
+Mr. Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him
+and beaming up at her.</p>
+<p>She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the
+corner of her apron to convey to him that she knew her business,
+and hurried away to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away
+to give the order.</p>
+<p>"Say&mdash;" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna
+would have been enough for this and he was pining to talk to them;
+but the twins weren't to <a name="Page_352" id="Page_352"></a>be
+stopped from both giving the very first order, and they disappeared
+together into the pantry.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently
+absorbed in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep
+accounts and to enter the number of teas, and from this high seat
+she was to preside over the activities of the <i>personnel</i>. She
+had retired hastily to it on the unexpected entrance of Mr.
+Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring to look as if she were
+totting up figures. As the pages were blank this was a little
+difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She wanted to
+get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had quite a
+good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and
+talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till
+the room was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests
+entirely to the Annas.</p>
+<p>He himself was going to keep much in the background at all
+times, but through the half-open door of his office he could see
+and hear; and he couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching
+and observed the effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just
+arrived turned on the twins, that the first guest appeared to be
+extraordinarily and undesirably affectionate. He thought he had
+seen him at the Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that
+the Annas, after their conversation with him there, felt towards
+him as old friends, and he considered their manner was a little
+unduly familiar. Perhaps, after all, he thought uneasily, Mrs.
+Bilton had better do the waiting and the Annas sit with him in the
+office. The ledger could be written up at the end of the day. Or he
+could hire somebody....</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there
+only one guest? It was twenty minutes <a name="Page_353" id=
+"Page_353"></a>to five; and this time yesterday the road had been
+choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every minute this
+absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he had
+better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary
+one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of
+the inn for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had
+heard to those others who so unaccountably hadn't come.</p>
+<p>He got up and went into the other room; and just as
+Anna-Felicitas was reappearing with the teapot followed by
+Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes, Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up
+expectantly and giving his tie a little pat of adjustment,
+perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot Twist.</p>
+<p>This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon
+heat to sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and
+amiable old man, and at any other time would have talked to him
+with pleasure; but he had made up his mind for the Twinklers as one
+makes up one's mind for a certain dish and is ravaged by strange
+fury if it isn't produced. Besides, hang it all, he was going to
+pay five dollars for his tea, and for that sum he ought to least to
+have it under the conditions he preferred.</p>
+<p>"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist
+introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering
+Annas,&mdash;a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.</p>
+<p>It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't
+mind, Mr.&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ridding is my name."</p>
+<p>"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects
+to you."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354"></a>But he couldn't help
+wondering what he would do if there were several tables with
+roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there wouldn't be
+enough of him in such a case to go round.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil
+Teapot Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now.
+For that a man had a right to a table to himself.</p>
+<p>But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that
+moment a car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were
+heard coming up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his
+ears, for from the things he had heard being said all the evening
+before and all that morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night
+from the lips of that strange old lady with whom by some dreadful
+mistake he was obliged to sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be
+exactly a rush.</p>
+<p>Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class,
+he thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of
+sulky vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm
+the Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding
+crossly, as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.</p>
+<p>"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the
+long things he was saying.</p>
+<p>"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place,"
+said Mr. Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears
+in expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was
+disappointed.</p>
+<p>He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young
+people, called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
+abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The
+young men were <a name="Page_355" id="Page_355"></a>evidently in
+the highest spirits, and were walking round the Annas admiring
+their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter and
+exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all
+their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as
+pleased, Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost
+he could hear them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where
+Mrs. Bilton sat, as he had told her, bent pen in hand over the
+ledger. She didn't move. It was true he had told her to sit like
+that, but hadn't the woman any imagination? What she ought to do
+now was to bustle forward and take that laughing group in
+charge.</p>
+<p>"As I was telling you&mdash;" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with
+an effort to Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young
+people and catch an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.</p>
+<p>In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,&mdash;it was
+solely to see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at
+the Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that.
+"Unprincipled old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his
+ears flaming. Aloud he said, "As I was telling you&mdash;" and went
+on distractedly with his rigmarole.</p>
+<p>Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise
+the experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr.
+Ridding and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in
+the middle of the room, were made aware of their presence by
+Anna-Felicitas suddenly dropping the pencil and tablets she had
+been provided with for writing down orders and taking an uncertain
+and obviously timid step forward.</p>
+<p>They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant
+<a name="Page_356" id="Page_356"></a>step, and saw a man and two
+women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course, didn't know
+them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding did.
+That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided
+knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a
+man who liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his
+daily paper was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who
+disliked Germans and yet at the same time had a thirstily
+affectionate disposition, he declined to believe the prevailing
+theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't believe it anyhow.
+At that age people were truthful, and he had heard them explain
+they had come from England and had acquired their rolling r's
+during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from
+declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular
+nationality, owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he
+couldn't call his but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as
+ours. Except, however, for the Twinklers, for all other persons of
+whom it was said that they were Germans, naturalized or not,
+immediate or remote, he had, instructed by his newspaper, what his
+called a healthy instinctive abhorrence.</p>
+<p>"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond
+between them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant
+advance to meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are
+wrong."</p>
+<p>But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were
+the first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any
+shop or hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the
+experts friends. <a name="Page_357" id="Page_357"></a>This was
+trade coming in,&mdash;real business being done. Anna-Felicitas
+hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and
+prepared-for moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the
+guests seemed so disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the
+threshold the whole three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't
+been prepared for that, and it unnerved her.</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her
+and embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense
+inclusive smile of appreciation.</p>
+<p>"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's
+explanations.</p>
+<p>"No," said he.</p>
+<p>"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.</p>
+<p>"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced
+harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But this is delicious&mdash;this is a conception of genius,"
+said Mr. Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up
+Anna-Felicitas's tablets and restored them to her with a low
+bow.</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.</p>
+<p>"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And
+she laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual
+understanding.</p>
+<p>"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously.
+"Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these
+beverages can be&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping
+Anna-Felicitas in her smile.</p>
+<p>"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas
+with a kind of grave nervousness.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_358" id="Page_358"></a>Ah&mdash;charming,
+charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately appreciative.</p>
+<p>"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes
+on her tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile.
+"And&mdash;and a great many kinds of cakes&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker
+genially, "or are all the tables engaged?"</p>
+<p>"Oh I <i>beg</i> your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and
+moving hastily towards a table laid for three.</p>
+<p>"Ah&mdash;that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following
+closely on her heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of
+ordering what we shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow
+me to present myself. My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German
+name. And this is my wife. She too had an honest German name before
+she honoured mine by accepting it&mdash;she was a Niedermayer. And
+this is my daughter, with whom I trust you will soon be
+friends."</p>
+<p>And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and
+Anna-Felicitas shook them.</p>
+<p>"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.</p>
+<p>"As I was telling you&mdash;" said Mr. Twist irritably, for
+really why should Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers?
+Her business was to wait, not to get shaking hands. He must point
+out to her very plainly.</p>
+<p>"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker;
+and at this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped
+her tablets a second time.</p>
+<p>"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that
+air of mutual comprehension.</p>
+<p>"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her
+tablets from the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting
+to thank him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></a>What?" said Mrs.
+Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for once the
+phrase must be sincere?"</p>
+<p>"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her
+title," said Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps&mdash;perhaps. Wiser
+perhaps from the point of view of convenience. Is that where you
+will sit, G&uuml;stchen? Still, we Germans when we are together can
+allow ourselves the refreshment of being ourselves, and I hope to
+be frequently the means of giving you the relief, you and your
+charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed correctly. It is a
+great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In these sad days
+we Germans must hang together&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from
+one Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or
+coffee?" she ended by asking again.</p>
+<p>"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down
+comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it,
+G&uuml;stchen. To see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."</p>
+<p>"Charming, charming," said his wife.</p>
+<p>"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at
+Anna-Felicitas, again with comprehension,&mdash;with, almost, a
+wink. "You must let me come and help. I'd look nice in that
+costume, wouldn't I mother."</p>
+<p>"There is also frothed choc&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist&mdash;he must be completely
+sympathy&mdash;" interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially,
+leaning forward and lowering his voice a little.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more <a name=
+"Page_360" id="Page_360"></a>people were coming in at the door, and
+behind them she could see on the path yet more, and Anna-Rose was
+in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.</p>
+<p>"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked.
+"Because I'm afraid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was
+looking.</p>
+<p>"Ah&mdash;" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent
+G&uuml;stchen, here are Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister&mdash;why,
+and there come the Diederichs&mdash;but splendid,
+splendid&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested
+face, "ever been to Berlin?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton
+irrelevance flung into the middle of his sentence.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's just like this."</p>
+<p>"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot
+there&mdash;see 'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other
+of their confounded towns."</p>
+<p>"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.</p>
+<p>"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans," said Ridding.</p>
+<p>"All Germans?"</p>
+<p>"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you
+know?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"So are the ones who've just come in."</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."</p>
+<p>"Germans?"</p>
+<p>"All Germans."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361"></a>There was a pause, during
+which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was presenting quite a
+populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm damned."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr.
+Twist. He considered that at last he was talking sense.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're
+damned. It was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would
+be. Shake hands, sir."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a><a name=
+"Page_362" id="Page_362"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+<p>That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that
+was obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed
+abruptly, after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had
+never seen so many Germans at once before, that her psyche was
+disharmonious to Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just
+as cats in a room made Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when
+he had flesh to go it with, that she hadn't been aware the inn was
+to be a popular resort and rendezvous for Germans, and that she
+wished to speak alone with Mr. Twist in the morning; while the
+twins, feeling the ominousness of this last sentence,&mdash;as did
+Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,&mdash;and overcome by the
+lassitude that had succeeded the shocks of the afternoon, a
+lassitude much increased by their having tried to finish up the
+pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly
+soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the
+moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars.
+There they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense
+distance and indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how
+infinitely insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and
+how they would both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And
+this last reflection afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and
+draughty comfort.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363"></a>Thus the first evening,
+that was to have been so happy, was spent by everybody in silence
+and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression even in his
+kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing with
+it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
+wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the
+opening day&mdash;"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing
+together strange essences and fruits&mdash;and he moved softly
+about so as not to disturb the meditations of the master. Li Koo
+was perfectly aware of what had gone wrong: it was the unexpected
+arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member of the least
+blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with peculiar
+disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
+down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these
+people of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and
+was not that sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous
+and rapid steps?</p>
+<p>Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he
+must think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had
+all those Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts,
+had none of the Americans come? It was very strange. And what
+Germans! So cordial, so exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering
+them to their bosoms, as though they belonged there. And so cordial
+too to him, approaching him in spite of his withdrawals, conveying
+to him somehow, his disagreeable impression had been, that he and
+they perfectly understood each other. Then Mrs. Bilton; was she
+going to give trouble? It looked like it. It looked amazingly like
+it. Was she after all just another edition of his mother, and
+unable to discriminate between Germans and Ger<a name="Page_364"
+id="Page_364"></a>mans, between the real thing and mere
+technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he hadn't told her
+the twins were German, but then neither had he told her they
+weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
+came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
+exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering
+their nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she
+hadn't done so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin
+to love the Annas, and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what
+their father had happened to be. He had supposed she did love them.
+How affectionately she had kissed them that very afternoon and
+wished them luck. Was all that nothing? Was lovableness nothing,
+and complete innocence, after all in the matter of being born, when
+weighed against the one fact of the von? What he would do if Mrs.
+Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would happen to The Open
+Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain simply
+couldn't conceive.</p>
+<p>Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door
+on to the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless
+on its edge, their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars,
+white in the moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children.
+Pathetic, solitary, alien children. What were they thinking of? He
+wouldn't mind betting it was their mother.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental,
+maternal side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and
+put his arms round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it.
+He didn't want to go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely
+brought up soul told him, his soul still echoing with the voice of
+Clark, to put his arms round them&mdash;<a name="Page_365" id=
+"Page_365"></a>this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton
+had left them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the
+very second occasion was one of those questions that would
+instantly have suggested itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't
+occur to Mr. Twist. He merely went on to think of another reason
+against it, which was the chance of Mrs. Bilton's looking out of
+her window just as he did it. She might, he felt, easily misjudge
+the situation, and the situation, he felt, was difficult enough
+already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas continued to
+consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that feeling of
+dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
+mattered.</p>
+<p>Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him
+into his office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering
+her resignation. She said that all her life she had been an
+upholder of straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as
+in others towards herself&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't
+interrupt.</p>
+<p>She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr.
+Twist, she feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single
+eye&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a
+determination to resist the encroachments of foreigners&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be
+mixed up with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment
+meant Germans&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366"></a>She regretted, but
+psychically she would never be able to flourish in a soil so
+largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be, of
+that nationality&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And though it was none of her business, still she must say it
+did seem to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and
+respected American name should be mixed up&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say
+it did seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian
+of two girls who, it was clear from what she had overheard that
+afternoon, were German&mdash;</p>
+<p>Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he
+shouted, so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee
+to keep quiet for just five minutes&mdash;sit down right here at
+this table and not say one single thing, not one single thing for
+just five minutes," he said, banging the table, "I'll tell you all
+about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your resignation at the end of that
+time if you're still set on leaving, but just for this once it's me
+that's going to do the talking."</p>
+<p>And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital
+letters would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of
+how good her intentions had been when she took the post, and how
+deceitful&mdash;she was forced to think it&mdash;Mr. Twist's were
+when he offered it. She was prepared, however, to give him a
+hearing. It was only fair. But Mr. Twist had to burst into capitals
+several times before he had done, so difficult was it for <a name=
+"Page_367" id="Page_367"></a>Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed,
+even when she herself wished, not to say anything.</p>
+<p>It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of
+the office again. She went straight into the garden, where the
+Annas, aware of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been
+lingering anxiously, unable at so crucial a moment to settle to
+anything, and with solemnity kissed them. Her eyes were very
+bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless as parchment, was red.
+Positively she kissed them without saying a single word; and they
+kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a relief that made them
+hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that the brightness in
+her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her handkerchief and
+wipe it away.</p>
+<p>"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm
+through with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll
+weld."</p>
+<p>And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the
+situation.</p>
+<p>She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that
+happened nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through
+what she called thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton
+had occupied the position of the guns; now it would be these poor
+orphans. No Germans could frighten her away, once she knew their
+story; no harsh judgments and misconceptions of her patriotic
+friends. Mr. Twist had told her everything, from the beginning on
+the <i>St. Luke</i>, harking back to Uncle Arthur and the attitude
+of England, describing what he knew of their mother and her death,
+not even concealing the part his own mother had played or that he
+wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs. Bilton's
+silence; and as she listened her heart <a name="Page_368" id=
+"Page_368"></a>melted within her, and the immense store of grit
+which was her peculiar pride came to the top and once and for all
+overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think, and at last she
+burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he hadn't
+imparted all this to her long ago.</p>
+<p>"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind
+before the outburst of her released volubility.</p>
+<p>Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked
+forward to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just
+happened so the first day, that only Germans came. It was just
+accident. Mr. Twist, with the very large part of him that wasn't
+his head, found himself feeling like this too and declining to take
+any notice of his intelligence, which continued to try to worry
+him.</p>
+<p>Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second
+afternoon was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and
+clustered round the Annas, and made friendly though cautious
+advances to Mr. Twist. The ones who had been there the first day
+came again and brought others with them worse than themselves, and
+they seemed more at home than ever, and the air was full of rolling
+r's&mdash;among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny, being the r's
+of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he told
+himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
+While as for these other people&mdash;confound it all, the place
+might really have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a
+<i>Conditorei</i> Unter den Linden.</p>
+<p>All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed
+and no Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and
+straight, and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered,
+<a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"></a>thought they weren't. What an
+aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered, impatient with
+them when first he came back from France. What folly. Americans.
+The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a thirsty
+day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
+seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient&mdash;like
+some blessed unction dropped from above.</p>
+<p>But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.</p>
+<p>At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go
+on hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down,
+and close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly
+shaded lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching
+from the partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the
+guests to begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice
+of the signals of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside
+growing bright in the surrounding blackness.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by
+the disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr.
+Wangelbecker, and had sat there watching in growing exasperation
+ever since. When six struck and nobody showed the least sign of
+going away he could bear it no longer, and touched the little
+muffled electric bell that connected him to Mrs. Bilton in what
+Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union&mdash;Anna II. was really
+excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in his
+presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
+an embarrassing abundance of imagery&mdash;by buzzing gently
+against her knee from the leg of the desk.</p>
+<p>She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up
+a column, and went to him.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_370" id="Page_370"></a>Now don't talk," said Mr.
+Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly she came in.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?"
+she repeated. "Why now, as though&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Don't <i>talk</i> I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I
+can't stand seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge
+rise. I want you to fetch them in here&mdash;now don't
+talk&mdash;you and me'll do the confounded waiting&mdash;no, no,
+don't talk&mdash;they're to stay quiet in here till the last of
+those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs.
+Bilton. No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they
+come." And he urged her out into the tea-room again.</p>
+<p>The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on,
+for they were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly
+enjoying themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more
+manifestly at home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices
+and fruit-salads. Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was
+after all a great deal to pay for afternoon tea, however good the
+cause might be and however important one's own ulterior motives;
+and since one had in any case to pay, one should eat what one
+could. So they kept the Annas very busy. There seemed to be no end,
+thought the Annas as they ran hither and thither, to what a German
+will hold.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was
+carrying a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying
+ices to innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap
+clung damply to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed.
+What with having to carry so many trays, and remember so many
+orders, and try at the same time to escape from the orderers and
+their questions <a name="Page_371" id="Page_371"></a>and
+admiration, she was in a condition not very far from tears.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr.
+Twist wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general
+bewilderment that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be
+going to scold her. She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr.
+Twist were to be severe, she was sure she wouldn't be able not to
+cry. She made her way very slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton
+looked round the room for the other one. There was no sign of her.
+Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she was fetching something in the
+kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and seeing a group over by
+the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was evidently
+destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep them
+quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new
+duties. Never would she have dreamed it possible that she should
+have to carry trays to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he
+would certainly turn in his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit,
+of adhesiveness to her guns; if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn
+in his grave, let him; he would, she dared say, be more comfortable
+on his other side after all these years.</p>
+<p>For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and
+waited single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No
+wonder that child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist
+didn't come and help, as he had promised, and nowhere was there any
+sign of Anna-Felicitas; and the guests not only wanted things to
+eat, they wanted to talk,&mdash;talk and ask questions. Well, she
+would wait on them, but she <a name="Page_372" id=
+"Page_372"></a>wouldn't talk. She turned a dry, parchment-like face
+to their conversational blandishments, and responded only by adding
+up their bills. Wonderful are the workings of patriotism. For the
+first time in her life, Mrs. Bilton was grumbled at for not
+talking.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_373" id="Page_373"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+<p>In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.</p>
+<p>"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about
+tired of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there.
+You're through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and
+the day after as well."</p>
+<p>He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for
+his business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he
+said severely, "and stay put."</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather
+unsteadily to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if
+you're angry or being kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever
+it is I&mdash;I wish you wouldn't. I&mdash;I wish you'd manage to
+be something that isn't either." And, as she had feared, she began
+to cry.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern
+mixed with irritation&mdash;out there all those Germans, in here
+the weeping child; what a day he was having&mdash;"for heaven's
+sake don't do that."</p>
+<p>"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being
+so natu&mdash;natu&mdash;naturally liquid."</p>
+<p>"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his
+pockets. If he took them out he was afraid he might <a name=
+"Page_374" id="Page_374"></a>start stroking her, and she seemed to
+him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
+would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great
+girl now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist
+could imagine....</p>
+<p>"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."</p>
+<p>"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"And the Germans have been too much for you."</p>
+<p>"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion
+that anybody could ever be that.</p>
+<p>"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist,
+setting his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to
+his natural kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and
+me&mdash;" Then he remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she
+come?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."</p>
+<p>"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been
+much upset by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had
+suspected her, though she couldn't understand it after last night's
+finishings up, of secret unworthy conduct in a corner with
+ice-cream.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't
+see her either," he said. "Confound them&mdash;what have they done
+to her? Worn her out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd
+crawled off somewhere and were crying too."</p>
+<p>"Anna-F.&mdash;doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and
+she&mdash;doesn't cry but&mdash;I wish you'd find&mdash;her."</p>
+<p>"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he
+said, looking at her from the door uncertainly.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375"></a>And she seemed so extra
+small over there in the enormous chair, and somehow so extra
+motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a promise not to
+move, that he found himself unable to resist going back to her for
+a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr. Twist,
+very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
+yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse;
+and also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.</p>
+<p>"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he
+knew what he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than
+ever,&mdash;grew, indeed, almost into small howls, so long was it
+since anybody had said things like that to her. It was her mother
+who used to say things like that; things almost exactly like
+that.</p>
+<p>"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious
+eye on the half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to
+outdo the noise of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush,
+hush&mdash;here's a clean handkerchief&mdash;you just wipe up your
+eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll worry, you know, if she sees you
+like this,&mdash;hush now, hush&mdash;there, there&mdash;and I
+expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in some
+corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would
+you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and
+feeling much flurried went away to search for the other one who was
+somewhere, he was sure, in a state of equal distress.</p>
+<p>He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he
+came out of the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her
+come into the tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed
+across it towards the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist.
+<a name="Page_376" id="Page_376"></a>He hurried to intercept her.
+Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over having done
+it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would seem, in
+any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
+particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,&mdash;why
+smug? wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete
+satisfaction on her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she
+passed between the tables, of the guests who tried in vain to
+attract her attention and detain her with orders. She wasn't at all
+hot, as Anna-Rose had been, nor rattled, nor in any way
+discomposed; she was just smug. And also she was unusually,
+extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at her like
+that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to her.
+And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand&mdash;no, his paw; in his
+annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of
+Mr. Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw&mdash;on her wrist to
+get her to listen to some confounded order or other. She took no
+notice of that either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly.
+Steadily. Obvious. Smug.</p>
+<p>"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached
+her.</p>
+<p>She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes.
+Then she appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said
+amiably.</p>
+<p>"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the
+office."</p>
+<p>"I can't. I'm busy."</p>
+<p>"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the
+pantry since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way,
+"that's trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw
+you come in. <a name="Page_377" id="Page_377"></a>Perhaps you'll
+tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged in."</p>
+<p>"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.</p>
+<p>"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's
+nobody to wait on?"</p>
+<p>They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to
+Li Koo through the serving window before answering; the order was
+tea and hot cinnamon toast for one.</p>
+<p>"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the
+most delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready,
+and carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all
+there. There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't
+come in."</p>
+<p>"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Because he doesn't like Germans."</p>
+<p>"And who pray is he?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+<p>"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course.
+His name is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now
+listen: I won't have&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared
+into two funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers.
+That one in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with
+what she would no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction
+became suddenly final that the office was the place for both the
+Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton would do the waiting.</p>
+<p>"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of <a name=
+"Page_378" id="Page_378"></a>cakes. "I'll send Mrs. Bilton for the
+tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister is there and
+wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed the
+tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
+laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
+something."</p>
+<p>"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with
+gentle firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it
+on the tray. "I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man
+out there is Mr. Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps
+of people he isn't, and one of the principal ones is Mr.
+Ridding."</p>
+<p>"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.</p>
+<p>"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it
+too.</p>
+<p>"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.</p>
+<p>"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas
+mildly; and her eyes began to screw up again.</p>
+<p>"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having
+got the tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs.
+Bilton and me will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."</p>
+<p>He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His
+appearance in this new r&ocirc;le was greeted by the Germans with
+subdued applause&mdash;subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't
+quite as cordial to them as they had supposed he would be, and they
+were accordingly being a little more cautious in their methods with
+him than they had been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took
+no notice of them, except that his ears turned red when he knocked
+against a chair and the tray nearly fell out of his hands and they
+all cried <a name="Page_379" id="Page_379"></a>out <i>Houp
+l&agrave;</i>. Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. <i>Houp l&agrave;</i>
+indeed.</p>
+<p>In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly
+verandah, sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He
+was a young man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin
+brown face and very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the
+window behind him shone on him as he turned his head when he heard
+the swing doors open, and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and
+at once. He also saw how the young man's face fell on his, Mr.
+Twist's, appearance with the tray, and he also saw with some
+surprise how before he had reached him it suddenly cleared again.
+And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist arrived at the
+table&mdash;got up with some little difficulty, for he had to lean
+hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with
+<i>empressement.</i></p>
+<p>"You've forgotten the sugar," said Anna-Felicitas's gentle voice
+behind Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she
+was, sure enough, looking smugger than ever.</p>
+<p>"This is Mr. Twist," said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable
+gesture. "That I was telling you about," she explained to the young
+man.</p>
+<p>"When?" asked Mr. Twist, surprised.</p>
+<p>"Before," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were talking for some time
+before I went in to order the tea, weren't we?" she said to the
+young man, angelically smiling at him.</p>
+<p>"Rather," he said; and since he didn't on this introduction
+remark to Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain
+he couldn't be an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless,
+suddenly suspected Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves
+that day and was ready to suspect anything, he was <a name=
+"Page_380" id="Page_380"></a>German cleverly got up for evil
+purposes to appear English. But the young man dispersed these
+suspicions by saying that he was over from England on six months'
+leave, and that his name was Elliott.</p>
+<p>"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater
+interest than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it
+wasn't.</p>
+<p>"What, are you an Elliott too?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas shook her head. "On the contrary," she said, "I'm
+a Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you're like us
+about coming from England. We've done that. Only our leave is for
+ever and ever. Or the duration of the war."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist waved her aside. "Anna-Felicitas," he said, "your
+sister is waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I'll
+see to Mr. Elliott."</p>
+<p>"Why not bring your sister here?" said the young man, who, being
+in the navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at
+Anna-Felicitas, who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile
+at each other.</p>
+<p>"I think that's a brilliant idea," she said; and turned to Mr.
+Twist. "You go," she said gently, thereby proving herself, the
+young man considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. "It's
+much more likely," she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without
+moving, "that she'll come for you than for me. My sister," she
+explained to the young man, "is older than I am."</p>
+<p>"Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more
+likely&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But only about twenty minutes older."</p>
+<p>"What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Anna-Felicitas," interrupted Mr. Twist, "you will <a name=
+"Page_381" id="Page_381"></a>go to your sister immediately. She
+needs you. She's upset. I don't wish to draw Mr. Elliott behind the
+scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get you into the
+office you force me to tell you that she is very, much upset
+indeed, and is crying."</p>
+<p>"Crying?" echoed Anna-Felicitas. "Christopher?" And she turned
+and departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was
+alert as well as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and
+grab at a chair in her way and pull it aside, and so avert a
+deplorable catastrophe.</p>
+<p>"I hope it's nothing serious?" he inquired of Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Oh no. Children will cry."</p>
+<p>"Children?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. "Tell me
+about England," he said. "You've been wounded, I see."</p>
+<p>"Leg," said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick
+and looking after Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"But that didn't get you six months' leave."</p>
+<p>"Lungs," said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr.
+Twist.</p>
+<p>Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out
+his tea.</p>
+<p>He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after
+hours in the water. For months he was struggling to recover, but
+finally tuberculosis had developed and he was sent to California,
+to his sister who had married an American and lived in the
+neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr. Twist extracted out of him by
+diligent questioning. He had to question very diligently. What the
+young man wanted to talk about was Anna-Felicitas; but every time
+he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382"></a>And she didn't come back.
+He waited and waited, and drank and drank. When the teapot was
+empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all the cakes, more
+and more deliberately, eking them out at last with slowly smoked
+cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist's activities
+there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the ambulance
+from start to finish; and still she didn't come back. In vain he
+tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer
+home&mdash;to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr.
+Twist wouldn't budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained
+shut. And the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at
+last but to go.</p>
+<p>So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get
+up, still spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing
+doors. It was both late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li
+Koo had lit the usual evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It
+blazed most beautifully, and the young man looked at it through the
+window and hesitated.</p>
+<p>"How jolly," he said.</p>
+<p>"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up
+too.</p>
+<p>"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man
+with a little shiver.</p>
+<p>"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before
+leaving."</p>
+<p>"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your
+sister and have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot
+coffee first."</p>
+<p>"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, <a name=
+"Page_383" id="Page_383"></a>looking at his watch. "We close at
+half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."</p>
+<p>"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go,"
+said the young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what
+couldn't be helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."</p>
+<p>"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr.
+Twist, "for surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick
+leg. You can pay me right here."</p>
+<p>And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as
+far as the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting
+car, seeing his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after
+all, humane, but the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just
+watched from the gate till the car had actually started, and then
+went back to the house.</p>
+<p>He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the
+ground. This second day had been worse than the first. And besides
+the continued and remarkable absence of Americans and the continued
+and remarkable presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness
+suddenly developed in the Annas. He felt insecure; as though he
+didn't understand, and hadn't got hold. They seemed to him very
+like eels. And this Elliott&mdash;what did he think <i>he</i> was
+after, anyway?</p>
+<p>For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He
+defied Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing
+successful, this Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And
+he stuck out his jaw&mdash;or would have stuck it out if he hadn't
+been prevented by the amiable weakness of that feature. But
+spiritually and morally, when he got back into the house he was all
+jaw.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a><a name=
+"Page_384" id="Page_384"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+<p>That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning
+and drop in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and
+see if he could pick up anything that would explain why Americans
+wouldn't come and have tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he
+might look up old Ridding. He didn't sleep. He lay all night
+thinking.</p>
+<p>The evening had been spent <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>
+with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose was in bed, sleeping off her tears;
+Mrs. Bilton had another headache, and disappeared early; so he was
+left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched about abstractedly eating up
+the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk, except once to remark a
+little pensively that her inside was dreadfully full of cold stuff,
+and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a mausoleum;
+but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist could
+see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had
+nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a
+useful purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any
+counter-observations she might make. Watchfulness was what was
+required. Silent watchfulness. And wariness. And firmness. In fact
+all the things that were most foreign to his nature, thought Mr.
+Twist, resentful and fatigued.</p>
+<p>Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li
+Koo, and then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without
+seeing the others. It was an<a name="Page_385" id=
+"Page_385"></a>other of the perfect days which he was now beginning
+to take as a matter of course, so many had there been since his
+arrival. People talked of the wet days and of their desolate
+abundance once they started, but there had been as yet no sign of
+them. The mornings succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November
+was merging into December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr.
+Twist to himself sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked
+lane in the gracious light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm
+scents drifted across his face, and the flowers in the grass,
+standing so bright and unruffled that they seemed almost as
+profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded at him, and everything
+was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh yes&mdash;I
+daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked
+round him,&mdash;he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful.
+These things hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be
+calm and bright. So could he, if&mdash;</p>
+<p>He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two
+figures, a man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside.
+Lovers, of course. "Oh yes&mdash;I daresay," said Mr. Twist again,
+grimly. They hadn't to deal with Twinklers either. No wonder they
+could sit happily in the grass. So could he, if&mdash;</p>
+<p>At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last
+thing they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned
+their heads, and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard
+that the Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.</p>
+<p>"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_386" id="Page_386"></a>Hello," said
+Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach with
+complacent interest.</p>
+<p>She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton
+just as she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr.
+Twist felt; sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect
+of natural and comfortable arrival at the place where she was.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her
+when the car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had
+torrents of things he wanted to say, and this was all that came
+out.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to
+the conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.</p>
+<p>"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I'll give you a lift."</p>
+<p>"No thanks. I've just come from there."</p>
+<p>"I see. Then <i>you'd</i> better come with me," said Mr. Twist
+to Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."</p>
+<p>"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm.
+But it had no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to
+contemplate him with perfect goodwill.</p>
+<p>He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could
+see, before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him
+ridiculous. He felt a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up.
+He ought to have just waved to them and gone on his way, and
+afterwards in the seclusion of his office issued very plain
+directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her future conduct. Sitting by
+the roadside like that! Openly; before everybody; with a young man
+she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.</p>
+<p>He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with <a name=
+"Page_387" id="Page_387"></a>such a jerk that the car leaped
+forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded by the
+briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of
+sight.</p>
+<p>"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.</p>
+<p>"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+"One has to sit somewhere."</p>
+<p>And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with
+delight at everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth
+time that she was the most wonderful person he had ever met, and
+she settled down to listen again, after the interruption caused by
+Mr. Twist, with a ready ear and the utmost complacency to these
+agreeable statements, and began to wonder whether perhaps after all
+she mightn't at last be about to fall in love.</p>
+<p>In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to
+look at him, and he told her tumultuously&mdash;for being a
+sailor-man he went straight ahead on great waves when it came to
+love-making&mdash;that her eyes were as if pansies had married
+stars.</p>
+<p>She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded
+lovely it made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer;
+and then he said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most
+perfect thing ever stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind
+turning her face to him so that he might see if she had another
+just like it on the other side.</p>
+<p>She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she
+had washed it lately or not&mdash;one so easily forgot one's ears;
+there were so many different things to wash&mdash;and he told her
+that when she blushed it was like the first wild rose of the first
+summer morning of the world.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388"></a>At this Anna-Felicitas was
+quite overcome, and subsided into a condition of blissful,
+quiescent waiting for whatever might come next. Fancy her face
+reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it every day
+for years and years in the looking-glass, and not noticed anything
+particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face. Something
+you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else you
+didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and
+couldn't be hidden,&mdash;an object remote indeed from pansies, and
+stars, and beautiful things like that.</p>
+<p>She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point
+out that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that
+perhaps when his leg was well again he would see things more as
+they were, but to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him
+this she found she was obliged to look away at once again. She
+couldn't look at him. Fancy that now, thought Anna-Felicitas,
+attentively gazing at her toes. And he had such dear eyes; and such
+a dear, eager sort of face. All the more, then, she reasoned,
+should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him. But they
+couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as carefully
+as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.</p>
+<p>"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery
+stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had
+ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's
+all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,&mdash;sends
+one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why,
+I'd talk to you about God now without turning a hair. Nothing would
+have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even heard
+of him three <a name="Page_389" id="Page_389"></a>years ago. Why, I
+write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now
+being seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and
+my mother came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle
+of the street. Do you realize what a tremendous change that means,
+you little girl who's never had brothers? You extraordinary
+adorable little lovely thing?"</p>
+<p>And off he was again.</p>
+<p>"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still
+watching her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider,
+before I said anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would
+like to say in the hearing of my parents. Would you like to say
+what you're saying to me in the hearing of your parents?"</p>
+<p>"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.</p>
+<p>"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She
+rather wished now she hadn't mentioned it.</p>
+<p>"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.</p>
+<p>She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps
+be regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give
+herself up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might
+have to say.</p>
+<p>And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the
+most highly gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all
+round and taking one thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the
+conclusion that this was the most agreeable and profitable morning
+she had ever spent. She sat there for hours, and they all flew.
+People passed in cars and saw her, and it didn't disturb her in the
+least. She perfectly remembered she ought to be helping Anna-Rose
+pick and arrange the flowers for the tea-tables, and she didn't
+mind. She knew <a name="Page_390" id="Page_390"></a>Anna-Rose would
+be astonished and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By
+midday she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for
+the people who had motored through the lane told the people who
+hadn't what they had seen. Once a great car passed with a small
+widow in it, who looked astonished when she saw the pair but had
+gone almost before Elliott could call out and wave to her.</p>
+<p>"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each
+other."</p>
+<p>"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion
+of continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as
+if she hadn't got a husband.</p>
+<p>"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate
+people to die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when
+they're not in the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor
+old Dellogg was such a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet,
+or I'd bring her up to tea this afternoon. But it doesn't matter.
+I'll take you to her."</p>
+<p>"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg.
+The name swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy
+enjoying herself to remark it and its coincidences now.</p>
+<p>"Of course. It's the first thing one does."</p>
+<p>"What first thing?"</p>
+<p>"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has
+found her. Once one has had"&mdash;his voice fell to a
+whisper&mdash;"the God-given luck to find her." And he laid his
+hand very gently on hers, which were clasped together in her
+lap.</p>
+<p>This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed,
+and she didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand
+lying on hers, and considered <a name="Page_391" id=
+"Page_391"></a>it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now, and
+she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
+Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly
+judicious went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so
+pleasant. Still, it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt
+Alice do in a similar situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure.
+Yet what was lunch when one was rapidly arriving, as she was sure
+now that she was, at the condition of being in love? She must be,
+or she wouldn't like his hand on hers. And she did like it.</p>
+<p>She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it.
+But would Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly
+clear about that. Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it
+up, and shake it, and say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like
+a lady. Well, perhaps she ought to do that. Christopher would
+probably think so too. But what a pity.... Still, behaviour was
+behaviour; ladies were ladies.</p>
+<p>She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
+instead&mdash;Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened&mdash;she
+did nothing of the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly
+on the top of his.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a><a name="Page_392"
+id="Page_392"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of
+painful indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he
+knew of a couple of miles farther that led up an unused and
+practically undrivable track back by the west side to The Open
+Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to proceed at once down the lane and
+salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or shouldn't he? For the first
+mile he decided he would; then, as his anger cooled, he began to
+think that after all he needn't worry much. The Annas were lucidly
+too young for serious philandering, and even if that Elliott didn't
+realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he couldn't
+do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
+this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
+served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had
+made up his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.</p>
+<p>There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.</p>
+<p>At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used,
+since his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth
+when he went into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were
+cold; and when after difficulty&mdash;actual difficulty&mdash;he
+succeeded in seeing the manager, he couldn't but perceive his
+unusual reserve. He then remembered what he had put down to mere
+accident at the time, that as he drove up Main <a name="Page_393"
+id="Page_393"></a>Street half an hour before, all the people he
+knew had been looking the other way.</p>
+<p>From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of
+explanation of the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager
+going dumb at its mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had
+arranged the sale of the inn, and again in the street people he
+knew looked the other way. The solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be
+back till the afternoon, and the clerk, an elderly person hitherto
+subservient, was curiously short about it.</p>
+<p>By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined
+to ask the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he
+couldn't find anybody. Every one, his architect, his various
+experts&mdash;those genial and frolicsome young men&mdash;were
+either engaged or away on business somewhere else. He set his
+teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
+Ridding&mdash;it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his
+recent undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the
+bottom of this thing&mdash;and walking into the parlour was
+instantly aware of a hush falling upon it, a holding of the
+breath.</p>
+<p>In the distance he saw old Ridding,&mdash;distinctly; and
+distinctly he saw that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the
+far end of the great parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of
+something vast and black heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had
+the look on his pink and naturally pleasant face of one who has
+abandoned hope. On seeing Mr. Twist a ray of interest lit him up,
+and he half rose. The formless mass in the next chair which Mr.
+Twist had taken for inanimate matter, probably cushions and wraps,
+and now perceived was one of the higher mammals, put out a hand
+<a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></a>and said something,&mdash;at
+least, it opened that part of its face which is called a mouth but
+which to Mr. Twist in the heated and abnormal condition of his
+brain seemed like the snap-to of some great bag,&mdash;and at that
+moment a group of people crossed the hall in front of old Ridding,
+and when the path was again clear the chair that had contained him
+was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only the higher mammal
+was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two smouldering
+coals.</p>
+<p>He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while
+he tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the
+right, and went out quickly by the side door.</p>
+<p>There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him
+up as to the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone
+to about the guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the
+time, but that was chiefly because he had been angry with himself.
+At bottom he had carried away an impression of friendliness. To
+this man he would now go as a last resource before turning back
+home, and once more he raced up Main Street in his Ford, producing
+by these repeated appearances an effect of agitation and
+restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.</p>
+<p>The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his
+morning's experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much
+relieved by being admitted at once. He was received neither coldly
+nor warmly, but with unmistakable interest.</p>
+<p>"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult
+him, but he was used to patience <a name="Page_395" id=
+"Page_395"></a>with clients, and he well knew their preference in
+conversation for the self-evident.</p>
+<p>"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr.
+Twist, his great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who
+again nodded.</p>
+<p>"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.</p>
+<p>"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the
+hell&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said.
+"Sorry to interrupt&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition
+between his office and his clerks' room.</p>
+<p>"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.</p>
+<p>He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were
+inquiring what the hell&mdash;?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but
+you're so calm&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."</p>
+<p>"I don't see what that's got to do with it."</p>
+<p>"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one.
+Yours is another."</p>
+<p>"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I
+want to know is why&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you.
+It's because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of
+the German Government."</p>
+<p>A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist
+with a detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared
+at the lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left
+him. This blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank
+astonishment.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_396" id="Page_396"></a>You know about my teapot?"
+he said at last.</p>
+<p>"Try me again, Mr. Twist."</p>
+<p>"It's on every American breakfast table."</p>
+<p>"Including my own."</p>
+<p>"They wouldn't use it if they thought&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
+proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general
+sentiment to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on
+an unofficial black list. It is to be banished from the
+hotels."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The
+teapot his mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended
+on, and all his happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging
+over America in great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist
+Non-Trickler were used for Germany. He saw&mdash;but what didn't he
+see in that moment of submerged horror? Then he seemed to come to
+the surface again and resume reason with a gasp. "Why?" he
+asked.</p>
+<p>"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"</p>
+<p>"No. Why do they think the inn&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The Miss Twinklers are German."</p>
+<p>"Half."</p>
+<p>"The half that matters&mdash;begging my absent wife's pardon. I
+know all about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over
+by that ward notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty
+transparent. So transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of
+my fellow-townsfolk has considerably lowered. But we live in
+unbalanced times. I guess it's women at the bottom of this. Women
+got on to it first, and the others caught the idea as they'd catch
+scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet fever, this spy scare that's
+about. Mind you, I admit the germs are certainly present among us."
+<a name="Page_397" id="Page_397"></a>And the lawyer smiled. He
+thought he saw he had made a little joke in that last remark.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't
+smile. "Do you mean to say those children&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."</p>
+<p>"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by
+the wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I
+guess I'd best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would
+you if you'd seen them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their
+age too high on that boat."</p>
+<p>"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured
+pretty considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you
+what is being believed?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. It's what I've come for."</p>
+<p>"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."</p>
+<p>"Go ahead."</p>
+<p>"What Acapulco says&mdash;and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and
+probably by this time the whole coast&mdash;is that you threw over
+your widowed mother, of whom you're the only son, and came off here
+with two German girls who got hold of you on the boat&mdash;now,
+Mr. Twist, don't interrupt&mdash;on the boat crossing from England,
+that England had turned them out as undesirable aliens&mdash;quite
+so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish&mdash;that they're in the pay of
+the German Government&mdash;no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist&mdash;and
+that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each
+afternoon has been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already
+suspected, I can't say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and
+that these people are so familiar with <a name="Page_398" id=
+"Page_398"></a>the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
+complete secret understanding."</p>
+<p>For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare.
+Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The
+lawyer was startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew
+with that sort of lips. "You're not&mdash;" he began.</p>
+<p>Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.</p>
+<p>"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but
+surprised.</p>
+<p>"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose
+his features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned
+funny. Cat's-paw. Yes&mdash;rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw.
+That does seem a bit of a bull's eye&mdash;" And for a second or
+two his features flatly refused to compose.</p>
+<p>The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of
+these beliefs may be awkward."</p>
+<p>"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.</p>
+<p>And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what
+it would mean,&mdash;the sheer disaster of it, the horrible
+situation those helpless Annas would be in. What a limitless fool
+he must have been in his conduct of the whole thing. His absorption
+in the material side of it had done the trick. He hadn't been
+clever enough, not imaginative enough, nor, failing that, worldly
+enough to work the other side properly. When he found there was no
+Dellogg he ought to have insisted on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion
+or no intrusion, and handing over the twins; and then gone away and
+left them. A woman was what was wanted. Fool that he was to suppose
+that he, a man, an unmarried man, <a name="Page_399" id=
+"Page_399"></a>could get them into anything but a scrape. But he
+was so fond of them. He just couldn't leave them. And now here they
+all were, in this ridiculous and terrible situation.</p>
+<p>"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For
+the life of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in
+slander actions&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are
+two courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but
+simultaneous. You shut down the inn&mdash;at once,
+to-morrow&mdash;that's Saturday. Close on Saturday, and give notice
+you don't re-open&mdash;now pray let me finish&mdash;close the inn
+as an inn, and use it simply as a private residence. Then, as quick
+as may be, marry those girls."</p>
+<p>"Marry what girls?"</p>
+<p>"The Miss von Twinklers."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly.
+"Marry them who to?"</p>
+<p>"You for one."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said
+that to me before."</p>
+<p>"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've
+done it."</p>
+<p>"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a
+way out&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered
+by events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.</p>
+<p>"You've&mdash;got
+to&mdash;marry&mdash;one&mdash;of&mdash;those&mdash;girls," said
+the lawyer, at each word smiting the table with his open palm.
+"Turn her into an American. Get her out of this being a German
+business. And be able at <a name="Page_400" id="Page_400"></a>the
+same time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why,
+even if you didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course
+any man would want to&mdash;I know what I'm talking about because
+I've seen them&mdash;it's your plain duty, having got them into
+this mess."</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased
+helplessness and yet a manifest profound anxiety for further
+advice.</p>
+<p>For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh&mdash;either
+or both," he said. "For God's sake don't be such a&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He pulled up short.</p>
+<p>"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of
+that sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and
+will substitute something milder. Have you any objection to
+ninny?"</p>
+<p>No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer
+might choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about.
+He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his
+forehead and round his mouth.</p>
+<p>"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.</p>
+<p>Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't
+heard them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist
+proposed to them&mdash;to one, he meant of course, but both would
+comment, the one he proposed to and the one he didn't&mdash;caused
+his imagination to reel. He hadn't much imagination; he knew that
+now, after his conduct of this whole affair, but all there was of
+it reeled.</p>
+<p>"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this
+by a movement of his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_401" id="Page_401"></a>Pooh," said the lawyer
+again, again indicating negligibleness. "My wife was&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all <i>that</i>"
+said Mr. Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell
+you they're <i>children</i>&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
+negligibleness.</p>
+<p>Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he
+said. "You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one
+thing more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll
+have the sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except
+one, and that's the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why,
+sweetest and prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most
+delectable, the most&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the
+table crooked. His ears flamed.</p>
+<p>"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly
+like that about my wife."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a><a name=
+"Page_402" id="Page_402"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+<p>Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him
+all up. His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the
+way home matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross
+streets before he got out of the town and for an entire mile
+afterwards he was on the wrong side of the road. During this
+period, deep as he was in confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely
+notice the anger on the faces of the other drivers and the variety
+and fury of their gesticulations, and it roused a dim wonder in
+him.</p>
+<p>Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard
+to the affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received
+in Clark. They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always
+disapproving. Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough,
+or was suspected of not going to do or be enough.</p>
+<p>His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss
+somebody,&mdash;somebody kind and soft, who would let herself be
+adored. She needn't even love him,&mdash;he knew he wasn't the sort
+of man to set passion alight; she need only be kind, and a little
+fond of him, and let him love her, and be his very own.</p>
+<p>His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes.
+But the Annas....</p>
+<p>When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
+propose&mdash;indeed, everything pointed <a name="Page_403" id=
+"Page_403"></a>to his simply having got to&mdash;but wouldn't they
+very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to think
+all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
+course,&mdash;one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny
+man, thought Mr. Twist; funny man,&mdash;yet otherwise so
+sagacious. It is true he need only propose to one of them, for
+which he thanked God, but he could imagine what that one, and what
+the other one too, who would be sure to be somewhere quite near
+would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred not to imagine.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his
+mud-guard. It was a big car which crackled with language as it
+whizzed on its way, and Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across
+the road, then perceived on which side he had been driving.</p>
+<p>The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and
+somnolence. Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool
+and shaded when he passed before, there was only the pressed-down
+grass and crushed flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long
+ago of course. She said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he
+wished she hadn't gone home, and that little Christopher too might
+for a bit be somewhere else, so that when he arrived he wouldn't
+immediately have to face everybody at once. He wanted to think; he
+wanted to have time to think; time before four o'clock came, and
+with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to any conclusion about
+shutting up the inn&mdash;and how could he if nobody gave him time
+to think?&mdash;those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they who
+had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and
+their blasted war....</p>
+<p>At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite <a name=
+"Page_404" id="Page_404"></a>pale in the green shade of the
+tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the lane
+watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
+very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's
+time given him to think.</p>
+<p>"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had
+waved to him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to
+the stable, "she isn't with you?"</p>
+<p>"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she
+said.</p>
+<p>"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.</p>
+<p>"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken
+eyes; for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of
+her mind, half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any
+moment of panic, an impression that the chief activities and
+recreations of all those Americans who weren't really good were
+two: they lynched, and they kidnapped. They lynched you if they
+didn't like you enough, and if they liked you too much they
+kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and unsuspecting, had been
+kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had alighted on her,
+observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other explanation was
+possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one so
+conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
+that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there
+was any shirking to be done they had always done it together. As
+the hours passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to
+persuade herself that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr.
+<a name="Page_405" id="Page_405"></a>Twist, strange and unnatural
+and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
+been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist
+she was convinced the worst had happened&mdash;her beautiful, her
+precious Columbus had been kidnapped.</p>
+<p>"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was
+announcing the kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think
+of Anna-Felicitas; he had seen her too recently. But that Mrs.
+Bilton should be kidnapped seemed to him to touch the lowest depths
+of American criminal enterprise and depravity. At the same time
+though he recoiled before this fresh blow a thought did fan through
+his mind with a wonderful effect of coolness and
+silence,&mdash;"Then they'll gag her," he said.</p>
+<p>"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag
+her?" And pulling open the gate and running out to him as one
+possessed she cried again, "Gag Columbus?"</p>
+<p>"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
+disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of
+the lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as
+leisurely as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a
+distracted household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a
+complete, an extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining
+quality. Still smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one
+could imagine a lily turned into a god, or a young god turned into
+a lily and walking down <a name="Page_406" id="Page_406"></a>the
+middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
+thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god
+would be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be
+worrying much about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd
+just be coming along like that with the corners of his mouth a
+little turned up, and his fair hair a little ruffled, and his
+charming young face full of a sober and abstracted radiance.</p>
+<p>"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk
+of his thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly,
+leaning over towards her, determined to get off to the garage
+before he found himself faced by both twins together, "that when
+next your imagination gets the jumps the best thing you can do is
+to hold on to it hard till it settles down again, instead of
+wasting your time and ruining your constitution going pale."</p>
+<p>And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the
+corner into the yard.</p>
+<p>Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only
+living thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the
+services of one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a
+really homey home. The first thing this cat had done had been to
+eat the canary, which gave the twins much unacknowledged relief. It
+was, they thought secretly, quite a good plan to have one's pets
+inside each other,&mdash;it kept them so quiet. She now sat unmoved
+in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning her whiskers while
+Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order to get into the
+stable without inconveniencing her.</p>
+<p>Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of
+envy.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407"></a>He might have got out and
+picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre about, reversing and
+making intricate figures in the dust, because it kept him longer
+away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of him, but
+continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel was
+within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
+The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that
+he wouldn't hurt a fly.</p>
+<p>Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the
+stable, all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and
+having got it in he still lingered fiddling about with it,
+examining its engine and wiping its bonnet; and then when he
+couldn't do that any longer he went out and lingered in the yard,
+looking down at the cat with his hands in his pockets. "I must
+think," he kept on saying to himself.</p>
+<p>"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen
+window.</p>
+<p>"All right," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who
+didn't like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got
+out of it by lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful
+white stomach. She was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful
+white stomach, and she had discovered that nobody could see it
+without wanting to stroke it. Whenever she found herself in a
+situation that threatened to become disagreeable she just lay down
+and showed her stomach. Human beings in similar predicaments can
+only show their tact.</p>
+<p>"Nice pussy&mdash;nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud,
+stroking this irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as
+she had intended he should.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_408" id="Page_408"></a>Lunchee get cold," said Li
+Koo, again putting his head out of the kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton
+say, Come in."</p>
+<p>"All right," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that
+should have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other
+gardening tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up
+and stood it up carefully again.</p>
+<p>Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.</p>
+<p>"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard
+door.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right
+away and have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I
+guess you'll be sorry."</p>
+<p>"All right&mdash;coming," he called back very loud and
+cheerfully, striding towards her as one strides who knows there is
+nothing for it now but courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton&mdash;sorry
+if I've kept you waiting. You shouldn't have bothered about
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself
+being loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house,
+through the house, and out on to the verandah.</p>
+<p>They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning
+was down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it
+blazed the garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as
+usual ready for four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding
+the Annas at the table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her
+back to the garden, her little fair head outlined against the
+glowing light as he had seen it every day since they had lived in
+the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably volubly and passionately
+addressing her.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409"></a>And there was no one.</p>
+<p>"Why&mdash;" he said, stopping short.</p>
+<p>"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before
+everything is spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed
+behind to give an order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the
+verandah and shaded her eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you
+can do all that talking better after lunch."</p>
+<p>He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most
+private place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some
+arum lilies that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood
+the twins facing each other.</p>
+<p>"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when
+they're ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's
+talking right away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more
+quickly for she plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to
+sally out into the sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often
+get a chance of a quiet chat together&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her
+chair ready for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning
+again.</p>
+<p>She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite
+that tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the
+eager gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.</p>
+<p>She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
+immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,&mdash;while
+Mrs. Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if
+one wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he
+gave himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once
+started flowing over him, on this occasion <a name="Page_410" id=
+"Page_410"></a>with something of the comfort of warm water, and he
+was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't gagged.</p>
+<p>While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at
+the two figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs.
+Bilton remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at
+the different stages, of the meal,&mdash;at the salad, at the
+pudding&mdash;he stopped her. She became more and more pleased by
+his evident determination to lunch alone with her, for after all
+one remains female to the end, and her conversation took on a
+gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second marriages. They
+had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had had no
+post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
+whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.</p>
+<p>The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs.
+Bilton talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she
+being the eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and,
+if she refused, proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But
+before proceeding to Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with
+peculiar misgiving, he would very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose
+the seriousness of the situation and the necessity, the urgency,
+the sanity of her marrying him. These proposals would be kept on
+the cool level of strict business. Every trace of the affection
+with which he was so overflowing would be sternly excluded. For
+instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel of
+Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
+comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth
+into his remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation <a name=
+"Page_411" id="Page_411"></a>demanded the most scrupulous fairness
+and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful avoidance of taking
+any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr. Twist, his hand
+shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water, how
+difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more
+female than ever.</p>
+<p>Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the
+war. Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
+steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated
+Mr. Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of
+it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.</p>
+<p>Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it.
+He saw that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he
+would explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which
+after the war they&mdash;he meant, of course, she&mdash;could
+easily in that land of facile and honourable divorce get rid of.
+Meanwhile, he would point out, they&mdash;she, of course; bother
+these twins&mdash;would be safely American, and he would undertake
+never to intrude love on them&mdash;her&mdash;unless by some
+wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr.
+Twist's spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more
+water.</p>
+<p>Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of
+self-mortification for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his
+wife&mdash;again at the dear word he had to gulp down
+water&mdash;and one his sister-in-law. They would just have to
+agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
+shilly-shallying. Yes. That was <a name="Page_412" id=
+"Page_412"></a>the line to take; and by the time he had got to the
+coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.</p>
+<p>But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for
+anything that would support him....</p>
+<p>"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the
+web of Mrs. Bilton's words.</p>
+<p>"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether
+female, for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,&mdash;"You're
+not sick?"</p>
+<p>"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his
+head drooping. "It's nice...."</p>
+<p>"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and
+going away rattling a bunch of keys.</p>
+<p>At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act
+of putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
+passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He
+knew there would be.</p>
+<p>He gulped down more water.</p>
+<p>Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole
+morning and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about
+it. Besides, the expression on her face wanted explaining,&mdash;a
+lot of explaining. Mr. Twist didn't like to think so, but
+Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct seemed to him almost artful. It
+seemed to him older than her years. It seemed to justify the
+lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to him as children.
+That young man Elliott&mdash;</p>
+<p>But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for
+looking once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was
+coming towards the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had
+vanished. Why had he bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go?
+He had counted, somehow, on beginning with Anna-Rose....</p>
+<p><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413"></a>He seized a cigarette and
+lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand steady. Before the
+cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas, walking in
+beneath the awning.</p>
+<p>"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to
+you."</p>
+<p>And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a><a name=
+"Page_414" id="Page_414"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+<p>"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew
+from the look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very
+remarkable look. It was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect
+bliss, had unaccountably got its feet wet. Not more troubled than
+that; a little troubled, but not more than that.</p>
+<p>"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished
+yours, do you mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs.
+Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this
+moment interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because
+otherwise Mrs. Bilton&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding
+towards it without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would
+certainly get her there.</p>
+<p>He could only follow.</p>
+<p>In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"</p>
+<p>"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had
+come, and he wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose.
+He wanted to get things clear with her first before dealing with
+this one. There was less of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head
+yesterday when he patted it.... <a name="Page_415" id=
+"Page_415"></a>And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and
+let herself be comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to
+comfort....</p>
+<p>"Christopher&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut
+the door.</p>
+<p>"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
+interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a
+bookcase. Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean
+against.</p>
+<p>"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her
+voice softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.</p>
+<p>Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the
+look of one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before
+diving in&mdash;with, that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to
+proceed.</p>
+<p>"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big
+chair. "It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't
+think being in love would make one want to sit down."</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him
+with a kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your&mdash;what did you say?" he
+asked.</p>
+<p>She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive
+radiance, of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very
+beautiful to her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I
+can't tell you how pleased I am because I've always been afraid I
+was going to find it a difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite
+the contrary."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416"></a>Then, as he only staged at
+her, she said, "He's coming round this afternoon on the new
+footing, and I wanted to prepare your and Christopher's minds in
+good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."</p>
+<p>And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently,
+judging from her expression, a silent contemplation of her
+bliss.</p>
+<p>"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her
+contemplation for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think
+so."</p>
+<p>Well. This beat everything.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.</p>
+<p>Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment
+what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared
+Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that
+time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before.
+And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself
+been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed
+of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't
+as if he hadn't wanted to hug them often and often, but he had
+restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives
+of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides
+a great doubt as to whether they wouldn't very energetically mind.
+And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away
+tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within
+twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in
+love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old footing yet. And
+who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to
+find out if he were <a name="Page_417" id="Page_417"></a>a proper
+person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a
+Twinkler twin?</p>
+<p>Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and
+mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr.
+Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at
+Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into
+space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety,
+and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought
+was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out
+to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld
+his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.</p>
+<p>He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next
+to her and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to
+speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had
+so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins.</p>
+<p>"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at
+last."</p>
+<p>"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna
+II., that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was,
+it's Elliott."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I
+believe," she added, "I now have to allude to him as John."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he
+said, "think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be
+calling a man John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."</p>
+<p>"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.</p>
+<p>"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty.
+It doesn't strike you as foolish."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_418" id="Page_418"></a>On the contrary," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've been very clever. I
+shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm not
+<i>naturally</i> quick." And she beamed with what she evidently
+regarded as a pardonable pride.</p>
+<p>"It doesn't strike you as even a little&mdash;well, a little
+improper."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that
+the one man one could never be improper about, even if one tried,
+was one's husband."</p>
+<p>"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word
+wife, but then that was different.</p>
+<p>"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a
+flaming unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he
+who had been toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the
+Twinkler sun had had a most unfair march stolen on him by this
+eleventh-hour stranger.</p>
+<p>He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the
+solution of half his problem,&mdash;and of much the worst half, for
+it was after all Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable
+feeling of slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good,
+sitting in a chair crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But
+now that the solution was presented to him he was full of fears.
+For on what now could he base his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott
+would be the legitimate protector of both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist,
+who had been so much perturbed by the idea of having to propose to
+one or other twin, was miserably upset by the realization that now
+he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut the ground from under
+his feet. He had indeed&mdash;what was the expression he used the
+evening before?&mdash;yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
+for <a name="Page_419" id="Page_419"></a>Anna-Rose to marry him,
+and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn feeling that on no other basis
+except necessity would she. He was thirty-five. It was all very
+well for Elliott to get proposing to people of seventeen; he
+couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only age. Mr.
+Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he was
+very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.</p>
+<p>"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
+jealously said.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only
+time but war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be
+quick and sudden about all sorts of things."</p>
+<p>"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."</p>
+<p>"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many
+things&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist
+as he gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating,
+reminiscent smugness.</p>
+<p>"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to
+wait while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular
+crisis fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as
+much time as you seem to think."</p>
+<p>"No&mdash;and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving
+herself a shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into
+her face again as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory,
+somehow got her feet wet.</p>
+<p>"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the
+room. "There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be
+pretty well heart-broken over this."</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_420" id="Page_420"></a>But that's so
+unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle deprecation.</p>
+<p>"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the
+impression&mdash;the remarkably vivid impression&mdash;that she's
+losing you."</p>
+<p>"But <i>that's</i> so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's
+sheer gain. Without the least effort or bother on her part she's
+acquiring a brother-in-law."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up
+and down the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it
+all myself."</p>
+<p>"But <i>that's</i> so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly. "Why should two of you be feeling things that
+aren't?"</p>
+<p>"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I
+shouldn't be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your
+conduct."</p>
+<p>"But there has to <i>be</i> conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still
+very gentle, but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I
+don't see how anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been
+some conduct first."</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't argue&mdash;don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose
+not to mind your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she
+hasn't even seen."</p>
+<p>"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
+somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't <i>argue</i>!" exclaimed Mr.
+Twist. "And as for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to
+this twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be
+terribly upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh
+worried crazy."</p>
+<p>"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with
+love?"</p>
+<p><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421"></a>Then she said very
+earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes troubled,
+"Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more, down
+in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
+saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I
+found she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't
+be comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell
+you what I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring
+at the carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I
+don't suppose anything I would say&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas
+gently.</p>
+<p>"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling
+his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.</p>
+<p>"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles.
+"You dear children," he said, "you dear, dear children&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I don't know about children&mdash;" began Anna-Felicitas; but
+was interrupted by a knock at the door.</p>
+<p>"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume
+the expression he had learned to associate with the approach of
+Mrs. Bilton. "Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out,
+"and put it on the&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the
+door an inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr.
+Twist," she said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says
+he just must. I found him on the verandah when I took your <a name=
+"Page_422" id="Page_422"></a>brandy out, and as I'm not the woman
+to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in with
+me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."</p>
+<p>"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."</p>
+<p>"I say&mdash;" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.</p>
+<p>"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair.
+"That's John."</p>
+<p>"I say&mdash;may I come in? I've got something
+important&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you
+rather&mdash;?" he began.</p>
+<p>"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a
+most beautiful light.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said.
+"Mrs. Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you&mdash;Commander
+Elliott of the British Navy."</p>
+<p>"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr.
+Twist, your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in
+here?"</p>
+<p>"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps
+you wouldn't mind waiting for me there&mdash;I don't suppose Mr.
+Elliott will want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."</p>
+<p>And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly
+willing and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the
+office.</p>
+<p>There stood Anna-Felicitas.</p>
+<p>Elliott stopped dead.</p>
+<p>"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.</p>
+<p>"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at
+him.</p>
+<p>"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look <a name=
+"Page_423" id="Page_423"></a>here, sir," he said, turning to Mr.
+Twist, "could <i>you</i> talk business with her there?"</p>
+<p>"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there.
+I've got to talk business," he said, turning to
+Anna-Felicitas,&mdash;"business about marrying you. And how can I
+with you standing there looking like&mdash;well, like that?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.</p>
+<p>"But you'll interrupt&mdash;just your being there will
+interrupt. I shall see you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll
+be impossible not to&mdash;I mean I know I'll want to&mdash;I mean,
+Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've got to explain all
+sorts of things to your guardian&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas
+gently. "He only very nearly once was."</p>
+<p>"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take
+some time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade&mdash;for I
+expect," he said, turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit
+sudden, sir?"</p>
+<p>"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but
+finding it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and
+so disarmingly in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might
+have been almost a reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never
+seen two people look so happy. He had never, of course, before been
+present at the first wonderful dawning of love. The whole room
+seemed to glow with the surprise of it.</p>
+<p>"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to
+Anna-Felicitas, who stood smiling beatifically at <a name=
+"Page_424" id="Page_424"></a>him without moving. "I've got to
+explain that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a
+fearfully decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've
+got a jolly little sister here who's respectable and well-known
+besides, and I'm going to produce references to back up these
+assertions, and proofs that I'm perfectly sound in health except
+for my silly foot, which isn't health but just foot and which you
+don't seem to mind anyhow, and how&mdash;I ask you <i>how</i>,
+Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you standing
+there looking like&mdash;well, like that?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"</p>
+<p>"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.</p>
+<p>His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step
+towards her, then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at
+Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"<i>Somebody's</i> got to go," he said.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a><a name=
+"Page_425" id="Page_425"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+<p>He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't
+bear the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers,
+both going out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear,
+after what he had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being
+left outside love.</p>
+<p>All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door
+of love. He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so
+much about it and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and
+its inhibitions got so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He
+had never tried to marry,&mdash;again because of his home and his
+mother and the whole only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try
+now. He would risk it. It was awful to risk it, but it was more
+awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How nearly the afternoon before,
+when she sat crying in his chair, had he taken her in his arms!
+Why, he would have taken her into them then and there, while she
+was in that state, while she was in the need of comfort, and never
+let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that he had got the
+idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child. Fool that he
+was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't children
+who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
+Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that
+was because she was little and easily cried. He loved <a name=
+"Page_426" id="Page_426"></a>her for being little. He loved her
+because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to comfort, to
+pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
+mother.</p>
+<p>Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
+recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
+answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped
+in. Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because
+Li Koo, who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li
+Koo did. He jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist
+hurried to it and looked out. There in the middle of the yard was
+the cat, exactly where he had left her an hour before, and kneeling
+beside her stroking her stomach was Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun
+streamed down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair
+that frisked round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close
+to her, so much absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when
+she did she didn't look up, but bent her head lower than before and
+stroked more assiduously.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Come and talk to me."</p>
+<p>"I'm thinking."</p>
+<p>"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little&mdash;little dear
+one."</p>
+<p>She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said
+again.</p>
+<p>"Come and tell me what you're thinking."</p>
+<p>"I'm thinking about cats."</p>
+<p>"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_427" id="Page_427"></a>Yes," said Anna-Rose,
+stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully keeping her face
+hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they are."</p>
+<p>"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and
+come and talk to me now."</p>
+<p>"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably
+twins, and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes
+sixes, but still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and
+don't mind a bit what their&mdash;what their twins do&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."</p>
+<p>"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their
+whiskers and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them.
+Perhaps if I&mdash;if I had whiskers and a&mdash;and a
+purr&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
+Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a
+laugh as she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a
+sound so wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him,
+that Mr. Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said,
+catching at the cat and hugging her tight, "I can't let <i>you</i>
+go&mdash;" And she buried her face in her fur, so that Mr. Twist
+still couldn't see it.</p>
+<p>"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very
+firmly. "You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up,
+cat and all, and set her on her feet.</p>
+<p>Then he saw her face.</p>
+<p>"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking
+shelter behind her pride and looking at him as <a name="Page_428"
+id="Page_428"></a>defiantly as she could out of eyes almost closed
+up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen to&mdash;to seem
+as if I'd been crying that I&mdash;that I'm minding anything."</p>
+<p>"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had
+straightway forgotten about himself and his longings and his
+proposals, and only knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no,"
+he said, looking at her aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding
+anything, either of us."</p>
+<p>He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had
+got to do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of
+agony&mdash;yes, it was downright agony&mdash;on her face.</p>
+<p>He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he
+thought&mdash;he was pretty sure&mdash;she was thinking and feeling
+that her beloved Columbus had gone from her, and gone to a
+stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to a stranger she had never
+even seen, never even heard of; that her Columbus had had secrets
+from her, had been doing things behind her back; that she had had
+perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was tasting the
+dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that she must
+be sick with fears,&mdash;for he knew how responsible she felt, how
+seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin&mdash;sick with
+fear about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness,
+of looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for
+all any one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.</p>
+<p>Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt.
+Certainly he could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one
+with confidence, who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting
+mate for Anna-Felicitas. <a name="Page_429" id="Page_429"></a>But
+he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
+thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to
+suffer so violently on account of what was, after all, a natural
+happening. But however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.</p>
+<p>He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said;
+and led her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen
+window, towards the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come
+right along with me," he repeated, holding her firmly for she was
+very wobbly on her feet, "and we'll tell each other all about the
+things we're not minding. Do you remember when the <i>St. Luke</i>
+left Liverpool? You thought I thought you were minding things then,
+and were very angry with me. We've made friends since, haven't we,
+and we aren't going to mind anything ever again except each
+other."</p>
+<p>But he hardly knew what he was saying, so great was his concern
+and distress.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose went blindly. She stumbled along, helped by him,
+clutching the cat. She couldn't see out of her swollen eyes. Her
+foot caught in a root, and the cat, who had for some minutes past
+been thoroughly uneasy, became panic-stricken and struggled out of
+her arms, and fled into the wood. She tried to stop it, but it
+would go. For some reason this broke down her self-control. The
+warm cat clutched to her breast had at least been something living
+to hold on to. Now the very cat had gone. Her pride collapsed, and
+she tumbled against Mr. Twist's arm and just sobbed.</p>
+<p>If ever a man felt like a mother it was Mr. Twist at that
+moment. He promptly sat her down on the grass. "There
+now&mdash;there, there now," he said, whipping out his handkerchief
+and anxiously mopping up <a name="Page_430" id="Page_430"></a>her
+face. "This is what I did on the <i>St. Luke</i>&mdash;do you
+remember?&mdash;there now&mdash;that time you told me about your
+mother&mdash;it looks like being my permanent job&mdash;there,
+there now&mdash;don't now&mdash;you'll have no little eyes left
+soon if you go on like this&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;Co-Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes I know all about Columbus. Don't you worry about her.
+She's all right. She's all right in the office at this moment, and
+we're all right out here if only you knew it, if only you wouldn't
+cry such quantities. It beats me where it all comes from, and you
+so little&mdash;there, there now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know&mdash;you're worrying yourself sick because
+you think you're responsible for her to your aunt and uncle, but
+you won't be, you know, once she's married&mdash;there, there
+now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Now don't&mdash;now please&mdash;yes, yes, I know&mdash;he's a
+stranger, and you haven't seen him yet, but everybody was a
+stranger once," said Mr. Twist, quoting Anna-Felicitas's own
+argument, the one that had especially irritated him half-an-hour
+before, "and he's real good&mdash;I'm sure of it. And you'll be
+sure too the minute you see him. That's to say, if you're able to
+see anything or anybody for the next week out of your unfortunate
+stuck-together little eyes."</p>
+<p>"Oh but&mdash;oh but&mdash;you don't&mdash;you
+haven't&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I have. Now turn your face so that I can wipe the
+other side properly. There now, I caught an enormous tear. I got
+him just in time before he trickled into your ear. Lord, how sore
+your poor little eyes are. Don't it even cheer you to think you're
+going to be a sister-in-law, Anna-Rose?"</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_431" id="Page_431"></a>Oh but you don't&mdash;you
+haven't&mdash;" she sobbed, her face not a whit less agonized for
+all his reassurances.</p>
+<p>"Well, I know I wish I were going to be a brother-in-law," said
+Mr. Twist, worried by his inability to reassure, as he tenderly and
+carefully dabbed about the corners of her eyes and her soaked
+eyelashes. "My, shouldn't I think well of myself."</p>
+<p>Then his hand shook.</p>
+<p>"I wish I were going to be Anna-Felicitas's brother-in-law," he
+said, suddenly impelled, perhaps by this failure to get rid of the
+misery in her face, to hurl himself on his fate. "Not
+<i>yours</i>&mdash;get your mind quite clear about that,&mdash;but
+Anna-Felicitas's." And his hand shook so much that he had to leave
+off drying. For this was a proposal. If only Anna-Rose would see
+it, this was a proposal.</p>
+<p>Anna-Rose, however, saw nothing. Even in normal times she wasn't
+good at relationships, and had never yet understood the
+that-man's-father-was-my-father's-son one; now she simply didn't
+hear. She was sitting with her hands limply in her lap, and sobbing
+in a curious sort of anguish.</p>
+<p>He couldn't help being struck by it. There was more in this than
+he had grasped. Again he forgot himself and his proposal. Again he
+was overwhelmed by the sole desire to help and comfort.</p>
+<p>He put his hand on the two hands lying with such an air of being
+forgotten on her lap. "What is it?" he asked gently. "Little dear
+one, tell me. It's clear I'm not dead on to it yet."</p>
+<p>"Oh&mdash;Columbus&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She seemed to writhe in her misery.</p>
+<p>"Well yes, yes Columbus. We know all about that."</p>
+<p><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432"></a>Anna-Rose turned her
+quivering face to him. "Oh, you haven't seen&mdash;you don't
+see&mdash;it's only me that's seen&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Seen what? What haven't I seen? Ah, don't cry&mdash;don't cry
+like that&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I've lost her&mdash;lost her&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Lost her? Because she's marrying?"</p>
+<p>"Lost her&mdash;lost her&mdash;" sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Come now," remonstrated Mr. Twist. "Come now. That's just flat
+contrary to the facts. You've lost nothing, and you've gained a
+brother."</p>
+<p>"Oh,&mdash;lost her&mdash;lost her," sobbed Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Come, come now," said Mr. Twist helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Oh," she sobbed, looking at him out of her piteous eyes, "has
+nobody thought of it but me? Columbus hasn't. I&mdash;I know she
+hasn't from what&mdash;from what&mdash;she said. She's
+too&mdash;too happy to think. But&mdash;haven't you
+thought&mdash;haven't you seen&mdash;that she'll be English
+now&mdash;really English&mdash;and go away from me to England with
+him&mdash;and I&mdash;I can't go to England&mdash;because I'm
+still&mdash;I'm still&mdash;an alien enemy&mdash;and so I've lost
+her&mdash;lost her&mdash;lost my own twin&mdash;"</p>
+<p>And Anna-Rose dropped her head on to her knees and sobbed in an
+abandonment of agony.</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist sat without saying or doing anything at all. He hadn't
+thought of this; nor, he was sure, had Anna-Felicitas. And it was
+true. Now he understood Anna-Rose's face and the despair of it. He
+sat looking at her, overwhelmed by the realization of her
+misfortune. For a moment he was blinded by it, and didn't see what
+it would mean for him. Then he did see. He almost leaped, so sudden
+was the vision, and so luminous.</p>
+<p>"Anna-Rose," he said, his voice trembling, "I <a name="Page_433"
+id="Page_433"></a>want to put my arm round you. That's because I
+love you. And if you'll let me do that I could tell you of a way
+there is out of this for you. But I can't tell you so well
+unless&mdash;unless you let me put my arm round you first...."</p>
+<p>He waited trembling. She only sobbed. He couldn't even be sure
+she was listening. So he put his arm round her to try. At least she
+didn't resist. So he drew her closer. She didn't resist that
+either. He couldn't even be sure she knew about it. So he put his
+other arm round her too, and though he couldn't be sure, he
+thought&mdash;he hardly dared think, but it did seem as
+if&mdash;she nestled.</p>
+<p>Happiness, such as in his lonely, loveless life he had never
+imagined, flooded Mr. Twist. He looked down at her face, which was
+now so close to his, and saw that her eyes were shut. Great sobs
+went on shaking her little body, and her tears, now that he wasn't
+wiping them, were rolling down her cheeks unchecked.</p>
+<p>He held her closer to him, close to his heart where she
+belonged, and again he had that sensation, that wonderful
+sensation, of nestling.</p>
+<p>"Little Blessed, the way out is so simple," he whispered.
+"Little Blessed, don't you see?"</p>
+<p>But whether Anna-Rose saw seemed very doubtful. There was only
+that feeling, as to which he was no doubt mistaken, of nestling to
+go on. Her eyes, anyhow, remained shut, and her body continued to
+heave with sobs.</p>
+<p>He bent his head lower. His voice shook. "It's so, so simple,"
+he whispered. "All you've got to do is to marry me."</p>
+<p>And as she made an odd little movement in his arms he held her
+tighter and began to talk very fast.</p>
+<p>"No, no," he said, "don't answer anything yet. <a name=
+"Page_434" id="Page_434"></a>Just listen. Just let me tell you
+first. I want to tell you to start with how terribly I love you.
+But that doesn't mean you've got to love me&mdash;you needn't if
+you don't want to&mdash;if you can't&mdash;if you'd rather not I'm
+eighteen years older than you, and I know what I'm like to look
+at&mdash;no, don't say anything yet&mdash;just listen quiet
+first&mdash;but if you married me you'd be an American right away,
+don't you see? Just as Anna-Felicitas is going to be English. And I
+always intended going back to England as soon as may be, and if you
+married me what is to prevent your coming too? Coming to England?
+With Anna-Felicitas and her husband. Anna-Rose&mdash;little
+Blessed&mdash;think of it&mdash;all of us together. There won't be
+any aliens in that quartette, I guess, and the day you marry me
+you'll be done with being German for good and all. And don't you
+get supposing it matters about your not loving me, because, you
+see, I love you so much, I adore you so terribly, that anyhow
+there'll be more than enough love to go round, and you needn't ever
+worry about contributing any if you don't feel like it&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Mr. Twist broke off abruptly. "What say?" he said, for Anna-Rose
+was making definite efforts to speak. She was also making definite
+and unmistakable movements, and this time there could be no doubt
+about it; she was coming closer.</p>
+<p>"What say?" said Mr. Twist breathlessly, bending his head.</p>
+<p>"But I do," whispered Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"Do what?" said Mr. Twist, again breathlessly.</p>
+<p>She turned her face up to his. On it was the same look he had
+lately seen on Anna-Felicitas's, shining through in spite of the
+disfiguration of her tears.</p>
+<p>"<a name="Page_435" id="Page_435"></a>But&mdash;<i>of course</i>
+I do," whispered Anna-Rose, an extraordinary smile, an awe-struck
+sort of smile, coming into her face at the greatness of her
+happiness, at the wonder of it.</p>
+<p>"What? Do what?" said Mr. Twist, still more breathlessly.</p>
+<p>"I&mdash;always did," whispered Anna-Rose.</p>
+<p>"<i>What</i> did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able
+to believe it, and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;there on her little
+face, on her little transfigured face, shone the same look.</p>
+<p>"Oh&mdash;<i>love</i> you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close
+as she could get.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes
+past four that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper
+obliquely across the sign of The Open Arms with the word.</p>
+<h3>SHUT</h3>
+<p>on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr.
+Twist had only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the
+German inrush a few minutes before the hour, because of his being
+so happy; and when he did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the
+strip on only just in time. A car drove up as he came down the
+ladder.</p>
+<p>"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car,
+pointing, thwarted and astonished, to the sign.</p>
+<p>"Shut," said Mr. Twist.</p>
+<p>"Shut?"</p>
+<p>"Shut."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher and Columbus, by Countess
+Elizabeth Von Arnim, Illustrated by Arthur Litle
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Christopher and Columbus
+
+Author: Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
+
+Release Date: January 10, 2005  [eBook #14646]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS
+
+By the Author of _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_
+
+Frontispiece by Arthur Litle
+
+Garden City New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist,
+pulling his mouth into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you." said Anna-Felicitas simply.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they decided,
+as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class deck of the
+American liner _St. Luke_, and watched the dirty water of the Mersey
+slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist,
+and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a
+father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized
+that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet
+sea, endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of
+it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they
+could, and knew that they hadn't the remotest idea, not the very
+remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to the
+other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways, derelicts, two
+wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor really
+English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were both,--they
+decided, looking very calm and determined and sitting very close
+together beneath the rug their English aunt had given them to put round
+their miserable alien legs, that what they really were, were Christopher
+and Columbus, because they were setting out to discover a New World.
+
+"It's very pleasant," said Anna-Rose. "It's very pleasant to go and
+discover America. All for ourselves."
+
+It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and Columbus. She
+was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their seventeenth
+birthday--and what a birthday: no cake, no candles, no kisses and
+wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to
+comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it hard, you can't get blood out of an
+aunt--only a month before. Both were very German outside and very
+English inside. Both had fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have,
+and eyes the colour of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic.
+Their noses were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if
+you are a Junker's daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose.
+Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round.
+Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the most
+of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was tall and
+thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker made her eyes
+more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both held their heads up
+with a great air of calm whenever anybody on the ship looked at them, as
+who should say serenely, "We're _thoroughly_ happy, and having the time
+of our lives."
+
+For worlds they wouldn't have admitted to each other that they were even
+aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry. Like other
+persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful nor pretended to
+be so much amused as when they were right down on the very bottom of
+their luck. Like other persons of German blood, they had the squashiest
+corners deep in their hearts, where they secretly clung to cakes and
+Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible
+anniversary, both dead and alive.
+
+The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the rubbish that
+floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty
+boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay
+about on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their
+mother's country, the country of their dreams ever since they could
+remember--and the _St. Luke_ with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.
+
+Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting an inch
+closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn't a submarine already?
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, changing as it
+were the unspoken conversation.
+
+As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward her
+twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and encourage
+her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them, and hadn't
+seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that happened to
+her,--such as, for instance, when the war began and they three, their
+father having died some years before, left their home up by the Baltic,
+just as there was the most heavenly weather going on, and the garden was
+a dream, and the blue Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens
+that very day,--all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose
+thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the
+tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery,--and came by slow
+and difficult stages to England; or such as when their mother began
+catching cold and didn't seem at last ever able to leave off catching
+cold, and though she tried to pretend she didn't mind colds and that
+they didn't matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter
+very much, for between them they killed her.
+
+Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that she was
+dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose's duty, as the next eldest in the family,
+to carry on the tradition and discountenance too much drooping in
+Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much too thoughtfully at the
+deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky and the rubbish brooding on
+the face of the waters, and she had jumped rather excessively when the
+_St. Luke_ stopped so suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake
+hard, and emitted that agonized whistle.
+
+"We're Christopher and Columbus," said Anna-Rose quickly, "and we're
+going to discover America."
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'll be Christopher."
+
+"No. I'll be Christopher," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Very well," said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable, acquiescent
+person in the world. "Then I suppose I'll have to be Columbus. But I
+think Christopher sounds prettier."
+
+Both rolled their r's incurably. It was evidently in their blood, for
+nothing, no amount of teaching and admonishment, could get them out of
+it. Before they were able to talk at all, in those happy days when
+parents make astounding assertions to other parents about the
+intelligence and certain future brilliancy of their offspring, and the
+other parents, however much they may pity such self-deception, can't
+contradict, because after all it just possibly may be so, the most
+foolish people occasionally producing geniuses,--in those happy days of
+undisturbed bright castle-building, the mother, who was English, of the
+two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the _St. Luke_, said to
+the father, who was German, "At any rate these two blessed little
+bundles of deliciousness"--she had one on each arm and was tickling
+their noses alternately with her eyelashes, and they were screaming for
+joy--"won't have to learn either German or English. They'll just _know_
+them."
+
+"Perhaps," said the father, who was a cautious man.
+
+"They're born bi-lingual," said the mother; and the twins wheezed and
+choked with laughter, for she was tickling them beneath their chins,
+softly fluttering her eyelashes along the creases of fat she thought so
+adorable.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+"It gives them a tremendous start," said the mother; and the twins
+squirmed in a dreadful ecstasy, for she had now got to their ears.
+
+"Perhaps," said the father.
+
+But what happened was that they didn't speak either language. Not, that
+is, as a native should. Their German bristled with mistakes. They spoke
+it with a foreign accent. It was copious, but incorrect. Almost the last
+thing their father, an accurate man, said to them as he lay dying, had
+to do with a misplaced dative. And when they talked English it rolled
+about uncontrollably on its r's, and had a great many long words in it
+got from Milton, and Dr. Johnson, and people like that, whom their
+mother had particularly loved, but as they talked far more to their
+mother than to their father, who was a man of much briefness in words
+though not in temper, they were better on the whole at English than
+German.
+
+Their mother, who loved England more the longer she lived away from
+it,--"As one does; and the same principle," Anna-Rose explained to
+Anna-Felicitas when they had lived some time with their aunt and uncle,
+"applies to relations, aunts' husbands, and the clergy,"--never tired of
+telling her children about it, and its poetry, and its spirit, and the
+greatness and glory of its points of view. They drank it all in and
+believed every word of it, for so did their mother; and as they grew up
+they flung themselves on all the English books they could lay hands
+upon, and they read with their mother and learned by heart most of the
+obviously beautiful things; and because she glowed with enthusiasm they
+glowed too--Anna-Rose in a flare and a flash, Anna-Felicitas slow and
+steadily. They adored their mother. Whatever she loved they loved
+blindly. It was a pity she died. She died soon after the war began. They
+had been so happy, so _dreadfully_ happy....
+
+"You can't be Christopher," said Anna-Rose, giving herself a shake, for
+here she was thinking of her mother, and it didn't do to think of one's
+mother, she found; at least, not when one is off to a new life and
+everything is all promise because it isn't anything else, and not if
+one's mother happened to have been so--well, so fearfully sweet. "You
+can't be Christopher, because, you see, I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas didn't see what being the eldest had to do with it, but
+she only said, "Very well," in her soft voice, and expressed a hope that
+Anna-Rose would see her way not to call her Col for short. "I'm afraid
+you will, though," she added, "and then I shall feel so like Onkel
+Nicolas."
+
+This was their German uncle, known during his life-time, which had
+abruptly left off when the twins were ten, as Onkel Col; a very ancient
+person, older by far even than their father, who had seemed so very old.
+But Onkel Col had been older than anybody at all, except the pictures of
+the _liebe Gott_ in Blake's illustrations to the Book of Job. He came to
+a bad end. Neither their father nor their mother told them anything
+except that Onkel Col was dead; and their father put a black band round
+the left sleeve of his tweed country suit and was more good-tempered
+than ever, and their mother, when they questioned her, just said that
+poor Onkel Col had gone to heaven, and that in future they would speak
+of him as Onkel Nicolas, because it was more respectful.
+
+"But why does mummy call him poor, when he's gone to heaven?"
+Anna-Felicitas asked Anna-Rose privately, in the recesses of the garden.
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose, who, being the eldest, as she so often
+explained to her sister, naturally knew more about everything, "because
+the angels won't like him. Nobody _could_ like Onkel Col. Even if
+they're angels. And though they're obliged to have him there because he
+was such a very good man, they won't talk to him much or notice him much
+when God isn't looking. And second of all, because you _are_ poor when
+you get to heaven. Everybody is poor in heaven. Nobody takes their
+things with them, and all Onkel Col's money is still on earth. He
+couldn't even take his clothes with him."
+
+"Then is he quite--did Onkel Col go there quite--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection with
+Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at them from the
+folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever they were led in,
+trembling, to see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it
+seemed particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
+which was surely of all places the most _endimanche_.
+
+"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a little.
+She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her mouth close to
+Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."
+
+They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in their
+eyes.
+
+"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away from the
+awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven because they
+don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you can't have
+the moth without having anything for it to go into."
+
+"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn when they take their
+furs out."
+
+"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven," continued
+Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there _isn't_ anything to steal."
+
+"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for she didn't
+like to think there was nothing really valuable in heaven.
+
+"Oh, nobody ever steals _them_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new uncomfortable
+view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right, and she always was
+right for she said so herself, that heaven couldn't be such a safe place
+after all, nor such a kind place. Thieves could break in and steal if
+they wanted to. She had a proper horror of thieves. She was sure the
+night would certainly come when they would break into her father's
+_Schloss_, or, as her English nurse called it, her dear Papa's slosh;
+and she was worried that poor Onkel Col should be being snubbed up
+there, and without anything to put on, which would make being snubbed so
+much worse, for clothes did somehow comfort one.
+
+She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment when she
+knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour for
+inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the orchard, an
+exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because she had learned
+through affliction that her inside, fond and proud of it as she was, was
+yet not of that superior and blessed kind that suffers green apples
+gladly--she sought out the nursemaid, whose name, too, confusingly, was
+Anna, and led the conversation up to heaven and the possible conditions
+prevailing in it by asking her to tell her, in strict confidence and as
+woman to woman, what she thought Onkel Col exactly looked like at that
+moment.
+
+"Unrecognizable," said the nursemaid promptly.
+
+"Unrecognizable?" echoed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+And the nursemaid, after glancing over her shoulder to see if the
+governess were nowhere in sight, told Anna-Felicitas the true story of
+Onkel Col's end: which is so bad that it isn't fit to be put in any book
+except one with an appendix.
+
+A stewardess passed just as Anna-Felicitas was asking Anna-Rose not to
+remind her of these grim portions of the past by calling her Col, a
+stewardess in such a very clean white cap that she looked both reliable
+and benevolent, while secretly she was neither.
+
+"Can you please tell us why we're stopping?" Anna-Rose inquired of her
+politely, leaning forward to catch her attention as she hurried by.
+
+The stewardess allowed her roving eye to alight for a moment on the two
+objects beneath the rug. Their chairs were close together, and the rug
+covered them both up to their chins. Over the top of it their heads
+appeared, exactly alike as far as she could see in the dusk; round
+heads, each with a blue knitted cap pulled well over its ears, and round
+eyes staring at her with what anybody except the stewardess would have
+recognized as a passionate desire for some sort of reassurance. They
+might have been seven instead of seventeen for all the stewardess could
+tell. They looked younger than anything she had yet seen sitting alone
+on a deck and asking questions. But she was an exasperated widow, who
+had never had children and wasn't to be touched by anything except a
+tip, besides despising, because she was herself a second-class
+stewardess, all second-class passengers,--"As one does," Anna-Rose
+explained later on to Anna-Felicitas, "and the same principle applies to
+Jews." So she said with an acidity completely at variance with the
+promise of her cap, "Ask the Captain," and disappeared.
+
+The twins looked at each other. They knew very well that captains on
+ships were mighty beings who were not asked questions.
+
+"She's trifling with us," murmured Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose was obliged to admit, though the thought was repugnant
+to her that they should look like people a stewardess would dare trifle
+with.
+
+"Perhaps she thinks we're younger than we are," she said after a
+silence.
+
+"Yes. She couldn't see how long our dresses are, because of the rug."
+
+"No. And it's only that end of us that really shows we're grown up."
+
+"Yes. She ought to have seen us six months ago."
+
+Indeed she ought. Even the stewardess would have been surprised at the
+activities and complete appearance of the two pupae now rolled motionless
+in the rug. For, six months ago, they had both been probationers in a
+children's hospital in Worcestershire, arrayed, even as the stewardess,
+in spotless caps, hurrying hither and thither with trays of food,
+sweeping and washing up, learning to make beds in a given time, and be
+deft, and quick, and never tired, and always punctual.
+
+This place had been got them by the efforts and influence of their Aunt
+Alice, that aunt who had given them the rug on their departure and who
+had omitted to celebrate their birthday. She was an amiable aunt, but
+she didn't understand about birthdays. It was the first one they had had
+since they were complete orphans, and so they were rather sensitive
+about it. But they hadn't cried, because since their mother's death they
+had done with crying. What could there ever again be in the world bad
+enough to cry about after that? And besides, just before she dropped
+away from them into the unconsciousness out of which she never came
+back, but instead just dropped a little further into death, she had
+opened her eyes unexpectedly and caught them sitting together in a row
+by her bed, two images of agony, with tears rolling down their swollen
+faces and their noses in a hopeless state, and after looking at them a
+moment as if she had slowly come up from some vast depth and distance
+and were gradually recognizing them, she had whispered with a flicker of
+the old encouraging smile that had comforted every hurt and bruise they
+had ever had, "_Don't cry_ ... little darlings, _don't_ cry...."
+
+But on that first birthday after her death they had got more and more
+solemn as time passed, and breakfast was cleared away, and there were no
+sounds, prick up their ears as they might, of subdued preparations in
+the next room, no stealthy going up and down stairs to fetch the
+presents, and at last no hope at all of the final glorious flinging open
+of the door and the vision inside of two cakes all glittering with
+candles, each on a table covered with flowers and all the things one has
+most wanted.
+
+Their aunt didn't know. How should she? England was a great and beloved
+country, but it didn't have proper birthdays.
+
+"Every country has one drawback," Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas
+when the morning was finally over, in case she should by any chance be
+thinking badly of the dear country that had produced their mother as
+well as Shakespeare, "and not knowing about birthdays is England's."
+
+"There's Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, whose honest mind groped
+continually after accuracy.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Rose admitted after a pause. "Yes. There's Uncle Arthur."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Uncle Arthur was the husband of Aunt Alice. He didn't like foreigners,
+and said so. He never had liked them and had always said so. It wasn't
+the war at all, it was the foreigners. But as the war went on, and these
+German nieces of his wife became more and more, as he told her, a
+blighted nuisance, so did he become more and more pointed, and said he
+didn't mind French foreigners, nor Russian foreigners; and a few weeks
+later, that it wasn't Italian foreigners either that he minded; and
+still later, that nor was it foreigners indigenous to the soil of
+countries called neutral. These things he said aloud at meals in a
+general way. To his wife when alone he said much more.
+
+Anna-Rose, who was nothing if not intrepid, at first tried to soften his
+heart by offering to read aloud to him in the evenings when he came home
+weary from his daily avocations, which were golf. Her own suggestion
+instantly projected a touching picture on her impressionable imagination
+of youth, grateful for a roof over its head, in return alleviating the
+tedium of crabbed age by introducing its uncle, who from his remarks was
+evidently unacquainted with them, to the best productions of the great
+masters of English literature.
+
+But Uncle Arthur merely stared at her with a lacklustre eye when she
+proposed it, from his wide-legged position on the hearthrug, where he
+was moving money about in trouser-pockets of the best material. And
+later on she discovered that he had always supposed the "Faery Queen,"
+and "Adonais," and "In Memoriam," names he had heard at intervals during
+his life, for he was fifty and such things do sometimes get mentioned
+were well-known racehorses.
+
+Uncle Arthur, like Onkel Col, was a very good man, and though he said
+things about foreigners he did stick to these unfortunate alien nieces
+longer than one would have supposed possible if one had overheard what
+he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their bed. His ordered
+existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew, was shaken in its
+innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans.
+Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but
+who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he
+couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures,
+his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but
+he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs
+couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she
+belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when
+she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
+children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that
+he would like to know.
+
+Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was both
+silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said nothing. She
+herself was quietly going through very much on behalf of her nieces.
+Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The tradespeople twitted
+the cook with having to cook for them and were facetious about sausages
+and asked how one made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
+very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was doing
+and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard such strange
+things, one never could possibly tell even with children; and regularly
+the local policeman bicycled over to see if the aliens, who were
+registered at the county-town police-station, were still safe. And then
+they looked so very German, Aunt Alice felt. There was no mistaking
+them. And every time they opened their mouths there were all those r's
+rolling about. She hardly liked callers to find her nieces in her
+drawing-room at tea-time, they were so difficult to explain; yet they
+were too old to shut up in a nursery.
+
+After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them back to
+Germany; but their consternation had been so great and their entreaties
+to be kept where they were so desperate that he said no more about that.
+Besides, they told him that if they went back there they would be sure
+to be shot as spies, for over there nobody would believe they were
+German, just as over here nobody would believe they were English; and
+besides, this was in those days of the war when England was still
+regarding Germany as more mistaken than vicious, and was as full as ever
+of the tradition of great and elaborate indulgence and generosity toward
+a foe, and Uncle Arthur, whatever he might say, was not going to be
+behind his country in generosity.
+
+Yet as time passed, and feeling tightened, and the hideous necklace of
+war grew more and more frightful with each fresh bead of horror strung
+upon it, Uncle Arthur, though still in principle remaining good, in
+practice found himself vindictive. He was saddled; that's what he was.
+Saddled with this monstrous unmerited burden. He, the most patriotic of
+Britons, looked at askance by his best friends, being given notice by
+his old servants, having particular attention paid his house at night by
+the police, getting anonymous letters about lights seen in his upper
+windows the nights; the Zeppelins came, which were the windows of the
+floor those blighted twins slept on, and all because he had married Aunt
+Alice.
+
+At this period Aunt Alice went to bed with reluctance. It was not a
+place she had ever gone to very willingly since she married Uncle
+Arthur, for he was the kind of husband who rebukes in bed; but now she
+was downright reluctant. It was painful to her to be told that she had
+brought this disturbance into Uncle Arthur's life by having let him
+marry her. Inquiring backwards into her recollections it appeared to her
+that she had had no say at all about being married, but that Uncle
+Arthur had told her she was going to be, and then that she had been.
+Which was what had indeed happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little
+woman even in those days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with
+agreeable fat at the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist
+delicacy that comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she
+suggested, just as now, most of the things most men want to come home
+to,--slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and peace within
+one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out privately to
+Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the first time, she
+suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied fashions succulent, she
+was doomed to make some good man happy. But she did find it real hard
+work.
+
+It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that Uncle
+Arthur would not much longer endure his nieces, and that even if he did
+she would not be able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very
+dreadful to her that she was being forced to choose between two duties,
+and that she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she
+must either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
+and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing by, go
+away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or she must
+stand by Arthur.
+
+She chose Arthur.
+
+How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her husband?
+Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole of their
+married life that she was now unalterably attached to him. Sometimes a
+wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing dusk of her mind,
+the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving him for them, and helping
+and protecting the two poor aliens till happier days should return. If
+there were any good stuff in Arthur would he not recognize, however
+angry he might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
+this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
+too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
+lean and dangerous enterprises.
+
+And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
+determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would remove
+them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a children's
+hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed to very
+largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to hospitals. The
+matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron; and from January to
+April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from Germans.
+
+Then they came back again.
+
+It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with them.
+The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was who
+brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
+arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
+nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
+Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
+said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
+poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
+it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as
+though they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")
+
+Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
+r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little
+mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and
+equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a
+week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a
+fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on
+patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron,
+with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the
+biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
+being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably have
+continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses if it
+had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the younger
+Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.
+
+In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's shortcomings
+by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas
+was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only
+never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water
+bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her duty, but
+every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against it and it
+fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with apprehension.
+Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.
+
+"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly
+to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.
+
+"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.
+
+"She reads, you see, a lot--whenever she gets the chance she reads--"
+
+"Reads!" echoed the sister.
+
+"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"
+
+"Thinking! Reading doesn't make _me_ think."
+
+"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
+dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
+nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
+be pleased to keep her on."
+
+"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced
+these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like
+very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to
+look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."
+
+The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many notes--and
+stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to
+her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from
+everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
+ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining
+and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
+kitten.
+
+"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
+always do what one considers one's first duty."
+
+So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly
+relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said
+Damn.
+
+"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.
+
+"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can
+we--"
+
+"Arthur," said his wife.
+
+"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people
+wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any
+better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for when he
+marries!"
+
+"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt Alice,
+tears in her gentle eyes.
+
+There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of Aunt Alice.
+She answered advertisements and offered the twins as nursery
+governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps, even as orphans
+willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim on salaries, she
+offered them for nothing, and at last she offered them accompanied by a
+bonus. "Their mother was English. They are quite English," wrote Aunt
+Alice innumerable times in innumerable letters. "I feel bound, however,
+to tell you that they once had a German father, but of course it was
+through no fault of their own," etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with
+writing letters; and any solution of the problem that might possibly
+have been arrived at came to nothing because Anna-Rose would not be
+separated from Anna-Felicitas, and if it was difficult to find anybody
+who would take on one German nobody at all could be found to take on
+two.
+
+Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt Alice was
+at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The twins racked their
+brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to relieve Uncle Arthur of
+their presence as he was to be relieved. If only they could be
+independent, do something, work, go as housemaids,--anything.
+
+They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it to _The
+Times_, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay for it. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but unimpeachable
+    Sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with respectability.
+    No objection to being demeaned.
+
+Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was Anna-Rose's
+word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding things like
+being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose. "Upper and Under.
+I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the eldest."
+
+Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she regarded
+it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word, liked it, and
+explained that it Put a whole sentence into a nut-shell, and wouldn't
+change it.
+
+No one answered this advertisement except a society in London for
+helping alien enemies in distress.
+
+"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.
+
+"And fancy thinking _us_ enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While
+mummy--" Her eyes filled with tears. She kept them back, however,
+behind convenient long eye-lashes.
+
+Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of _The Times_ that
+they instantly answered without saying a word to Aunt Alice. The
+advertisement was:
+
+    Slightly wounded Officer would be glad to find intelligent and
+    interesting companion who can drive a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments by
+    arrangement.
+
+"We'll _tell_ him we're intelligent and interesting," said Anna-Rose,
+eagerly.
+
+"Yes--who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given a chance?"
+said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.
+
+"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the emoluments
+won't have to be doubled."
+
+"Yes--because he mightn't like paying twice over."
+
+"Yes--and while the preliminaries are being settled we could be learning
+to drive Uncle Arthur's car."
+
+"Yes--except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they different?"
+
+"Yes--but only about the same difference as there is between a man and a
+woman. A man and a woman are both human beings, you know. And Daimlers
+and Humbers are both cars."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.
+
+They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.
+
+The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward the end
+of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and were
+requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to express their
+sympathy with his wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity
+of driving a Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be
+instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell them
+if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so it was very
+unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite the contrary.
+
+They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all hope
+and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have betrayed their
+want of intelligence and interestingness right away, when one day a
+letter came from General Headquarters in France, addressed _To Both the
+Miss Twinklers_, and it was a long letter, pages long, from the slightly
+wounded officer, telling them he had been patched up again and sent back
+to the front, and their answer to his advertisement had been forwarded
+to him there, and that he had had heaps of other answers to it, and that
+the one he had liked best of all was theirs; and that some day he hoped
+when he was back again, and able to drive himself, to show them how
+glorious motoring was, if their mother would bring them,--quick motoring
+in his racing car, sixty miles an hour motoring, flashing through the
+wonders of the New Forest, where he lived. And then there was a long bit
+about what the New Forest must be looking like just then, all quiet in
+the spring sunshine, with lovely dappled bits of shade underneath the
+big beeches, and the heather just coming alive, and all the winding
+solitary roads so full of peace, so empty of noise.
+
+"Write to me, you two children," said the letter at the end. "You've no
+idea what it's like getting letters from home out here. Write and tell
+me what you do and what the garden is like these fine afternoons. The
+lilacs must be nearly done, but I'm sure there's the smell of them
+still about, and I'm sure you have a beautiful green close-cut lawn, and
+tea is brought out on to it, and there's no sound, no sort of sound,
+except birds, and you two laughing, and I daresay a jolly dog barking
+somewhere just for fun and not because he's angry."
+
+The letter was signed (Captain) John Desmond, and there was a scrawl in
+the corner at the end: "It's for jolly little English kids like you that
+we're fighting, God bless you. Write to me again soon."
+
+"English kids like us!"
+
+They looked at each other. They had not mentioned their belligerent
+ancestry in their letter. They felt uncomfortable, and as if Captain
+Desmond were fighting for them, as it were, under false pretences. They
+also wondered why he should conclude they were kids.
+
+They wrote to him again, explaining that they were not exactly what
+could be described as English, but on the other hand neither were they
+exactly what could be described as German. "We would be very glad indeed
+if we were really _something_," they added.
+
+But after their letter had been gone only a few days they saw in the
+list of casualties in _The Times_ that Captain John Desmond had been
+killed.
+
+And then one day the real solution was revealed, and it was revealed to
+Uncle Arthur as he sat in his library on a wet Sunday morning
+considering his troubles in detail.
+
+Like most great ideas it sprang full-fledged into being,--obvious,
+unquestionable, splendidly simple,--out of a trifle. For, chancing to
+raise his heavy and disgusted eyes to the bookshelves in front of him,
+they rested on one particular book, and on the back of this book stood
+out in big gilt letters the word
+
+    AMERICA
+
+There were other words on its back, but this one alone stood out, and it
+had all the effect of a revelation.
+
+There. That was it. Of course. That was the way out. Why the devil
+hadn't Alice thought of _that_? He knew some Americans; he didn't like
+them, but he knew them; and he would write to them, or Alice would write
+to them, and tell them the twins were coming. He would give the twins
+L200,--damn it, nobody could say that wasn't handsome, especially in
+war-time, and for a couple of girls who had no earthly sort of claim on
+him, whatever Alice might choose to think they had on her. Yet it was
+such a confounded mixed-up situation that he wasn't at all sure he
+wouldn't come under the Defence of the Realm Act, by giving them money,
+as aiding the enemy. Well, he would risk that. He would risk anything to
+be rid of them. Ship 'em off, that was the thing to do. They would fall
+on their feet right enough over there. America still swallowed Germans
+without making a face.
+
+Uncle Arthur reflected for a moment with extreme disgust on the
+insensibility of the American palate. "Lost their chance, that's what
+_they've_ done," he said to himself--for this was 1916, and America had
+not yet made her magnificent entry into the war--as he had already said
+to himself a hundred times. "Lost their chance of coming in on the side
+of civilization, and helping sweep the world up tidy of barbarism.
+Shoulder to shoulder with us, that's where _they_ ought to have been.
+English-speaking races--duty to the world--" He then damned the
+Americans; but was suddenly interrupted by perceiving that if they had
+been shoulder to shoulder with him and England he wouldn't have been
+able to send them his wife's German nieces to take care of. There was,
+he conceded, that advantage resulting from their attitude. He could not,
+however, concede any others.
+
+At luncheon he was very nearly gay. It was terrible to see Uncle
+Arthur very nearly gay, and both his wife and the twins were most
+uncomfortable. "I wonder what's the matter now," sighed Aunt Alice
+to herself, as she nervously crumbled her toast.
+
+It could mean nothing good, Arthur in such spirits on a wet Sunday, when
+he hadn't been able to get his golf and the cook had overdone the joint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+And so, on a late September afternoon, the _St. Luke_, sliding away from
+her moorings, relieved Uncle Arthur of his burden.
+
+It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
+not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
+knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
+pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
+moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
+perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
+in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
+case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
+that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
+nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
+_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.
+
+For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
+enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
+And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
+seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
+her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
+them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
+they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
+_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
+afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
+waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.
+
+"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
+handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.
+
+"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
+gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
+eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
+sniffing.
+
+Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out
+her handkerchief and waved it violently.
+
+Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.
+"Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has any one
+come to see us off?"
+
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.
+
+The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had
+faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round
+and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight
+for a minute.
+
+"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But do you
+suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen
+off?"
+
+And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were
+safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, "That
+man--" and then stopped. "What man?"
+
+"Standing just behind us--"
+
+"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than
+she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.
+
+"Yes. Looking as if in another moment he'd be sorry for us," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Sorry for us!" repeated Anna-Felicitas, roused to indignation.
+
+"Yes. Did you ever?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas said, with a great deal of energy while she put her
+handkerchief finally and sternly away, that she didn't ever; and after a
+pause Anna-Rose, remembering one of her many new responsibilities and
+anxieties--she had so many that sometimes for a time she didn't remember
+some of them--turned her head to Anna-Felicitas, and fixing a worried
+eye on her said, "You won't go forgetting your Bible, will you, Anna
+F.?"
+
+"My Bible?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, looking blank.
+
+"Your German Bible. The bit about _wenn die boesen Buben locken, so folge
+sie nicht_."
+
+Anna-Felicitas continued to look blank, but Anna-Rose with a troubled
+brow said again, "You won't go and forget that, will you, Anna F.?"
+
+For Anna-Felicitas was very pretty. In most people's eyes she was very
+pretty, but in Anna-Rose's she was the most exquisite creature God had
+yet succeeded in turning out. Anna-Rose concealed this conviction from
+her. She wouldn't have told her for worlds. She considered it wouldn't
+have been at all good for her; and she had, up to this, and ever since
+they could both remember, jeered in a thoroughly sisterly fashion at her
+defects, concentrating particularly on her nose, on her leanness, and
+on the way, unless constantly reminded not to, she drooped.
+
+But Anna-Rose secretly considered that the same nose that on her own
+face made no sort of a show at all, directly it got on to
+Anna-Felicitas's somehow was the dearest nose; and that her leanness was
+lovely,--the same sort of slender grace her mother had had in the days
+before the heart-breaking emaciation that was its last phase; and that
+her head was set so charmingly on her neck that when she drooped and
+forgot her father's constant injunction to sit up,--"For," had said her
+father at monotonously regular intervals, "a maiden should be as
+straight as a fir-tree,"--she only seemed to fall into even more
+attractive lines than when she didn't. And now that Anna-Rose alone had
+the charge of looking after this abstracted and so charming younger
+sister, she felt it her duty somehow to convey to her while tactfully
+avoiding putting ideas into the poor child's head which might make her
+conceited, that it behoved her to conduct herself with discretion.
+
+But she found tact a ticklish thing, the most difficult thing of all to
+handle successfully; and on this occasion hers was so elaborate, and so
+carefully wrapped up in Scriptural language, and German Scripture at
+that, that Anna-Felicitas's slow mind didn't succeed in disentangling
+her meaning, and after a space of staring at her with a mild inquiry in
+her eyes, she decided that perhaps she hadn't got one. She was much too
+polite though, to say so, and they sat in silence under the rug till the
+_St. Luke_ whistled and stopped, and Anna-Rose began hastily to make
+conversation about Christopher and Columbus.
+
+She was ashamed of having shown so much of her woe at leaving England.
+She hoped Anna-Felicitas hadn't noticed. She certainly wasn't going on
+like that. When the _St. Luke_ whistled, she was ashamed that it wasn't
+only Anna-Felicitas who jumped. And the amount of brightness she put
+into her voice when she told Anna-Felicitas it was pleasant to go and
+discover America was such that that young lady, who if slow was sure,
+said to herself, "Poor little Anna-R., she's really taking it dreadfully
+to heart."
+
+The _St. Luke_ was only dropping anchor for the night in the Mersey, and
+would go on at daybreak. They gathered this from the talk of passengers
+walking up and down the deck in twos and threes and passing and
+repassing the chairs containing the silent figures with the round heads
+that might be either the heads of boys or of girls, and they were
+greatly relieved to think they wouldn't have to begin and be sea-sick
+for some hours yet. "So couldn't we walk about a little?" suggested
+Anna-Felicitas, who was already stiff from sitting on the hard cane
+chair.
+
+But Aunt Alice had told them that the thing to do on board a ship if
+they wished, as she was sure they did, not only to avoid being sick but
+also conspicuous, was to sit down in chairs the moment the ship got
+under way, and not move out of them till it stopped again. "Or, at
+least, as rarely as possible," amended Aunt Alice, who had never herself
+been further on a ship than to Calais, but recognized that it might be
+difficult to avoid moving sooner or later if it was New York you were
+going to. "Two such young girls travelling alone should be seen as
+seldom as ever you can manage. Your Uncle is sending you second-class
+for that very reason, because it is so much less conspicuous."
+
+It was also very much less expensive, and Uncle Arthur's generosities
+were of the kind that suddenly grow impatient and leave off. Just as in
+eating he was as he said, for plain roast and boiled, and messes be
+damned, so in benefactions he was for lump sums and done with it; and
+the extras, the driblets, the here a little and there a little that were
+necessary, or were alleged by Aunt Alice to be necessary, before he
+finally got rid of those blasted twins, annoyed him so profoundly that
+when it came to taking their passage he could hardly be got not to send
+them in the steerage. This was too much, however, for Aunt Alice, whose
+maid was going with them as far as Euston and therefore would know what
+sort of tickets they had, and she insisted with such quiet obstinacy
+that they should be sent first-class that Uncle Arthur at last split the
+difference and consented to make it second. To her maid Aunt Alice also
+explained that second-class was less conspicuous.
+
+Anna-Rose, mindful of Aunt Alice's words, hesitated as to the wisdom of
+walking about and beginning to be conspicuous already, but she too was
+stiff, and anything the matter with one's body has a wonderful effect,
+as she had already in her brief career had numerous occasions to
+observe, in doing away with prudent determinations. So, after cautiously
+looking round the corners to see if the man who was on the verge of
+being sorry for them were nowhere in sight, they walked up and down the
+damp, dark deck; and the motionlessness, and silence, and mist gave them
+a sensation of being hung mid-air in some strange empty Hades between
+two worlds.
+
+Far down below there was a faint splash every now and then against the
+side of the _St. Luke_ when some other steamer, invisible in the mist,
+felt her way slowly by. Out ahead lay the sea, the immense uneasy sea
+that was to last ten days and nights before they got to the other side,
+hour after hour of it, hour after hour of tossing across it further and
+further away; and forlorn and ghostly as the ship felt, it yet, because
+on either side of it were still the shores of England, didn't seem as
+forlorn and ghostly as the unknown land they were bound for. For
+suppose, Anna-Felicitas inquired of Anna-Rose, who had been privately
+asking herself the same thing, America didn't like them? Suppose the
+same sort of difficulties were waiting for them over there that had
+dogged their footsteps in England?
+
+"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself on the
+readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will like us,
+because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to it in exactly
+the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,--and don't you go forgetting it and
+showing your disagreeable side--that the dove was in when it flew across
+the waters to the ark, and with olive branches in our beaks just the
+same as the dove's, only they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's
+friends."
+
+"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends--" began Anna-Felicitas, who
+had great doubts as to everything connected with Uncle Arthur.
+
+"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she wasn't
+going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question liked to give
+all the information in her power, "secondly, America is the greatest of
+the neutrals except the _liebe Gott_, and is bound particularly to
+prize us because we're so unusually and peculiarly neutral. What ever was
+more neutral than you and me? We're neither one thing nor the other, and
+yet at the same time we're both." Anna-Felicitas remarked that it sounded
+rather as if they were the Athanasian Creed.
+
+"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's L200
+waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm thing to think of.
+We never had L200 waiting for us anywhere in our lives before, did
+we,--so you remember that, and don't get grumbling."
+
+Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that she
+couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the goodwill of
+Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt Alice's friends they
+had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's friends were more likely to
+like her.
+
+Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which to start
+on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and that one
+didn't have doubts.
+
+Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she was very
+hungry, not having had anything that could be called a meal since
+breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in "Lycidas," the hungry
+ones who looked up and were not fed, and she quoted the lines in case
+Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew
+the lines by heart, and if there was any quoting to be done liked to do
+it herself), and said she felt just like that,--"Empty," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "and yet swollen. When do you suppose people have food
+on board ships? I don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about--oh well,
+about leaving England, if it was after dinner."
+
+"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At least,
+not more than's just proper."
+
+"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily. "Except
+what's proper."
+
+"And even if we were feeling it _dreadfully_," said Anna-Rose, with a
+little catch in her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't
+make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."
+
+"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got much to
+bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things, Anna-F."
+
+"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.
+
+They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there wouldn't
+soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all disappeared.
+They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there were no lights.
+The row of cabin windows along the wall were closely shuttered, and the
+door they had come through when first they came on deck was shut too,
+and they couldn't find it in the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling
+along a wall for a door they knew was there and not be able to find it,
+that they began to laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up
+more than anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
+Arthur.
+
+"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and vainly
+along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.
+
+"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas,
+following in her tracks.
+
+A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left off
+patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity against the
+wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It was a male
+figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they thought, and it stopped
+in front of them and said in an American voice, "Hello."
+
+Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of reply
+to Hello.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured "Hello"
+back again.
+
+Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to people
+they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think they had
+brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided that perhaps
+"Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said it.
+
+"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of this.
+
+"That's what _we_ think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.
+
+"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose, still
+distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to know.
+
+"But _don't_ tell us to ask the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas, even more
+earnestly.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."
+
+The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding on; and
+they followed him as obediently as though such persons as possible _boese
+Buben_ didn't exist.
+
+"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.
+
+"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs were
+long and they could hardly keep up with him.
+
+"English?" said the man.
+
+"Ye--es," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I said," Anna-Felicitas
+endeavoured to explain, hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep
+within reach of his ear, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the pantings for
+breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"
+
+They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful question to
+have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but, having got to the
+door they had been searching for, opened it and stepped into the bright
+light inside, and putting out his arm behind him pulled them in one
+after the other over the high wooden door-frame.
+
+Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the afternoon,
+engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like grievances to an
+official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She stopped suddenly when
+the man appeared, and the official took his hands out of his pockets and
+became alert and attentive, and the stewardess hastily picked up a tray
+she had set down and began to move away along a passage.
+
+The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and came
+back even more quickly than she had tried to go.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to Anna-Felicitas,
+"it's Hi she answers to."
+
+"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good circumlocutions to
+throw them away on her."
+
+"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.
+
+He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason into a
+laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to follow him, and
+went out again into the night.
+
+"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the stewardess
+down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber and machine-oil
+and cooking all mixed up together.
+
+"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't tell us to
+ask the Captain, because we really do know better than that."
+
+"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.
+
+"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."
+
+The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.
+
+"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of course."
+
+"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess shortly,
+eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.
+
+"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."
+
+"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing to stare
+round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down
+arm-in-arm.
+
+"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do you
+suppose we quarrel?"
+
+"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
+stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."
+
+She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or
+the long girl.
+
+"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas
+gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head. She was
+unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a
+reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
+years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take more than even
+the Captain to obsess _me_."
+
+They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the
+stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly
+leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If you're friends, what
+do you want to know his name for, then?"
+
+"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The Captain's," said the stewardess.
+
+"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
+patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."
+
+"Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself, however, and
+merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman _was_ the Captain," went
+upstairs and left them.
+
+Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your advice," she
+called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for it was evident that
+for some reason her heart was hardened, by flattery. "You _told_ us to
+ask the Captain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it occurred to
+them that perhaps what was the matter with the stewardess was that she
+needed a tip. At first, with their recent experiences fresh in their
+minds, they thought that she was probably passionately pro-Ally, and had
+already detected all those Junkers in their past and accordingly
+couldn't endure them. Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You
+will have to give your stewardess a little something."
+
+This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they had
+been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the tippers, and
+anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses. Neither, it
+appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she said vaguely
+that as it was an American boat they were going on she supposed it would
+have to be American money, which was dollars, and she didn't know much
+about dollars except that you divided them by four and multiplied them
+by five, or else it was the other way about; and when, feeling still
+uninformed, they had begged her to tell them why one did that, she said
+it was the quickest way of finding out what a dollar really was, and
+would they mind not talking any more for a little while because her head
+ached.
+
+The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had all
+been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but Americans,
+Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of their talking
+English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this point
+and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to crane out her
+head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her whether she didn't think
+that might be so, but was afraid of disturbing the people in the
+opposite berths.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin, and
+Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
+Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the opposite
+side were two similar berths, each containing as Anna-Felicitas
+whispered after peeping cautiously through their closed curtains,--for
+at first on coming in after dinner to go to bed the cabin seemed empty,
+except for inanimate things, like clothes hanging up and an immense
+smell,--its human freight. They were awed by this discovery, for the
+human freight was motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the
+noises suggesting sleep.
+
+They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible, but it
+was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for anything, not
+even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced a little uneasily
+at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed cautiously and
+delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly was. It appeared to
+be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum pudding at Christmas, and
+German bedrooms in the morning. It was a smell they didn't like the idea
+of sleeping with, but they saw no way of getting air. They thought of
+ringing for the stewardess and asking her to open a window, though they
+could see no window, but came to the conclusion it was better not to
+stir her up; not yet, at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed
+what was the matter with her. They said nothing out loud, for fear of
+disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains, but they knew what each
+was thinking, for one isn't, as they had long ago found out, a twin for
+nothing.
+
+There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely hoisted up
+into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for some time after the
+rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had already neatly inserted
+herself into her own berth, after watching these legs in silence and
+fighting a desire to give them a tug and see what would happen, had to
+get out at last on hearing Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there
+as though she were choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was
+then on a level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
+Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do anything
+with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the blankets, but
+lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes up very tight and
+stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and evidently struggling
+with what appeared to be an attack of immoderate and ill-timed mirth.
+
+Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was suddenly seized
+herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a hasty glance round
+at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her own berth and pulled the
+sheet over her mouth.
+
+She was sobering herself by going over her different responsibilities,
+checking them off on her fingers,--the two five-pound notes under her
+pillow for extra expenses till they were united in New York to their
+capital, the tickets, the passports, and Anna-Felicitas,--when two thick
+fair pigtails appeared dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by
+Anna-Felicitas's head.
+
+"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered Anna-Felicitas, her
+eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still
+further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood
+rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
+freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of
+its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really
+stowaways.
+
+"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head emphatically,
+which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose, considering that it
+was upside down. "_German_ stowaways," whispered Anna-Felicitas,
+sniffing expressively though cautiously.
+
+Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the bulging
+curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much curved. In spite
+of herself her flesh began to creep a little.
+
+"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously congested.
+"Stowaways are."
+
+There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board and
+took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till they came
+to bed.
+
+"_German_ men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a delicate
+expressive sniff.
+
+"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into ladies'
+cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."
+
+"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies' disguise."
+She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible suggestions.
+
+"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly, for
+Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic fit.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
+inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
+very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet creep
+across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness.
+She sat up to watch, her eyes round with interest.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with several
+pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the berths. Having
+got there she stood still a moment listening, and then putting a careful
+finger between the curtain of the lower berth and its frame, drew it the
+smallest crack aside and peeped in.
+
+Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your pardon,"
+she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I thought--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush down her
+back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any more than
+before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker than she had gone.
+She just stopped on the way to switch off the light, and then felt along
+the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till she got to her head, and pulling
+it near her by its left pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its
+left ear, "Wide awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."
+
+And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady in the
+berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that didn't make them
+less German. Nothing ever makes a German less German, Anna-Rose
+explained to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their blood
+by the right kind of mother."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."
+
+This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the next day,
+by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human freight being
+Germans, for one of their own submarines came after the _St. Luke_ and
+no one was quite so loud in expression of terror and dislike as the two
+Germans.
+
+They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were Germans.
+They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was nothing compared
+to how one had been born. The curtains of their berths, till then so
+carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and the berths gave up their
+contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it
+was the resurrection and the berths were riven sepulchres chucking up
+their dead.
+
+This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the _St. Luke_ was
+pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The twins, waking
+about seven, found with a pained surprise that they were not where they
+had been dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing
+tennis happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
+that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
+groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long
+it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head
+once with the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped
+it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as quiet
+as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even raise her head,
+she felt so very uncomfortable.
+
+At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same stewardess, they
+languidly noted, with whom already they had had two encounters, for it
+happened that this was one of the cabins she attended to--and said that
+if anybody wanted breakfast they had better be quick or it would be
+over.
+
+"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending tone; and
+instantly was sick.
+
+The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the twins,
+in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so as not to
+witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the cabin, feebly
+marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being quick to persons who
+were being constantly stood on their heads. And breakfast,--they
+shuddered and thought of other things; of fresh, sweet air, and of the
+scent of pinks and apricots warm with the sun.
+
+At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in, and
+with determination in every gesture.
+
+"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them talking
+at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side, "you mustn't
+give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed. You must get up
+and go on deck. And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all
+the time?"
+
+Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was more on
+the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could only see the
+stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured that she didn't
+care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat drill at
+mid-day, and you've got to be present."
+
+Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't care.
+
+"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every soul on the
+ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat drill."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that moment
+how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths redoubled
+their groans.
+
+"Come, come--" said the stewardess.
+
+Then the _St. Luke_ whistled five times, and the stewardess turned pale.
+For a brief space, before they understood what had happened, the twins
+supposed she was going to be sick. But it wasn't that that was the
+matter with her, for after a moment's staring at nothing with horror on
+her face she pounced on them and pulled them bodily out of their berths,
+regardless by which end, and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she
+plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the
+passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled
+back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with
+hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and
+all the time she was calling out "Quick--quick--quick--" There was a
+great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.
+
+The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the
+Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled
+vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the
+fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran
+in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps,--a steward so much
+bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the
+German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their
+protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother
+Nature--Mother Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only
+stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and
+seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.
+
+Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt there
+was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing their
+valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward assuring
+them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be taken up and
+somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never dare do anything
+to a ship containing its own flesh and blood--and an American ship,
+too--there must be some awful mistake--but anyhow they must be
+saved--there would be terrible trouble, that they could assure the
+steward and the twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if
+America allowed two Germans to be destroyed--and anyhow they would
+insist on having their passage money refunded....
+
+The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and very
+unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of
+her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly
+wondered, while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at
+the cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
+buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally seemed
+busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag
+of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in
+spite of the steward's assuring her that it would drag her down in the
+water like a stone tied to a kitten.
+
+"You're a _very_ cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said, as he pushed
+them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding up Anna-Felicitas
+on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run alone.
+
+The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at the foot
+of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got her on deck
+propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to the set of cabins
+they were in, and darted away and in a minute was back again with a big
+coat which he wrapped round her.
+
+"May as well be comfortable till you do begin to drown," he said
+briskly, "but mind you don't forget to throw it off, Missie, the minute
+you feel the water."
+
+Anna-Felicitas slid down on to the deck, her head leaning against the
+wall, her eyes shut, a picture of complete indifference to whatever
+might be going to happen next. Her face was now as white as the frill of
+the night-gown that straggled out from beneath her coat, for the journey
+from the cabin to the deck had altogether finished her. Anna-Rose was
+thankful that she felt too ill to be afraid. Her own heart was black
+with despair,--despair that Anna-Felicitas, the dear and beautiful one,
+should presently, at any moment, be thrown into that awful heaving
+water, and certainly be hurt and frightened before she was choked out of
+life.
+
+She sat down beside her, getting as close as possible to keep her warm.
+Her own twin. Her own beloved twin. She took her cold hands and put them
+away beneath the coat the steward had brought. She slid an arm round her
+and laid her cheek against her sleeve, so that she should know somebody
+was there, somebody who loved her. "What's the _good_ of it all--_why_
+were we born--" she wondered, staring at the hideous gray waves as
+they swept up into sight over the side of the ship and away again as the
+ship rose up, and at the wet deck and the torn sky, and the
+miserable-looking passengers in their life-jackets collected together
+round the life-boat.
+
+Nobody said anything except the German ladies. They, indeed, kept up a
+constant wail. The others were silent, the men mostly smoking
+cigarettes, the women holding their fluttering wraps about them, all of
+them staring out to sea, watching for the track of the torpedo to
+appear. One shot had been fired already and had missed. The ship was
+zig-zagging under every ounce of steam she could lay on. An official
+stood by the life-boat, which was ready with water in it and provisions.
+That the submarine must be mad, as the official remarked, to fire on an
+American ship, didn't console anybody, and his further assurance that
+the matter would not be allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt
+too sure that in all probability they themselves were going to rest
+there, down underneath that repulsive icy water, after a struggle that
+was going to be unpleasant.
+
+The man who had roused Anna-Rose's indignation as the ship left the
+landing-stage by looking as though he were soon going to be sorry for
+her, came across from the first class, where his life-boat was, to watch
+for the track of the expected torpedo, and caught sight of the twins
+huddled in their corner.
+
+Anna-Rose didn't see him, for she was staring with wide eyes out at the
+desolate welter of water and cloud, and thinking of home: the home that
+was, that used to be till such a little while ago, the home that now
+seemed to have been so amazingly, so unbelievably beautiful and blest,
+with its daily life of love and laughter and of easy confidence that
+to-morrow was going to be just as good. Happiness had been the ordinary
+condition there, a simple matter of course. Its place was taken now by
+courage. Anna-Rose felt sick at all this courage there was about. There
+should be no occasion for it. There should be no horrors to face, no
+cruelties to endure. Why couldn't brotherly love continue? Why must
+people get killing each other? She, for her part, would be behind nobody
+in courage and in the defying of a Fate that could behave, as she felt,
+so very unlike her idea of anything even remotely decent; but it
+oughtn't to be necessary, this constant condition of screwed-upness; it
+was waste of effort, waste of time, waste of life,--oh the _stupidity_
+of it all, she thought, rebellious and bewildered.
+
+"Have some brandy," said the man, pouring out a little into a small cup.
+
+Anna-Rose turned her eyes on him without moving the rest of her. She
+recognized him. He was going to be sorry for them again. He had much
+better be sorry for himself now, she thought, because he, just as much
+as they were, was bound for a watery bier.
+
+"Thank you," she said distantly, for not only did she hate the smell of
+brandy but Aunt Alice had enjoined her with peculiar strictness on no
+account to talk to strange men, "I don't drink."
+
+"Then I'll give the other one some," said the man.
+
+"She too," said Anna-Rose, not changing her position but keeping a
+drearily watchful eye on him, "is a total abstainer."
+
+"Well, I'll go and fetch some of your warm things for you. Tell me where
+your cabin is. You haven't got enough on."
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose distantly, "we have quite enough on,
+considering the occasion. We're dressed for drowning."
+
+The man laughed, and said there would be no drowning, and that they had
+a splendid captain, and were outdistancing the submarine hand over fist.
+Anna-Rose didn't believe him, and suspected him of supposing her to be
+in need of cheering, but a gleam of comfort did in spite of herself
+steal into her heart.
+
+He went away, and presently came back with a blanket and some pillows.
+
+"If you _will_ sit on the floor," he said, stuffing the pillows behind
+their backs, during which Anna-Felicitas didn't open her eyes, and her
+head hung about so limply that it looked as if it might at any moment
+roll off, "you may at least be as comfortable as you can."
+
+Anna-Rose pointed out, while she helped him arrange Anna-Felicitas's
+indifferent head on the pillow, that she saw little use in being
+comfortable just a minute or two before drowning. "Drowning be hanged,"
+said the man.
+
+"That's how Uncle Arthur used to talk," said Anna-Rose, feeling suddenly
+quite at home, "except that _he_ would have said 'Drowning be damned.'"
+
+The man laughed. "Is he dead?" he asked, busy with Anna-Felicitas's
+head, which defied their united efforts to make it hold itself up.
+
+"Dead?" echoed Anna-Rose, to whom the idea of Uncle Arthur's ever being
+anything so quiet as dead and not able to say any swear words for such a
+long time as eternity seemed very odd.
+
+"You said he _used_ to talk like that."
+
+"Oh, no he's not dead at all. Quite the contrary."
+
+The man laughed again, and having got Anna-Felicitas's head arranged in
+a position that at least, as Anna-Rose pointed out, had some sort of
+self-respect in it, he asked who they were with.
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with as much defiant independence as she could
+manage to somebody who was putting a pillow behind her back. He was
+going to be sorry for them. She saw it coming. He was going to say "You
+poor things," or words to that effect. That's what the people round
+Uncle Arthur's had said to them. That's what everybody had said to them
+since the war began, and Aunt Alice's friends had said it to her too,
+because she had to have her nieces live with her, and no doubt Uncle
+Arthur's friends who played golf with him had said it to him as well,
+except that probably they put in a damn so as to make it clearer for him
+and said "You poor damned thing," or something like that, and she was
+sick of the very words poor things. Poor things, indeed! "We're with
+each other," she said briefly, lifting her chin.
+
+"Well, I don't think that's enough," said the man. "Not half enough.
+You ought to have a mother or something."
+
+"_Everybody_ can't have mothers," said Anna-Rose very defiantly indeed,
+tears rushing into her eyes.
+
+The man tucked the blanket round their resistless legs. "There now," he
+said. "That's better. What's the good of catching your deaths?"
+
+Anna-Rose, glad that he hadn't gone on about mothers, said that with
+so much death imminent, catching any of it no longer seemed to her
+particularly to matter, and the man laughed and pulled over a chair
+and sat down beside her.
+
+She didn't know what he saw anywhere in that dreadful situation to laugh
+at, but just the sound of a laugh was extraordinarily comforting. It
+made one feel quite different. Wholesome again. Like waking up to
+sunshine and one's morning bath and breakfast after a nightmare. He
+seemed altogether a very comforting man. She liked him to sit near them.
+She hoped he was a good man. Aunt Alice had said there were very few
+good men, hardly any in fact except one's husband, but this one did seem
+one of the few exceptions. And she thought that by now, he having
+brought them all those pillows, he could no longer come under the
+heading of strange men. When he wasn't looking she put out her hand
+secretly and touched his coat where he wouldn't feel it. It comforted
+her to touch his coat. She hoped Aunt Alice wouldn't have disapproved of
+seeing her sitting side by side with him and liking it.
+
+Aunt Alice had been, as her custom was, vague, when Anna-Rose, having
+given her the desired promise not to talk or let Anna-Felicitas talk to
+strange men, and desiring to collect any available information for her
+guidance in her new responsible position had asked, "But when are men
+_not_ strange?"
+
+"When you've married them," said Aunt Alice. "After that, of course, you
+love them."
+
+And she sighed heavily, for it was bed-time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Nothing more was seen of the submarine.
+
+The German ladies were certain the captain had somehow let them know he
+had them on board, and were as full of the credit of having saved the
+ship as if it had been Sodom and Gomorrah instead of a ship, and they
+the one just man whose presence would have saved those cities if he had
+been in them; and the American passengers were equally sure that the
+submarine, on thinking it over, had decided that President Wilson was
+not a man to be trifled with, and had gone in search of some prey which
+would not have the might and majesty of America at its back.
+
+As the day went on, and the _St. Luke_ left off zig-zagging, the relief
+of those on board was the relief of a reprieve from death. Almost
+everybody was cured of sea-sickness, and quite everybody was ready to
+overwhelm his neighbour with cordiality and benevolence. Rich people
+didn't mind poor people, and came along from the first class and talked
+to them just as if they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves.
+A billionairess native to Chicago, who had crossed the Atlantic forty
+times without speaking to a soul, an achievement she was as justly proud
+of as an artist is of his best creations, actually asked somebody in a
+dingy mackintosh, whose little boy still looked pale, if he had been
+frightened; and an exclusive young man from Boston talked quite a long
+while to an English lady without first having made sure that she was
+well-connected. What could have been more like heaven? The tone on the
+_St. Luke_ that day was very like what the tone in the kingdom of heaven
+must be in its simple politeness. "And so you see," said Anna-Rose, who
+was fond of philosophizing in season and out of season, and particularly
+out of season, "how good comes out of evil."
+
+She made this observation about four o'clock in the afternoon to
+Anna-Felicitas in an interval of absence on the part of Mr. Twist--such,
+the amiable stranger had told them, was his name--who had gone to see
+about tea being brought up to them; and Anna-Felicitas, able by now to
+sit up and take notice, the hours of fresh air having done their work,
+smiled the ready, watery, foolishly happy smile of the convalescent. It
+was so nice not to feel ill; it was so nice not to have to be saved. If
+she had been able to talk much, she would have philosophized too, about
+the number and size of one's negative blessings--all the things one
+hasn't got, all the very horrid things; why, there's no end to them once
+you begin to count up, she thought, waterily happy, and yet people
+grumble.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was in that cleaned-out, beatific, convalescent mood in
+which one is sure one will never grumble again. She smiled at anybody
+who happened to pass by and catch her eye. She would have smiled just
+like that, with just that friendly, boneless familiarity at the devil if
+he had appeared, or even at Uncle Arthur himself.
+
+The twins, as a result of the submarine's activities, were having the
+pleasantest day they had had for months. It was the realization of this
+that caused Anna-Rose's remark about good coming out of evil. The
+background, she could not but perceive, was a very odd one for their
+pleasantest day for months--a rolling steamer and a cold wind flicking
+at them round the corner; but backgrounds, she pointed out to
+Anna-Felicitas, who smiled her agreement broadly and instantly, are
+negligible things: it is what goes on in front of them that matters. Of
+what earthly use, for instance, had been those splendid summer
+afternoons in the perfect woods and gardens that so beautifully framed
+in Uncle Arthur?
+
+No use, agreed Anna-Felicitas, smiling fatuously.
+
+In the middle of them was Uncle Arthur. You always got to him in the
+end.
+
+Anna-Felicitas nodded and shook her head and was all feeble agreement.
+
+She and Anna-Felicitas had been more hopelessly miserable, Anna-Rose
+remarked, wandering about the loveliness that belonged to him than they
+could ever have dreamed was possible. She reminded Anna-Felicitas how
+they used to rub their eyes to try and see more clearly, for surely
+these means of happiness, these elaborate arrangements for it all round
+them, couldn't be for nothing? There must be some of it somewhere, if
+only they could discover where? And there was none. Not a trace of it.
+Not even the faintest little swish of its skirts.
+
+Anna-Rose left off talking, and became lost in memories. For a long
+time, she remembered, she had told herself it was her mother's death
+blotting the light out of life, but one day Anna-Felicitas said aloud
+that it was Uncle Arthur, and Anna-Rose knew it was true. Their mother's
+death was something so tender, so beautiful, that terrible as it was to
+them to be left without her they yet felt raised up by it somehow,
+raised on to a higher level than where they had been before, closer in
+their hearts to real things, to real values. But Uncle Arthur came into
+possession of their lives as a consequence of that death, and he had
+towered up between them and every glimpse of the sun. Suddenly there was
+no such thing as freedom and laughter. Suddenly everything one said and
+did was wrong. "And you needn't think," Anna-Felicitas had said wisely,
+"that he's like that because we're Germans--or _seem_ to be Germans,"
+she amended. "It's because he's Uncle Arthur. Look at Aunt Alice.
+_She's_ not a German. And yet look at her."
+
+And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her mind's eye,
+for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a wood picnicking,
+and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a _tete-a-tete_ luncheon with
+Uncle Arthur who hadn't said a word from start to finish; and though she
+didn't like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still
+less when he didn't say them, for then she imagined them, and what she
+imagined was simply awful,--Anna-Rose had, I say, looked at Aunt Alice
+in her mind's eye, and knew that this too was true.
+
+Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray of tea
+and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful picnic.
+
+Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite. Anna-Rose had told him quite
+soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to clear his
+mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas, though their
+clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which their flair was done,
+might be misleading, were no longer children, but quite the contrary;
+that they were, in fact, persons who were almost ripe for going to
+dances, and certainly in another year would be perfectly ripe for dances
+supposing there were any.
+
+Mr. Twist listened attentively, and begged her to tell him any other
+little thing she might think of as useful to him in his capacity of
+friend and attendant,--both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be
+till he had seen them safely landed in New York.
+
+"I hope you don't think we _need_ anybody," said Anna-Rose. "We shall
+like being friends with you very much, but only on terms of perfect
+equality."
+
+"Sure," said Mr. Twist, who was an American.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+She hesitated a moment.
+
+"You thought?" encouraged Mr. Twist politely.
+
+"I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry for us."
+
+"Sorry?" said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.
+
+"Yes. When we were waving good-bye to--to our friends."
+
+"Sorry?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Which was great waste of your time."
+
+"I should think so," said Mr. Twist with heartiness.
+
+Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an activity
+in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr. Twist's attentions
+in the spirit in which they were offered, which was, as he said, one of
+mutual friendliness and esteem. As he was never sea-sick, he could move
+about and do things for them that might be difficult to do for
+themselves; as he knew a great deal about stewardesses, he could tell
+them what sort of tip theirs expected; as he was American, he could
+illuminate them about that country. He had been doing Red Cross work
+with an American ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home
+for a short visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose gathered, was
+ancient and widowed, was getting on. His mother, he said, lived in
+seclusion in a New England village with his sister, who had not married.
+
+"Then she's got it all before her," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I shouldn't think she'd got as much of it before her as you," said Mr.
+Twist, "because she's considerably more grown up--I mean," he added
+hastily, as Anna-Rose's mouth opened, "she's less--well, less completely
+young."
+
+"We're not completely young," said Anna-Rose with dignity. "People are
+completely young the day they're born, and ever after that they spend
+their time becoming less so."
+
+"Exactly. And my sister has been becoming less so longer than you have.
+I assure you that's all I meant. She's less so even than I am."
+
+"Then," said Anna-Rose, glancing at that part of Mr. Twist's head where
+it appeared to be coming through his hair, "she must have got to the
+stage when one is called a maiden lady."
+
+"And if she were a German," said Anna-Felicitas suddenly, who hadn't
+till then said anything to Mr. Twist but only smiled widely at him
+whenever he happened to look her way, "she wouldn't be either a lady or
+a maiden, but just an It. It's very rude of Germans, I think," went on
+Anna-Felicitas, abstractedly smiling at the cake Mr. Twist was offering
+her, "never to let us be anything but Its till we've taken on some men."
+
+Mr. Twist expressed surprise at this way of describing marriage, and
+inquired of Anna-Felicitas what she knew about Germans.
+
+"The moment you leave off being sea-sick, Anna-F.," said Anna-Rose,
+turning to her severely, "you start being indiscreet. Well, I suppose,"
+she added with a sigh to Mr. Twist, "you'd have had to know sooner or
+later. Our name is Twinkler."
+
+She watched him to see the effect of this, and Mr. Twist, perceiving he
+was expected to say something, said that he didn't mind that anyhow, and
+that he could bear something worse in the way of revelations.
+
+"Does it convey nothing to you?" asked Anna-Rose, astonished, for in
+Germany the name of Twinkler was a mighty name, and even in England it
+was well known.
+
+Mr. Twist shook his head. "Only that it sounds cheerful," he said.
+
+Anna-Rose watched his face. "It isn't only Twinkler," she said, speaking
+very distinctly. "It's _von_ Twinkler."
+
+"That's German," said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.
+
+"Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn't happen that we
+weren't."
+
+"I don't think I quite follow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose. "You see, we used to have a
+German father."
+
+"But only because our mother married him," explained Anna-Felicitas.
+"Else we wouldn't have."
+
+"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it has
+dogged our footsteps ever since."
+
+"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying anybody
+does. You go into a church, and before you know where you are, you're
+all tangled up with posterity."
+
+"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at her own
+past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you. It's really
+simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."
+
+"If there hadn't been a war we'd have been all right," said
+Anna-Felicitas. "But directly there's a war, whoever it is you've
+married, if it isn't one of your own countrymen, rises up against you,
+just as if he were too many meringues you'd had for dinner."
+
+"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against you."
+
+"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We never used to bother about what we were," said Anna-Felicitas. "We
+were just human beings, and so was everybody else just human beings."
+
+"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people not
+being Germans."
+
+"But you mustn't think we mind now either," said Anna-Felicitas,
+"because, you see, we're not."
+
+Mr. Twist looked at them in turn. His ears were a little prominent and
+pointed, and they gave him rather the air, when he put his head on one
+side and looked at them, of an attentive fox-terrier. "I don't think I
+quite follow," he said again.
+
+"It _is_ very difficult," agreed Anna-Rose.
+
+"It's because you've got into your head that we're German because of our
+father," said Anna-Felicitas. "But what's a father, when all's said and
+done?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Twist, "one has to have him."
+
+"But having got him he isn't anything like as important as a mother,"
+said Anna-Rose.
+
+"One hardly sees one's father," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's always busy.
+He's always thinking of something else."
+
+"Except when he looks at one and tells one to sit up straight," said
+Anna-Rose pointedly to Anna-Felicitas, whose habit of drooping still
+persisted in spite of her father's admonishments.
+
+"Of course he's very kind and benevolent when he happens to remember
+that one is there," said Anna-Felicitas, sitting up beautifully for a
+moment, "but that's about everything."
+
+"And of course," said Anna-Rose, "one's father's intentions are
+perfectly sound and good, but his attention seems to wander. Whereas
+one's mother--"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, "one's mother--"
+
+They broke off and looked straight in front of them. It didn't bear
+speaking of. It didn't bear thinking of.
+
+Suddenly Anna-Felicitas, weak from excessive sea-sickness, began to cry.
+The tears just slopped over as though no resistance of any sort were
+possible.
+
+Anna-Rose stared at her a moment horror-struck. "Look here, Anna-F.,"
+she exclaimed, wrath in her voice, "I won't _have_ you be sentimental--I
+won't _have_ you be sentimental...."
+
+And then she too began to cry.
+
+Well, once having hopelessly disgraced and exposed themselves, there was
+nothing for it but to take Mr. Twist into their uttermost confidence. It
+was dreadful. It was awful. Before that strange man. A person they
+hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their feelings. Showing
+their innermost miserable places.
+
+They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they
+weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,--odd ones
+left over from last time, which was years and years ago,--"But _really_
+years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,--"the
+years one falls down on garden paths in, and cuts one's knees, and
+one's mother--one's mother--c-c-c-comforts one--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and pulling
+out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even been
+unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right away."
+
+And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid promptness his
+Red Cross experience had taught him, started competently wiping up their
+faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
+encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something not too
+determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those pictures of
+efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe is
+familiar,--eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm mouths and
+chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect, offering in
+capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist was the reverse of
+eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of good-looking; that is, he would
+have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later
+to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled
+thing,--which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping
+their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they
+discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being
+friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged
+to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
+after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping,
+said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship)--he would
+have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.
+
+"But you have to _have_ a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who didn't think
+it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could eat with it and
+see out of it.
+
+"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose; but
+secretly she thought that having been begun so successfully at his feet,
+and carried upwards with such grace of long limbs and happy proportions,
+he might as well have gone on equally felicitously for the last little
+bit.
+
+"I expect God got tired of him over that last bit," she mused, "and just
+put on any sort of head."
+
+"Yes--that happened to be lying about," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "In a
+hurry to get done with him."
+
+"Anyway he's very kind," said Anna-Rose, a slight touch of defiance in
+her voice.
+
+"Oh, _very_ kind," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And it doesn't matter about faces for being kind," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not in the least," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And if it hadn't been for the submarine we shouldn't have got to know
+him. So you see," said Anna-Rose,--and again produced her favourite
+remark about good coming out of evil.
+
+Those were the days in mid-Atlantic when England was lost in its own
+peculiar mists, and the sunshine of America was stretching out towards
+them. The sea was getting calmer and bluer every hour, and submarines
+more and more unlikely. If a ship could be pleasant, which
+Anna-Felicitas doubted, for she still found difficulty in dressing and
+undressing without being sea-sick and was unpopular in the cabin, this
+ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day long, staring at the
+blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if you were living in the
+middle of a jewel, and tried not to remember--oh, there were heaps of
+things it was best not to remember; and when the rail of the ship moved
+up across the horizon too far into the sky, or moved down across it and
+showed too much water, you just shut your eyes and then it didn't
+matter; and the sun shone warm and steady on your face, and the wind
+tickled the tassel on the top of your German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist
+came and read aloud to you, which sent you to sleep quicker than
+anything you had ever known.
+
+The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket was called
+"Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an American collection of
+English poetry, professing in its preface to be a Short Cut to Culture;
+and he would read with what at that time, it being new to them, seemed
+to the twins a strange exotic pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to
+Dooty," and the effect was as if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian
+psalm in its ribs, and make it leap and giggle.
+
+Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she didn't mind what
+the ship's rail did with the horizon, opened them very round when first
+Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was used to hearing them read
+by her mother in the adorable husky voice that sent such thrills through
+one, but she listened with the courtesy and final gratitude due to the
+efforts to entertain her of so amiable a friend, and only the roundness
+of her eyes showed her astonishment at this waltzing round, as it
+appeared to her, of Mr. Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of
+God. He also read "Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur
+took for a Derby winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to
+refrain from stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point
+of having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
+questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on deck,
+which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it was because
+her deck-chair was so very much harder than she was.
+
+Anna-Felicitas, who considered that, if these things were short-cuts to
+anywhere, seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got
+there, snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
+off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which worried
+Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment less
+beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more than ever,
+unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being administered, to
+make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again by taking and shaking
+her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of waking up suddenly and
+forgetting to be polite, as one does when first one wakes up and hasn't
+had time to remember one is a lady. "To-morrow to fresh woods and
+pastures noo," Mr. Twist would finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp
+of satisfaction at having swallowed yet another solid slab of culture;
+and Anna-Felicitas, returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur,
+with her eyes still shut and her head lolling limply, things like,
+"After all, it _does_ rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still
+doesn't like it."
+
+Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild inquiry,
+and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately explain what
+Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from anything resembling what
+she had said that Mr. Twist looked more mildly inquiring than ever.
+
+Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too sleepy or
+too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got angry, and would
+get what the Germans call a red head and look at Anna-Felicitas very
+severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would close his book and watch
+with that alert, cocked-up-ear look of a sympathetic and highly
+interested terrier; but sooner or later the ship would always give a
+roll, and Anna-Felicitas would shut her eyes and fade to paleness and
+become the helpless bundle of sickness that nobody could possibly go on
+being severe with.
+
+The passengers in the second class were more generally friendly than
+those in the first class. The first class sorted itself out into little
+groups, and whispered about each other, as Anna-Rose observed, watching
+their movements across the rope that separated her from them. The second
+class remained to the end one big group, frayed out just a little at the
+edge in one or two places.
+
+The chief fraying out was where the Twinkler kids, as the second-class
+young men, who knew no better, dared to call them, interrupted the
+circle by talking apart with Mr. Twist. Mr. Twist had no business there.
+He was a plutocrat of the first class; but in spite of the regulations
+which cut off the classes from communicating, with a view apparently to
+the continued sanitariness of the first class, the implication being
+that the second class was easily infectious and probably overrun, there
+he was every day and several times in every day. He must have heavily
+squared the officials, the second-class young men thought until the day
+when Mr. Twist let it somehow be understood that he had known the
+Twinkler young ladies for years, dandled them in their not very remote
+infancy on his already full-grown knee, and had been specially appointed
+to look after them on this journey.
+
+Mr. Twist did not specify who had appointed him, except to the Twinkler
+young ladies themselves, and to them he announced that it was no less a
+thing, being, or creature, than Providence. The second-class young men,
+therefore, in spite of their rising spirits as danger lay further
+behind, and their increasing tendency, peculiar to those who go on
+ships, to become affectionate, found themselves no further on in
+acquaintance with the Misses Twinkler the last day of the voyage than
+they had been the first. Not that, under any other conditions, they
+would have so much as noticed the existence of the Twinkler kids. In
+their blue caps, pulled down tight to their eyebrows and hiding every
+trace of hair, they looked like bald babies. They never came to meals;
+their assiduous guardian, or whatever he was, feeding them on deck with
+the care of a mother-bird for its fledglings, so that nobody except the
+two German ladies in their cabin had seen them without the caps. The
+young men put them down as half-grown only, somewhere about fourteen
+they thought, and nothing but what, if they were boys instead of girls,
+would have been called louts.
+
+Still, a ship is a ship, and it is wonderful what can be managed in the
+way of dalliance if one is shut up on one long enough; and the Misses
+Twinkler, in spite of their loutishness, their apparent baldness, and
+their constant round-eyed solemnity, would no doubt have been the
+objects of advances before New York was reached if it hadn't been for
+Mr. Twist. There wasn't a girl under forty in the second class on that
+voyage, the young men resentfully pointed out to each other, except
+these two kids who were too much under it, and a young lady of thirty
+who sat manicuring her nails most of the day with her back supported by
+a life-boat, and polishing them with red stuff till they flashed rosily
+in the sun. This young lady was avoided for the first two days, while
+the young men still remembered their mothers, because of what she looked
+like; but was greatly loved for the rest of the voyage precisely for
+that reason.
+
+Still, every one couldn't get near her. She was only one; and there
+were at least a dozen active, cooped-up young men taking lithe,
+imprisoned exercise in long, swift steps up and down the deck, ready for
+any sort of enterprise, bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So
+that at last the left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy
+nails was less kind to, actually in their despair attempted ghastly
+flirtations with the two German ladies. They approached them with a kind
+of angry amorousness. They tucked them up roughly in rugs. They brought
+them cushions as though they were curses. And it was through this
+_rapprochement_, in the icy warmth of which the German ladies expanded
+like bulky flowers and grew at least ten years younger, the ten years
+they shed being their most respectable ones, that the ship became aware
+of the nationality of the Misses Twinkler.
+
+The German ladies were not really German, as they explained directly
+there were no more submarines about, for a good woman, they said,
+becomes automatically merged into her husband, and they, therefore, were
+merged into Americans, both of them, and as loyal as you could find, but
+the Twinklers were the real thing, they said,--real, unadulterated,
+arrogant Junkers, which is why they wouldn't talk to anybody; for no
+Junker, said the German ladies, thinks anybody good enough to be talked
+to except another Junker. The German ladies themselves had by sheer luck
+not been born Junkers. They had missed it very narrowly, but they had
+missed it, for which they were very thankful seeing what believers they
+were, under the affectionate manipulation of their husbands, in
+democracy; but they came from the part of Germany where Junkers most
+abound, and knew the sort of thing well.
+
+It seemed to Mr. Twist, who caught scraps of conversation as he came
+and went, that in the cabin the Twinklers must have alienated sympathy.
+They had. They had done more; they had got themselves actively disliked.
+
+From the first moment when Anna-Rose had dared to peep into their
+shrouded bunks the ladies had been prejudiced, and this prejudice had
+later flared up into a great and justified dislike. The ladies, to begin
+with, hadn't known that they were von Twinklers, but had supposed them
+mere Twinklers, and the von, as every German knows, makes all the
+difference, especially in the case of Twinklers, who, without it, were a
+race, the ladies knew, of small shopkeepers, laundresses and postmen in
+the Westphalian district, but with it were one of the oldest families in
+Prussia; known to all Germans; possessed of a name ensuring subservience
+wherever it went.
+
+In this stage of preliminary ignorance the ladies had treated the two
+apparently ordinary Twinklers with the severity their conduct, age, and
+obvious want of means deserved; and when, goaded by their questionings,
+the smaller and more active Twinkler had let out her von at them much as
+one lets loose a dog when one is alone and weak against the attacks of
+an enemy, instead of falling in harmoniously with the natural change of
+attitude of the ladies, which became immediately perfectly polite and
+conciliatory, as well as motherly in its interest and curiosity, the two
+young Junkers went dumb. They would have nothing to do with the most
+motherly questioning. And just in proportion as the German ladies found
+themselves full of eager milk of kindness, only asking to be permitted
+to nourish, so did they find themselves subsequently, after a day or
+two of such uncloaked repugnance to it, left with quantities of it
+useless on their hands and all going sour.
+
+From first to last the Twinklers annoyed them. As plain Twinklers they
+had been tiresome in a hundred ways in the cabin, and as von Twinklers
+they were intolerable in their high-nosed indifference.
+
+It had naturally been expected by the elder ladies at the beginning of
+the journey, that two obscure Twinklers of such manifest youth should
+rise politely and considerately each morning very early, and get
+themselves dressed and out of the way in at the most ten minutes,
+leaving the cabin clear for the slow and careful putting together bit by
+bit of that which ultimately emerged a perfect specimen of a lady of
+riper years, but the weedy Twinkler insisted on lying in her berth so
+late that if the ladies wished to be in time for the best parts of
+breakfast, which they naturally and passionately did wish, they were
+forced to dress in her presence, which was most annoying and awkward.
+
+It is true she lay with closed eyes, apparently apathetic, but you never
+know with persons of that age. Experience teaches not to trust them.
+They shut their eyes, and yet seem, later on, to have seen; they
+apparently sleep, and afterwards are heard asking their spectacled
+American friend what people do on a ship, a place of so much gustiness,
+if their hair gets blown off into the sea. Also the weedy one had a most
+tiresome trick of being sick instantly every time Odol was used, or a
+little brandy was drunk. Odol is most refreshing; it has a lovely smell,
+without which no German bedroom is complete. And the brandy was not
+common schnaps, but an old expensive brandy that, regarded as a smell,
+was a credit to anybody's cabin.
+
+The German ladies would have persisted, and indeed did persist in using
+Odol and drinking a little brandy, indifferent to the feeble prayer from
+the upper berth which floated down entreating them not to, but in their
+own interests they were forced to give it up. The objectionable child
+did not pray a second time; she passed immediately from prayer to
+performance. Of two disagreeables wise women choose the lesser, but they
+remain resentful.
+
+The other Twinkler, the small active one, did get up early and take
+herself off, but she frequently mixed up her own articles of toilet with
+those belonging to the ladies, and would pin up her hair, preparatory to
+washing her face, with their hairpins.
+
+When they discovered this they hid them, and she, not finding any,
+having come to the end of her own, lost no time in irresolution but
+picked up their nail-scissors and pinned up her pigtails with that.
+
+It was a particularly sacred pair of nail-scissors that almost
+everything blunted. To use them for anything but nails was an outrage,
+but the grossest outrage was to touch them at all. When they told her
+sharply that the scissors were very delicate and she was instantly to
+take them out of her hair, she tugged them out in a silence that was
+itself impertinent, and pinned up her pigtails with their buttonhook
+instead.
+
+Then they raised themselves on their elbows in their berths and asked
+her what sort of a bringing up she could have had, and they raised their
+voices as well, for though they were grateful, as they later on
+declared, for not having been born Junkers, they had nevertheless
+acquired by practice in imitation some of the more salient Junker
+characteristics.
+
+"You are _salop_," said the upper berth lady,--which is untranslatable,
+not on grounds of propriety but of idiom. It is not, however, a term of
+praise.
+
+"Yes, that is what you are--_salop_," echoed the lower berth lady. "And
+your sister is _salop_ too--lying in bed till all hours."
+
+"It is shameful for girls to be _salop_," said the upper berth.
+
+"I didn't know it was your buttonhook. I thought it was ours," said
+Anna-Rose, pulling this out too with vehemence.
+
+"That is because you are _salop_," said the lower berth.
+
+"And I didn't know it wasn't our scissors either."
+
+"_Salop, salop_," said the lower berth, beating her hand on the wooden
+edge of her bunk.
+
+"And--and I'm sorry."
+
+Anna-Rose's face was very red. She didn't look sorry, she looked angry.
+And so she was; but it was with herself, for having failed in
+discernment and grown-upness. She ought to have noticed that the
+scissors and buttonhook were not hers. She had pounced on them with the
+ill-considered haste of twelve years old. She hadn't been a lady,--she
+whose business it was to be an example and mainstay to Anna-Felicitas,
+in all things going first, showing her the way.
+
+She picked up the sponge and plunged it into the water, and was just
+going to plunge her annoyed and heated face in after it when the upper
+berth lady said: "Your mother should be ashamed of herself to have
+brought you up so badly."
+
+"And send you off like this before she has taught you even the ABC of
+manners," said the lower berth.
+
+"Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none herself."
+
+"Evidently," said the lower berth, "she is herself _salop_."
+
+The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin in
+Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there in her
+nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful flight, her
+eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top of her head.
+
+The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize the
+significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large angry faces
+as a target. One of the faces would certainly have received the sponge
+and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if it hadn't been for the
+prompt and skilful intervention of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the unusual
+loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into attention and
+opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were saying and saw the
+sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was Anna-Rose who held it, where
+it would be in another second, and hastily putting out a shaking little
+hand from her top berth, caught hold feebly but obstinately of the
+upright ends of Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.
+
+"I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of mind and
+entire absence of candour.
+
+She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be sick, and
+the excellent child--_das gute Kind_, as her father used to call her
+because she, so conveniently from the parental point of view, invariably
+never wanted to be or do anything particularly--without hesitation
+sacrificed herself in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and
+immediately was.
+
+By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, all fury had died out.
+She never could see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after
+one of these attacks without forgiving her and everybody else
+everything.
+
+She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and tuck her
+blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, murmured,
+"Christopher--don't mind _them_--" and she suddenly realized, for they
+never called each other by those names except in great moments of
+emotion when it was necessary to cheer and encourage, what
+Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it had been done
+deliberately, she could only whisper back, because she was so afraid of
+crying, "No, no, Columbus dear--of course--who really cares about
+_them_--" and came down off the steps with no fight left in her.
+
+Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had
+retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled Twinkler
+should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a crack apart
+in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be going to do next
+and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness, getting dressed, they
+merely inquired what part of Westphalia she came from, and only in the
+tone they asked it did they convey that whatever part it was, it was
+anyhow a contemptible one.
+
+"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a little, in
+spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.
+
+Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to have to
+be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.
+
+"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being a
+Twinkler it must be Westphalia."
+
+"We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words
+and making a great effort to speak politely. "We come from England."
+
+"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling. "You were
+born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in Westphalia."
+
+"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only circumstance that
+stops them is if their mothers happen to be temporarily absent."
+
+"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts to
+remain bland.
+
+"Are you pretending--pretending to _us_," said the lower berth lady,
+again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not
+German?"
+
+"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner, "but I
+don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go on being one
+directly he got to a really neutral place."
+
+"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting
+what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the
+Twinkler background.
+
+"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of
+consideration, tying her shoe-laces.
+
+"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves
+now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from
+Westphalia?"
+
+"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
+considering.
+
+She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a
+deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining
+calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she
+said.
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on
+their elbows.
+
+"That's where our father lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her
+surprise at their surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he
+died he did that there too."
+
+"Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your father fled
+his country."
+
+"No. _You_ said that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door.
+She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might
+not be able to be a lady.
+
+"After all, it _is_ what you do when you go to heaven," she said as she
+opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the
+last word.
+
+"But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it were,
+from afar. "Then--you were born in Prussia?"
+
+"Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the door
+quickly behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind--he had the most
+amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was Edward--took a
+lively interest in the plans and probable future of the two Annas. He
+also took a lively and solicitous interest in their present, and a
+profoundly sympathetic one in their past. In fact, their three tenses
+interested him to the exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief
+desire was to see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting
+them in the shape of Uncle Arthur's friends--he distrusted Uncle Arthur,
+and therefore his friends--into the safe and pleasant waters of real
+American hospitality and kindliness.
+
+He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the tap. He
+reminded himself of that which he had been taught since childhood, of
+the mighty heart of America which, once touched, would take persons like
+the twins right in and never let them out again. But it had to be
+touched. It had, as it were, to be put in connection with them by means
+of advertisement. America, he reflected, was a little deaf. She had to
+be shouted to. But once she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...
+
+He cogitated much in his cabin--one with a private bathroom, for Mr.
+Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample means--on these two defenceless
+children. If they had been Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons
+plainly in need of relief! As it was, America would be likely, he
+feared, to consider that either Germany or England ought to be looking
+after them, and might conceivably remain chilly and uninterested.
+
+Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn't many friends in America, and those he
+had didn't like him. At least that was what Mr. Twist gathered from the
+conversation of Anna-Rose. She didn't positively assert but she very
+candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite believe that Uncle
+Arthur's friends wouldn't be warm ones. Their hospitality he could
+imagine fleeting and perfunctory. They would pass on the Twinklers as
+soon as possible, as indeed why should they not? And presently some
+dreary small job would be found for them, some job as pupil-teacher or
+girls' companion in the sterile atmosphere of a young ladies' school.
+
+As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike, Mr.
+Twist disliked Uncle Arthur. Patriotism was nothing at any time to Mr.
+Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur's particular kind of
+patriotism was very odious to him. To wreak it on these two poor aliens!
+Mr. Twist had no words for it. They had been cut adrift at a tender age,
+an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American son and brother, was unable
+to regard unmoved, and packed off over the sea indifferent to what might
+happen to them so long as Uncle Arthur knew nothing about it. Having
+flung these kittens into the water to swim or drown, so long as he
+didn't have to listen to their cries while they were doing it, Uncle
+Arthur apparently cared nothing.
+
+All Mr. Twist's chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose up
+within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur. He wanted to go and ask him
+what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him whether he
+called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn't do this, being on a
+ship heading for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of
+the ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,--but the right sort
+of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards you as a
+sacred and precious charge.
+
+In his mind's eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying,
+red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured him under-sized
+and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields
+of England to his trembling household. He was quite disconcerted one day
+to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and
+not fat at all, except in one place.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind's-eye view of
+Uncle Arthur.
+
+"He goes fat suddenly," said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of her
+dozes. "As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck when it got
+to his waistcoat."
+
+"If you can imagine it," added Anna-Rose politely, ready to explain and
+describe further if required.
+
+But Mr. Twist could imagine it. He readjusted his picture of Uncle
+Arthur, and this time got him right,--the tall, not bad-looking man,
+clean-shaven and with more hair a great deal than he, Mr. Twist, had. He
+had thought of him as an old ruffian; he now perceived that he could be
+hardly more than middle-aged and that Aunt Alice, a lady for whom he
+felt an almost painful sympathy, had a lot more of Uncle Arthur to get
+through before she was done.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, accepting the word middle-aged as correct.
+"Neither of his ends looks much older than yours do. He's aged in the
+middle. That's the only place. Where the bomb is."
+
+"I suppose that's why it's called middle-aged," said Anna-Felicitas
+dreamily. "One middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It
+must be queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself gradually
+rotting."
+
+These were the sorts of observations, Mr. Twist felt, that might
+prejudice his mother against the twins If they could be induced not to
+say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he felt that
+his house, of all houses in America, should be offered them as a refuge
+whenever they were in need of one. But his mother was not, he feared,
+very adaptable. In her house--it was legally his, but it never felt as
+if it were--people adapted themselves to her. He doubted whether the
+twins could or would. Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was
+candour. They had no _savoir faire_. They seemed incapable of anything
+but naturalness, and their particular type of naturalness was not one,
+he was afraid, that his mother would understand.
+
+She had not been out of her New England village, a place called briefly,
+with American economy of time, Clark, for many years, and her ideal of
+youthful femininity was still that which she had been herself. She had,
+if unconsciously, tried to mould Mr. Twist also on these lines, in spite
+of his being a boy, and owing to his extreme considerateness had not yet
+discovered her want of success. For years, indeed, she had been
+completely successful, and Mr. Twist arrived at and embarked on
+adolescence with the manners and ways of thinking of a perfect lady.
+
+Till he was nineteen he was educated at home, as it were at his mother's
+knee, at any rate within reach of that sacred limb, and she had taught
+him to reverence women; the reason given, or rather conveyed, being that
+he had had and still was having a mother. Which he was never to forget.
+In hours of temptation. In hours of danger. Mr. Twist, with his virginal
+white mind, used to wonder when the hours of temptation and of danger
+would begin, and rather wish, in the elegant leisure of his
+half-holidays, that they soon would so that he might show how determined
+he was to avoid them.
+
+For the ten years from his father's death till he went to Harvard, he
+lived with his mother and sister and was their assiduous attendant. His
+mother took the loss of his father badly. She didn't get over it, as
+widows sometimes do, and grow suddenly ten years younger. The sight of
+her, so black and broken, of so daily recurring a patience, of such
+frequent deliberate brightening for the sake of her children, kept Mr.
+Twist, as he grew up, from those thoughts which sometimes occur to young
+men and have to do with curves and dimples. He was too much absorbed by
+his mother to think on such lines. He was flooded with reverence and
+pity. Through her, all women were holy to him. They were all mothers,
+either actual or to be--after, of course, the proper ceremonies. They
+were all people for whom one leapt up and opened doors, placed chairs
+out of draughts, and fetched black shawls. On warm spring days, when he
+was about eighteen, he told himself earnestly that it would be a
+profanity, a terrible secret sinning, to think amorously--yes, he
+supposed the word was amorously--while there under his eyes, pervading
+his days from breakfast to bedtime, was that mourning womanhood, that
+lopped life, that example of brave doing without any hope or expectation
+except what might be expected or hoped from heaven. His mother was
+wonderful the way she bore things. There she was, with nothing left to
+look forward to in the way of pleasures except the resurrection, yet
+she did not complain.
+
+But after he had been at Harvard a year a change came over Mr. Twist.
+Not that he did not remain dutiful and affectionate, but he perceived
+that it was possible to peep round the corners of his mother, the
+rock-like corners that had so long jutted out between him and the view,
+and on the other side there seemed to be quite a lot of interesting
+things going on. He continued, however, only to eye most of them from
+afar, and the nearest he got to temptation while at Harvard was to read
+"Madame Bovary."
+
+After Harvard he was put into an engineering firm, for the Twists only
+had what would in English money be five thousand pounds a year, and
+belonged therefore, taking dollars as the measure of standing instead of
+birth, to the middle classes. Aunt Alice would have described such an
+income as ample means; Mrs. Twist called it straitened circumstances,
+and lived accordingly in a condition of perpetual self-sacrifice and
+doings without. She had a car, but it was only a car, not a
+Pierce-Arrow; and there was a bathroom to every bedroom, but there were
+only six bedrooms; and the house stood on a hill and looked over the
+most beautiful woods, but they were somebody else's woods. She felt, as
+she beheld the lives of those of her neighbours she let her eyes rest
+on, who were the millionaires dotted round about the charming environs
+of Clark, that she was indeed a typical widow,--remote, unfriended,
+melancholy, poor.
+
+Mrs. Twist might feel poor, but she was certainly comfortable. It was
+her daughter Edith's aim in life to secure for her the comfort and
+leisure necessary for any grief that wishes to be thorough. The house
+was run beautifully by Edith. There were three servants, of whom Edith
+was one. She was the lady's maid, the head cook, and the family butler.
+And Mr. Twist, till he went to Harvard, might be described as the
+page-boy, and afterwards in his vacations as the odd man about the
+house. Everything centred round their mother. She made a good deal of
+work, because of being so anxious not to give trouble. She wouldn't get
+out of the way of evil, but bleakly accepted it. She wouldn't get out of
+a draught, but sat in it till one or other of her children remembered
+they hadn't shut the door. When the inevitable cold was upon her and she
+was lamentably coughing, she would mention the door for the first time,
+and quietly say she hadn't liked to trouble them to shut it, they had
+seemed so busy with their own affairs.
+
+But after he had been in the engineering firm a little while, a further
+change came over Mr. Twist. He was there to make money, more money, for
+his mother. The first duty of an American male had descended on him. He
+wished earnestly to fulfil it creditably, in spite of his own tastes
+being so simple that his income of L5000--it was his, not his mother's,
+but it didn't feel as if it were--would have been more than sufficient
+for him. Out of engineering, then, was he to wrest all the things that
+might comfort his mother. He embarked on his career with as determined
+an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made
+to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether
+beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for him, and
+definitely grew up.
+
+The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him to be at
+home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board with her brother
+Charles, a clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic Refreshment
+at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of which Uncle Charles
+poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable meals--for he practised
+the austerities and had no wife--dribbled at its spout. Hold it as
+carefully as one might it dribbled at its spout, and added to the
+confused appearance of the table by staining the cloth afresh every time
+it was used.
+
+Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and generosity,
+his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth, being all amiability
+and affection, above the nose was quite different. In the middle came
+his nose, a nose that led him to improve himself, to read and meditate
+the poets, to be tenacious in following after the noble; and above were
+eyes in which simplicity sat side by side with appreciation; and above
+these was the forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were
+inventions.
+
+He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he came into
+daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood he had often
+fixed up little things for Edith,--she was three years older than he,
+and was even then canning and preserving and ironing,--little
+simplifications and alleviations of her labour; but they had been just
+toys, things that had amused him to put together and that he forgot as
+soon as they were done. But the teapot revealed to him clearly what his
+forehead was there for. He would not and could not continue, being the
+soul of considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
+every meal--they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
+supper--and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at every
+meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful with it.
+He handled it with the most delicate precision. He gave it time. He
+never hurried it. He never filled it more than half full. And yet at the
+end of every pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the
+cloth.
+
+Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different pattern,
+with a curved spout instead of a straight one.
+
+The same thing happened.
+
+Then he went to Wanamaker's, and spent an hour in the teapot section
+trying one pattern after the other, patiently pouring water, provided by
+a tipped but languid and supercilious assistant, out of each different
+make of teapot into cups.
+
+They all dribbled.
+
+Then Mr. Twist went home and sat down and thought. He thought and
+thought, with his dome-like forehead resting on his long thin hand; and
+what came out of his forehead at last, sprang out of it as complete in
+every detail as Pallas Athene when she very similarly sprang, was that
+now well-known object on every breakfast table, Twist's Non-Trickler
+Teapot.
+
+In five years Mr. Twist made a fortune out of the teapot. His mother
+passed from her straitened circumstances to what she still would only
+call a modest competence, but what in England would have been regarded
+as wallowing in money. She left off being middle-class, and was received
+into the lower upper-class, the upper part of this upper-class being
+reserved for great names like Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With
+these Mrs. Twist could not compete. She would no doubt some day, for
+Edward was only thirty and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was
+able to add to the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss
+of the elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. It was as
+though an east wind veered round for a brief space a little to the
+south.
+
+Being naturally, however, inclined to deprecation, when every other
+reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she once more
+sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist, and hung her
+cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a peg. When the
+novelty of having a great many bedrooms instead of six, and a great deal
+of food not to eat but to throw away, and ten times of everything else
+instead of only once, began to wear off, Mrs. Twist drooped again, and
+pulled the departed Twist out of the decent forgetfulness of the past,
+and he once more came to dinner in the form of his favourite dishes, and
+assisted in the family conversations by means of copious quotations from
+his alleged utterances.
+
+Mr. Twist's income was anything between sixty and seventy thousand
+pounds a year by the time the war broke out. Having invented and
+patented the simple device that kept the table-cloths of America, and
+indeed of Europe, spotless, all he had to do was to receive his
+percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But so much had he
+changed since his adolescence that he preferred to stick to his
+engineering and his office in New York rather than go home and be happy
+with his mother.
+
+She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She understood his
+behaviour still less when he went off to France in 1915, himself
+equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.
+
+For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided Mrs.
+Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an only son in
+danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was never so much
+called upon as during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest,
+and there was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of
+the funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.
+
+While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the Twinklers--this
+was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she tried Anna-Rose's patience
+severely by asking her not once but several times whether she didn't
+think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose disliked it from the first because of
+the suggestion it contained that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them
+as works of mercy--while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at
+his home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
+to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense slaughtering
+of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being now the head
+servant of many instead of three was more than double as hard-worked as
+she used to be, was on her feet those last few days without stopping.
+And she had to go and meet Edward in New York as well. Whether Mrs.
+Twist feared that he might not come straight home or whether it was what
+she said it was, that dear Edward must not be the only person on the
+boat who had no one to meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that
+when it came to the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had
+difficulty in maintaining her usual brightness.
+
+Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the _St. Luke_
+got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey from New York, and
+during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared for. She thought Edith
+surprisingly thoughtless to be so much pleased to go. She examined her
+flat and sinewy form with disapproval when she came in hatted and booted
+to say good-bye. No wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't
+help her either now--she was too old. She had missed her chances, poor
+thing.
+
+Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years before, when
+Edward was still in the school room, who had almost married Edith. He
+was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had come to Clark to stay
+with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to do through a long vacation,
+and had taken to dropping in at all hours and interrupting Edith in her
+housekeeping; and Edith, even then completely flat but of a healthy
+young uprightness and bright of eyes and hair, had gone silly and
+forgotten how to cook, and had given her mother, who surely had enough
+sorrows already, an attack of indigestion.
+
+Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
+necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith. And
+besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry. She told
+herself that she could not bear the thought of poor Edith's running the
+risk of an affliction similar to her own. If one hasn't a husband one
+cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw. If Edith married she would
+certainly lose him unless he lost her. Marriage had only two solutions,
+she explained to her silent daughter,--she would not, of course, discuss
+with her that third one which America has so often flown to for solace
+and relief,--only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either one
+died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other one did.
+It was only a question of time before one of the married was left alone
+to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it always ended black.
+"And think of my having to see you like _this_" she said, with a gesture
+indicating her sad dress.
+
+Edith was intimidated; and the young man presently went away whistling.
+He was the only one. Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely
+from her mind; and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet
+Edward in the clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she
+unconsciously felt a faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time
+to get married in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been
+married at twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone
+through, was hardly more gray than Edith's.
+
+"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself after
+bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable to bear
+the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased face, went
+off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked her, if she
+still had a minute to spare, to help her to the sofa, because she felt
+faint.
+
+"I expect the excitement has been too much for me," she murmured, lying
+down and shutting her eyes; and Edith, disciplined in affection and
+attentiveness, immediately took off her hat and settled down to getting
+her mother well again in time for Edward.
+
+Which is why nobody met Mr. Twist on his arrival in New York, and he
+accordingly did things, as will be seen, which he mightn't otherwise
+have done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the _St. Luke_ was so near its journey's end that people were
+packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the scraps of talk
+the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried condition of mind Mr.
+Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of the days had produced in
+them, and began to consider their prospects with more attention. This
+attention soon resulted in anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being
+irritable. Anna-Felicitas didn't show hers at all.
+
+It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America and
+never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future for them
+once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about a new life and
+a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer it; but when the new
+world was really upon them, and the new life, with all the multitudinous
+details that would have to be tackled, going to begin in a few hours,
+their hearts became uneasy and sank within them. England hadn't liked
+them. Suppose America didn't like them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked
+them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's friends didn't like them either? Their
+hearts sank to, and remained in, their boots.
+
+Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from what
+Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their fellow-passengers,
+was a chamois-leather bag containing their passports, a letter to the
+bank where their L200 was, a letter to those friends of Uncle Arthur's
+who were to be tried first, a letter to those other friends of his who
+were to be the second line of defence supposing the first one failed,
+and ten pounds in two L5 notes.
+
+Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used in bed
+most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so miserable, had given
+Anna-Rose one of the L5 notes for the extra expenses of the journey
+till, in New York, she should be able to draw on the L200, though what
+expenses there could be for a couple of girls whose passage was paid
+Uncle Arthur was damned, he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had
+secretly added the other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it
+would have to be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to
+be ready for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing
+restlessness of the passengers that it would soon be time to go and
+change it. How many dollars ought she to get?
+
+Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have asked him
+long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the end of their
+journey. Only yesterday there was the same old limitless sea everywhere,
+the same old feeling that they were never going to arrive. Now the waves
+had all gone, and one could actually see land. The New World. The place
+all their happiness or unhappiness would depend on.
+
+She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as if she
+had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and was going to
+say something appropriate and encouraging on the Christopher and
+Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been pondering the L5 notes
+problem, wouldn't listen.
+
+"A dollar," said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, "isn't like a
+shilling or a mark, but on the other hand neither is it like a pound."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate business.
+
+"It's four times more than one, and five times less than the other,"
+said Anna-Felicitas. "That's how you've got to count. That's what Aunt
+Alice said."
+
+"Yes. And then there's the exchange," said Anna-Rose, frowning. "As if
+it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange. Uncle Arthur
+said we weren't to forget that."
+
+Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange, and
+Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who had to be
+kept in her proper place, especially when one was just getting to
+America and she might easily become above herself, said that it was
+something that varied. ("The exchange, you know, varies," Uncle Arthur
+had said when he gave her the L5 note. "You must keep your eye on the
+variations." Anna-Rose was all eagerness to keep her eye on them, if
+only she had known what and where they were. But one never asked
+questions of Uncle Arthur. His answers, if one did, were confined to
+expressions of anger and amazement that one didn't, at one's age,
+already know.)
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose out of the
+corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her further.
+
+"I wish Mr. Twist would come," said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking in the
+direction he usually appeared from.
+
+"We won't always have _him_" remarked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I never said we would," said Anna-Rose shortly.
+
+The young lady of the nails appeared at that moment in a hat so
+gorgeous that the twins stopped dead to stare. She had a veil on and
+white gloves, and looked as if she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue
+the very next minute.
+
+"Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come--"
+
+"Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist," said
+Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses nobody specially and means nothing
+in particular.
+
+"If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you," said Anna-Rose.
+"There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now, remember. I won't."
+
+"But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+"I shall be walking about New York."
+
+"Oh, _you'll_ see," said Anna-Rose irritably.
+
+She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the tipping,
+and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's friends, whose
+names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so naturally she was
+irritable. One is. And nobody knew and understood this better than
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Let's go and put on our hats and get ready," she said, after a moment's
+pause during which she wondered whether, in the interests of Anna-Rose's
+restoration to calm, she mightn't have to be sick again. She did hope
+she wouldn't have to. She had supposed she had done with that. It is
+true there were now no waves, but she knew she had only to go near the
+engines and smell the oil. "Let's go and put on our hats," she
+suggested, slipping her hand through Anna-Rose's arm.
+
+Anna-Rose let herself be led away, and they went to their cabin; and
+when they came out of it half an hour later, no longer with that bald
+look their caps had given them, the sun catching the little rings of
+pale gold hair that showed for the first time, and clad, instead of in
+the disreputable jerseys that they loved, in neat black coats and
+skirts--for they still wore mourning when properly dressed--with
+everything exactly as Aunt Alice had directed for their arrival, the
+young men of the second class could hardly believe their eyes.
+
+"You'll excuse me saying so," said one of them to Anna-Felicitas as she
+passed him, "but you're looking very well to-day."
+
+"I expect that's because I _am_ well," said Anna-Felicitas amiably.
+
+Mr. Twist, when he saw them, threw up his hands and ejaculated "My!"
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas, who was herself puzzled by the difference
+the clothes had made in Anna-Rose after ten solid days of cap and
+jersey, "I think it's our hats. They do somehow seem very splendid."
+
+"Splendid?" echoed Mr. Twist. "Why, they'd make the very angels jealous,
+and get pulling off their haloes and kicking them over the edge of
+heaven."
+
+"What is so wonderful is that Aunt Alice should ever have squeezed them
+out of Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose, gazing lost in admiration at
+Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't disgorge nice hats easily at all."
+
+And one of the German ladies muttered to the other, as her eye fell on
+Anna-Felicitas, "_Ja, ja, die hat Rasse._"
+
+And it was only because it was the other German lady's hair that spent
+the night in a different part of the cabin from her head and had been
+seen doing it by Anna-Felicitas, that she cavilled and was grudging.
+"_Gewiss_," she muttered back, "_bis auf der Nase. Die Nase aber
+entfremdet mich. Die ist keine echte Junkernase_."
+
+So that the Twinklers had quite a success, and their hearts came a
+little way out of their boots; only a little way, though, for there were
+the Clouston K. Sacks looming bigger into their lives every minute now.
+
+Really it was a beautiful day, and, as Aunt Alice used to say, that does
+make such a difference. A clear pale loveliness of light lay over New
+York, and there was a funny sprightliness in the air, a delicate dry
+crispness. The trees on the shore, when they got close, were delicate
+too--delicate pale gold, and green, and brown, and they seemed so
+composed and calm, the twins thought, standing there quietly after the
+upheavals and fidgetiness of the Atlantic. New York was well into the
+Fall, the time of year when it gets nearest to beauty. The beauty was
+entirely in the atmosphere, and the lights and shadows it made. It was
+like an exquisite veil flung over an ugly woman, hiding, softening,
+encouraging hopes.
+
+Everybody on the ship was crowding eagerly to the sides. Everybody was
+exhilarated, and excited, and ready to be friendly and talkative. They
+all waved whenever another boat passed. Those who knew America pointed
+out the landmarks to those who didn't. Mr. Twist pointed them out to the
+twins, and so did the young man who had remarked favourably on
+Anna-Felicitas's looks, and as they did it simultaneously and there was
+so much to look at and so many boats to wave to, it wasn't till they had
+actually got to the statue of Liberty that Anna-Rose remembered her L10
+and the dollars.
+
+The young man was saying how much the statue of Liberty had cost, and
+the word dollars made Anna-Rose turn with a jump to Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, clutching at her chamois leather bag where it very
+visibly bulged out beneath her waistband, "I forgot--I must get change.
+And how much do you think we ought to tip the stewardess? I've never
+tipped anybody yet ever, and I wish--I wish I hadn't to."
+
+She got quite red. It seemed to her dreadful to offer money to someone
+so much older than herself and who till almost that very morning had
+treated her and Anna-Felicitas like the naughtiest of tiresome children.
+Surely she would be most offended at being tipped by people such years
+younger than herself?
+
+Mr. Twist thought not.
+
+"A dollar," said the young man. "One dollar. That's the figure. Not a
+cent more, or you girls'll get inflating prices and Wall Street'll bust
+up."
+
+Anna-Rose, not heeding him and clutching nervously the place where her
+bag was, told Mr. Twist that the stewardess hadn't seemed to mind them
+quite so much last night, and still less that morning, and perhaps some
+little memento--something that wasn't money--
+
+"Give her those caps of yours," said the young man, bursting into
+hilarity; but indeed it wasn't his fault that he was a low young man.
+
+Mr. Twist, shutting him out of the conversation by interposing a
+shoulder, told Anna-Rose he had noticed stewardesses, and also stewards,
+softened when journeys drew near their end, but that it didn't mean they
+wanted mementos. They wanted money; and he would do the tipping for her
+if she liked.
+
+Anna-Rose jumped at it. This tipping of the stewardess had haunted her
+at intervals throughout the journey whenever she woke up at night. She
+felt that, not having yet in her life tipped anybody, it was very hard
+that she couldn't begin with somebody more her own size.
+
+"Then if you don't mind coming behind the funnel," she said, "I can give
+you my L5 notes, and perhaps you would get them changed for me and
+deduct what you think the stewardess ought to have."
+
+Mr. Twist, and also Anna-Felicitas, who wasn't allowed to stay behind
+with the exuberant young man though she was quite unconscious of his
+presence, went with Anna-Rose behind the funnel, where after a great
+deal of private fumbling, her back turned to them, she produced the two
+much-crumpled L5 notes.
+
+"The steward ought to have something too," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh, I'd be glad if you'd do him as well," said Anna-Rose eagerly. "I
+don't think I _could_ offer him a tip. He has been so fatherly to us.
+And imagine offering to tip one's father."
+
+Mr. Twist laughed, and said she would get over this feeling in time. He
+promised to do what was right, and to make it clear that the tips he
+bestowed were Twinkler tips; and presently he came back with messages of
+thanks from the tipped--such polite ones from the stewardess that the
+twins were astonished--and gave Anna-Rose a packet of very dirty-looking
+slices of green paper, which were dollar bills, he said, besides a
+variety of strange coins which he spread out on a ledge and explained to
+her.
+
+"The exchange was favourable to you to-day," said Mr. Twist, counting
+out the money.
+
+"How nice of it," said Anna-Rose politely. "Did you keep your eye on
+its variations?" she added a little loudly, with a view to rousing
+respect in Anna-Felicitas who was lounging against a seat and showing a
+total absence of every kind of appropriate emotion.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Twist after a slight pause. "I kept both my eyes
+on all of them."
+
+Mr. Twist had, it appeared, presented the steward and stewardess each
+with a dollar on behalf of the Misses Twinkler, but because the exchange
+was so favourable this had made no difference to the L5 notes. Reducing
+each L5 note into German marks, which was the way the Twinklers, in
+spite of a year in England, still dealt in their heads with money before
+they could get a clear idea of it, there would have been two hundred
+marks; and as it took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two
+hundred marks would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside
+that extra complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the
+exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping
+quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said
+Anna-Rose a little out of breath as she got to the end of her
+calculation, fifty dollars.
+
+"Correct," said Mr. Twist, who had listened with respectful attention.
+"Here they are."
+
+"I said roughly," said Anna-Rose. "It can't be _exactly_ fifty dollars.
+The tips anyhow would alter that."
+
+"Yes, but you forget the exchange."
+
+Anna-Rose was silent. She didn't want to go into that before
+Anna-Felicitas. Of the two, she was supposed to be the least bad at
+sums. Their mother had put it that way, refusing to say, as Anna-Rose
+industriously tried to trap her into saying, that she was the better of
+the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to authority on the
+subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations
+roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for
+withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might
+have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on
+and was unable to respect her.
+
+Evidently the exchange was something beneficent. She decided to rejoice
+in it in silence, accept whatever it did, and refrain from asking
+questions.
+
+"So I did. Of course. The exchange," she said, after a little.
+
+She gathered up the dollar bills and began packing them into her bag.
+They wouldn't all go in, and she had to put the rest into her pocket,
+for which also there were too many; but she refused Anna-Felicitas's
+offer to put some of them in hers on the ground that sooner or later she
+would be sure to forget they weren't her handkerchief and would blow her
+nose with them.
+
+"Thank you very much for being so kind," she said to Mr. Twist, as she
+stuffed her pocket full and tried by vigorous patting to get it to look
+inconspicuous. "We're never going to forget you, Anna-F. and me. We'll
+write to you often, and we'll come and see you as often as you like."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily, as she watched the shore of Long
+Island sliding past. "Of course you've got your relations, but relations
+soon pall, and you may be quite glad after a while of a little fresh
+blood."
+
+Mr. Twist thought this very likely, and agreed with several other things
+Anna-Felicitas, generalizing from Uncle Arthur, said about relations,
+again with that air of addressing nobody specially and meaning nothing
+in particular, while Anna-Rose wrestled with the obesity of her pocket.
+
+"Whether you come to see me or not," said Mr. Twist, whose misgivings as
+to the effect of the Twinklers on his mother grew rather than subsided,
+"I shall certainly come to see you."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Sack won't allow followers," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes
+far away. "Uncle Arthur didn't. He wouldn't let the maids have any, so
+they had to go out and do the following themselves. We had a follower
+once, didn't we, Anna-R.?" she continued her voice pensive and
+reminiscent. "He was a friend of Uncle Arthur's. Quite old. At least
+thirty or forty. I shouldn't have thought he _could_ follow. But he did.
+And he used to come home to tea with Uncle Arthur and produce boxes of
+chocolate for us out of his pockets when Uncle Arthur wasn't looking. We
+ate them and felt perfectly well disposed toward him till one day he
+tried to kiss one of us--I forget which. And that, combined with the
+chocolates, revealed him in his true colours as a follower, and we told
+him they weren't allowed in that house and urged him to go to some place
+where they were, or he would certainly be overtaken by Uncle Arthur's
+vengeance, and we said how surprised we were, because he was so old and
+we didn't know followers were as old as that ever."
+
+"It seemed a very shady thing," said Anna-Rose, having subdued the
+swollenness of her pocket, "to eat his chocolates and then not want to
+kiss him, but we don't hold with kissing, Anna-F. and me. Still, we were
+full of his chocolates; there was no getting away from that. So we
+talked it over after he had gone, and decided that next day when he came
+we'd tell him he might kiss one of us if he still wanted to, and we drew
+lots which it was to be, and it was me, and I filled myself to the brim
+with chocolates so as to feel grateful enough to bear it, but he didn't
+come."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "He didn't come again for a long while, and
+when he did there was no follow left in him. Quite the contrary."
+
+Mr. Twist listened with the more interest to this story because it was
+the first time Anna-Felicitas had talked since he knew her. He was used
+to the inspiriting and voluble conversation of Anna-Rose who had looked
+upon him as her best friend since the day he had wiped up her tears; but
+Anna-Felicitas had been too unwell to talk. She had uttered languid and
+brief observations from time to time with her eyes shut and her head
+lolling loosely on her neck, but this was the first time she had been,
+as it were, an ordinary human being, standing upright on her feet,
+walking about, looking intelligently if pensively at the scenery, and in
+a condition of affable readiness, it appeared, to converse.
+
+Mr. Twist was a born mother. The more trouble he was given the more
+attached he became. He had rolled Anna-Felicitas up in rugs so often
+that to be not going to roll her up any more was depressing to him. He
+was beginning to perceive this motherliness in him himself, and he gazed
+through his spectacles at Anna-Felicitas while she sketched the rise and
+fall of the follower, and wondered with an almost painful solicitude
+what her fate would be in the hands of the Clouston Sacks.
+
+Equally he wondered as to the other one's fate; for he could not think
+of one Twinkler without thinking of the other. They were inextricably
+mixed together in the impression they had produced on him, and they
+dwelt together in his thoughts as one person called, generally,
+Twinklers. He stood gazing at them, his motherly instincts uppermost,
+his hearty yearning over them now that the hour of parting was so near
+and his carefully tended chickens were going to be torn from beneath his
+wing. Mr. Twist was domestic. He was affectionate. He would have loved,
+though he had never known it, the sensation of pattering feet about his
+house, and small hands clinging to the apron he would never wear. And it
+was entirely characteristic of him that his invention, the invention
+that brought him his fortune, should have had to do with a teapot.
+
+But if his heart was uneasy within him at the prospect of parting from
+his charges their hearts were equally uneasy, though not in the same
+way. The very name of Clouston K. Sack was repugnant to Anna-Rose; and
+Anna-Felicitas, less quick at disliking, turned it over cautiously in
+her mind as one who turns over an unknown and distasteful object with
+the nose of his umbrella. Even she couldn't quite believe that any good
+thing could come out of a name like that, especially when it had got
+into their lives through Uncle Arthur. Mr. Twist had never heard of the
+Clouston Sacks, which made Anna-Rose still more distrustful. She wasn't
+in the least encouraged when he explained the bigness of America and
+that nobody in it ever knew everybody--she just said that everybody had
+heard of Mr. Roosevelt, and her heart was too doubtful within her even
+to mind being told, as he did immediately tell her within ear-shot of
+Anna-Felicitas, that her reply was unreasonable.
+
+Just at the end, as they were all three straining their eyes, no one
+with more anxiety than Mr. Twist, to try and guess which of the crowd on
+the landing-stage were the Clouston Sacks, they passed on their other
+side the _Vaterland_, the great interned German liner at its moorings,
+and the young man who had previously been so very familiar, as Anna-Rose
+said, but who was only, Mr. Twist explained, being American, came
+hurrying boldly up.
+
+"You mustn't miss this," he said to Anna-Felicitas, actually seizing her
+by the arm. "Here's something that'll make you feel home-like right
+away."
+
+And he led her off, and would have dragged her off but for
+Anna-Felicitas's perfect non-resistance.
+
+"He _is_ being familiar," said Anna-Rose to Mr. Twist, turning very red
+and following quickly after him. "That's not just being American.
+Everybody decent knows that if there's any laying hold of people's arms
+to be done one begins with the eldest sister."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't realize that you _are_ the elder," said Mr. Twist.
+"Strangers judge, roughly, by size."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not
+heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left
+sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the
+worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come
+to the end of what she can do in that direction. I see it growing on
+her. Every Sunday she's inches prettier than she was the Sunday before.
+And wherever I take her to live, and however out of the way it is, I'm
+sure the path to our front door is going to be black with suitors."
+
+This dreadful picture so much perturbed her, and she looked up at Mr.
+Twist with such worried eyes, that he couldn't refrain from patting her
+on her shoulder.
+
+"There, there," said Mr. Twist, and he begged her to be sure to
+let him know directly she was in the least difficulty, or even
+perplexity,--"about the suitors, for instance, or anything else.
+You must let me be of some use in the world, you know," he said.
+
+"But we shouldn't like it at all if we thought you were practising being
+useful on us," said Anna-Rose "It's wholly foreign to our natures to
+enjoy being the objects of anybody's philanthropy."
+
+"Now I just wonder where you get all your long words from," said Mr.
+Twist soothingly; and Anna-Rose laughed, and there was only one dimple
+in the Twinkler family and Anna-Rose had got it.
+
+"What do you want to get looking at _that_ for?" she
+asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd
+staring at the _Vaterland_, and got to where Anna-Felicitas
+stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang
+the young man was treating her to,--that terse, surprising, swift
+hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was
+hearing in such abundance for the first time.
+
+The American passengers appeared one and all to be rejoicing over the
+impotence of the great ship. Every one of them seemed to be violently
+pro-Ally, derisively conjecturing the feelings of the _Vaterland_ as
+every day under her very nose British ships arrived and departed and
+presently arrived again,--the same ships she had seen depart coming back
+unharmed, unhindered by her country's submarines. Only the two German
+ladies, once more ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It
+was incredible to them, simply _unfassbar_ as they said in their
+thoughts, that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare
+lay a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything
+belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. Well, these Americans,
+these dollar-grubbing Yankees, would soon get taught a sharp, deserved
+lesson--but at this point they suddenly remembered they were Americans
+themselves, and pulled up their thoughts violently, as it were, on their
+haunches.
+
+They turned, however, bitterly to the Twinkler girl as she pushed her
+way through to her sister,--those renegade Junkers, those contemptible
+little apostates--and asked her, after hearing her question to
+Anna-Felicitas, with an extraordinary breaking out of pent-up emotion
+where she, then, supposed she would have been at that moment if it
+hadn't been for Germany.
+
+"Not here I think," said Anna-Rose, instantly and fatally ready as she
+always was to answer back and attempt what she called reasoned
+conversation. "There wouldn't have been a war, so of course I wouldn't
+have been here."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't so much as have been born without Germany," said the
+lady whose hair came off, with difficulty controlling a desire to shake
+this insolent and perverted Junker who could repeat the infamous English
+lie as to who began the war. "You owe your very existence to Germany.
+You should be giving thanks to her on your knees for her gift to you of
+life, instead of jeering at this representative--" she flung a finger
+out toward the _Vaterland_--"this patient and dignified-in
+-temporary-misfortune representative, of her power."
+
+"I wasn't jeering," said Anna-Rose, defending herself and clutching at
+Anna-Felicitas's sleeve to pull her away.
+
+"You wouldn't have had a father at all but for Germany," said the other
+lady, the one whose hair grew.
+
+"And perhaps you will tell me," said the first one, "where you would
+have been _then_."
+
+"I don't believe," said Anna-Rose, her nose in the air, "I don't
+believe I'd have ever been at a loss for a father."
+
+The ladies, left speechless a moment by the arrogance as well as several
+other things about this answer gave Anna-Rose an opportunity for further
+reasoning with them, which she was unable to resist. "There are lots of
+fathers," she said, "in England, who would I'm sure have been delighted
+to take me on if Germany had failed me."
+
+"England!"
+
+"Take you on!"
+
+"An English father for you? For a subject of the King of Prussia?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid I--I'm going to be sick," gasped Anna-Felicitas suddenly.
+
+"You're never going to be sick in this bit of bathwater, Miss Twinkler?"
+exclaimed the young man, with the instant ungrudging admiration of one
+who is confronted by real talent. "My, what a gift!"
+
+Anna-Rose darted at Anna-Felicitas's drooping head, that which she had
+been going to say back to the German ladies dissolving on her tongue.
+"Oh no--_no_--" she wailed. "Oh _no_--not in your best hat, Columbus
+darling--you can't--it's not done--and your hat'll shake off into the
+water, and then there'll only be one between us and we shall never be
+able to go out paying calls and things at the same time--come away and
+sit down--Mr. Twist--Mr. Twist--oh, please come--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas allowed herself to be led away, just in time as she
+murmured, and sat down on the nearest seat and shut her eyes. She was
+thankful Anna-Rose's attention had been diverted to her so instantly,
+for it would have been very difficult to be sick with the ship as quiet
+as one's own bedroom. Nothing short of the engine-room could have made
+her sick now. She sat keeping her eyes shut and Anna-Rose's attention
+riveted, wondering what she would do when there was no ship and
+Anna-Rose was on the verge of hasty and unfortunate argument. Would she
+have to learn to faint? But that would terrify poor Christopher so
+dreadfully.
+
+Anna-Felicitas pondered, her eyes shut, on this situation. Up to now in
+her life she had always found that situations solved themselves. Given
+time. And sometimes a little assistance. So, no doubt, would this one.
+Anna-Rose would ripen and mellow. The German ladies would depart hence
+and be no more seen; and it was unlikely she and Anna-Rose would meet at
+such close quarters as a ship's cabin any persons so peculiarly and
+unusually afflicting again. All situations solved themselves; or, if
+they showed signs of not going to, one adopted the gentle methods that
+helped them to get solved. Early in life she had discovered that objects
+which cannot be removed or climbed over can be walked round. A little
+deviousness, and the thing was done. She herself had in the most
+masterly manner when she was four escaped church-going for several years
+by a simple method, that seemed to her looking back very like an
+inspiration, of getting round it. She had never objected to going, had
+never put into words the powerful if vague dislike with which it filled
+her when Sunday after Sunday she had to go and dangle her legs
+helplessly for two hours from the chair she was put on in the enclosed
+pew reserved for the _hohe graefliche Herrschaften_ from the Slosh.
+
+Her father, a strict observer of the correct and a pious believer in
+God for other people, attended Divine Service as regularly as he wound
+the clocks and paid the accounts. He _repraesentierte_, as the German
+phrase went; and his wife and children were expected to _repraesentieren_
+too. Which they did uncomplainingly; for when one has to do with
+determined husbands and fathers it is quickest not to complain. But the
+pins and needles that patient child endured, Anna-Felicitas remembered,
+looking back through the years at the bunched-up figure on the chair as
+at a stranger, were something awful. The edge of the chair just caught
+her legs in the pins and needles place. If she had been a little bigger
+or a little smaller it wouldn't have happened; as it was, St. Paul
+wrestling with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas
+perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after Sunday
+bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside her, and she
+heard her own voice floating out into the void above the heads of the
+mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible distinctness in a sort
+of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a
+second time, in the breathless suspension of mumbling that followed upon
+this: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"--and a third time she
+opened her mouth to repeat the outrageous statement, regardless of her
+mother's startled hand laid on her arm, and of Anna-Rose's petrified
+stare, and of the lifted faces of the congregation, and of the bent,
+scandalized brows of the pastor,--impelled by something that possessed
+her, unable to do anything but obey it; but her father, a man of deeds,
+rose up in his place, took her in his arms, and carried her down the
+stairs and out of the church. And the minute she found herself really
+rescued, and out where the sun and wind, her well-known friends, were
+larking about among the tombstones, she laid her cheek as affectionately
+against her father's head as if she were a daughter to be proud of, and
+would have purred if she had had had a purr as loudly as the most
+satisfied and virtuous of cats.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, standing her up on a convenient tomb so
+that her eyes were level with his, "is it then true about the cold
+potato?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas patting his face, pleased at what her legs
+were feeling like again.
+
+"_Mein Kind_," said her father, "do you not know it is wrong to lie?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, the heavenly blue of her eyes,
+gazing straight into his, exactly like the mild sky above the trees.
+
+"No?" echoed her father, staring at her. "But, _Kind_, you know what a
+lie is?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him tenderly in her satisfaction at
+being restored to a decent pair of legs; and as he still stood staring
+at her she put her hands one on each of his cheeks and squeezed his face
+together and murmured, "Oh, I do _love_ you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Lost in the contemplation of a distant past Anna-Felicitas sat with her
+eyes shut long after she needn't have.
+
+She had forgotten about the German ladies, and America, and the future
+so instantly pressing on her, and was away on the shores of the Baltic
+again, where bits of amber where washed up after a storm, and the pale
+rushes grew in shallow sunny water that was hardly salt, and the air
+seemed for ever sweet with lilac. All the cottage gardens in the little
+village that clustered round a clearing in the trees had lilac bushes in
+them, for there was something in the soil that made lilacs be more
+wonderful there than anywhere else in the world, and in May the whole
+forest as far as one could walk was soaked with the smell of it. After
+rain on a May evening, what a wonder it was; what a wonder, that running
+down the black, oozing forest paths between wet pine stems, out on to
+the shore to look at the sun setting below the great sullen clouds of
+the afternoon over on one's left where Denmark was, and that lifting of
+one's face to the exquisite mingling of the delicate sea smell and the
+lilac. And then there was home to come back to when the forest began to
+look too dark and its deep silence made one's flesh creep--home, and a
+light in the window where ones mother was. Incredible the security of
+those days, the safe warmth of them, the careless roominess....
+
+"You know if you _could_ manage to feel a little better, Anna-F.," said
+Anna-Rose's voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get
+off this ship."
+
+Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
+self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the deck
+except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last alongside
+the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was ashamed of
+herself for having wandered off so easily and comfortably into the past,
+and left poor Christopher alone in the difficult present.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her hat a
+tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for anything,
+especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep. Have you--" she
+hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are they--are the Clouston Sacks
+visible yet?"
+
+"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too, and
+looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here sooner to
+see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them, and they looked
+so like what I think they will look like that I went into our cabin
+again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them. They've found the people
+they were after, and have gone."
+
+"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and I think
+we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know what they're
+like and they don't know what you're like it may be difficult. Heaven
+forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you, but I have to catch a
+train if I'm to get home to-night, and I don't intend to catch it until
+I've handed you over safely to the Sacks."
+
+"Those Sacks--" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished irrelevantly by
+remarking that it was the details of life that were discouraging,--from
+which Anna Felicitas knew that Christopher's heart was once more in her
+boots.
+
+"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
+"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but at
+some time when we're more at leisure."
+
+It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks
+would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning
+that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their
+plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack
+lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they
+knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist
+knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet
+their young charges, stay that night in New York, and continue on to
+Boston next day. The twins were so certain they would be met that Mr.
+Twist was certain too. He had concluded, with a growingly empty feeling
+in his heart as the time of separation drew near, that all that now
+remained for him to do on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over
+to the Sacks. And then leave them. And then go home to that mother he
+loved but had for some time known he didn't like,--go home a bereft and
+lonely man.
+
+But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been Sacks for
+all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody in fact seemed
+to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said, "Are you the
+Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms; the air was full
+of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate kissing of relations; but
+nobody took any notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
+waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's luggage--only his
+was baggage--was examined, and the kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed
+hither and thither, and broke up into groups, and was shot through by
+interviewers, and got packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and
+thinner, and at last was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it
+was no longer possible.
+
+There were no Sacks.
+
+To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed hall
+piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly and asked
+if they were intending to meet some young ladies called Twinkler. His
+tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one of inquiry, it
+almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were cold. He wandered
+about uncertainly from group to group, his soft felt hat on the back of
+his head and his brow getting more and more puckered; and Anna-Rose,
+anxiously looking on from afar, became impatient at last of these
+refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and thought that perhaps Mr. Twist
+wasn't making himself clear.
+
+Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she approached a
+group on her own account and asked them, enunciating her words very
+clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack.
+
+The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at her in
+astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr. Twist being
+turned away for the fifth time in the distance a wave of red despair
+came over her, and she said, reproach in her voice and tears in her
+eyes, "But _somebody's_ got to be the Sacks."
+
+Upon which the group she was addressing stared at her in a more
+astonished silence than ever.
+
+Mr. Twist came up mopping his brow and took he arm and led her back to
+Anna-Felicitas, who was taking care of the luggage and had sat down
+philosophically to await developments on a bag of sulphur. She didn't
+yet know what sulphur looked like on one's clothes after one has sat on
+it, and smiled cheerfully and encouragingly at Anna-Rose as she came
+towards her.
+
+"There _are_ no Sacks," said Anna-Rose, facing the truth.
+
+"It's exactly like that Uncle Arthur of yours," said Mr. Twist, mopping
+his forehead and speaking almost vindictively. "Exactly like him. A man
+like that _would_ have the sort of friends that don't meet one."
+
+"Well, we must do without the Sacks," said Anna-Felicitas, rising from
+the sulphur bag with the look of serene courage that can only dwell on
+the face of one who is free from care as to what has happened to him
+behind. "And it isn't," she added sweetly to Mr. Twist, "as if we hadn't
+got _you_."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, suddenly seeing daylight. "Of course. What do
+Sacks really matter? I mean, for a day or two? You'll take us somewhere
+where we can wait till we've found them."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Some nice quiet old-fashioned coffee-house
+sort of place, like the one the Brontes went to in St. Paul's Churchyard
+the first time they were launched into the world."
+
+"Yes. Some inexpensive place."
+
+"Suited to the frugal."
+
+"Because although we've got L200, even that will need watching or it
+will go."
+
+During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead. As often
+as he mopped it it broke out afresh and had to be mopped again. They
+were the only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He
+couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim,
+locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers attentively.
+
+Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her wharves and
+landing-places with officials specially appointed to guard the purity of
+family life. Family life obviously cannot be pure without a marriage
+being either in it or having at some time or other passed through it.
+The officials engaged in eyeing Mr. Twist and the twins were all married
+themselves, and were well acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the
+Twist and Twinkler party as they might, they could see no trace of
+marriage anywhere about it.
+
+On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it amounted
+to conscious illegality.
+
+"Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward abruptly.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead.
+
+"These here--" said the official, jerking his thumb at the twins. "They
+your sisters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like him?"
+
+"Daughters?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist stiffly.
+
+"No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of repudiation. "You
+_can't_ really think we look as much like him as all that?"
+
+"Wife and sister-in-law?"
+
+Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose
+forgetting her cares for a moment. But they were flattered, because it
+was at least a proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up.
+
+"Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters, and
+they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell me--"
+
+"These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said Mr.
+Twist vehemently.
+
+"Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out his jaw.
+"This is a free country, and I'll have no darned cheek."
+
+"These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more
+patiently. "They're my friends."
+
+"Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're going to
+do with them next."
+
+"Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered brow at
+the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew."
+
+The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant contempt. He
+had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed already. There had
+been a slump in sinners the past week, and he was as full of suppressed
+energy and as much tormented by it as an unexercised and overfed horse.
+"Step this way," he ordered curtly, waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden
+erection that was apparently an office. "Oh, don't you worry about the
+girls," he added, as his prey seemed disinclined to leave them.
+
+But Mr. Twist did worry. He saw Ellis Island looming up behind the two
+figures that were looking on in an astonishment that had not yet had
+time to turn into dismay as he was marched off out of sight. "I'll be
+back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.
+
+"That's as may be," remarked the official grimly.
+
+But he was back; if not in a minute in a little more than five minutes,
+still accompanied by the official, but an official magically changed
+into tameness and amiability, desirous to help, instructing his
+inferiors to carry Mr. Twist's and the young ladies' baggage to a taxi.
+
+It was the teapot that had saved him,--that blessed teapot that was
+always protruding itself benevolently into his life. Mr. Twist had
+identified himself with it, and it had instantly saved him. In the
+shelter of his teapot Mr. Twist could go anywhere and do anything in
+America. Everybody had it. Everybody knew it. It was as pervasive of
+America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly pervasive. It was only less
+visible because it stayed at home. It was more like a wife than Ford's
+cars were. From a sinner caught red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable
+creator, leapt to the position of one who can do no wrong, for he had
+not only placed his teapot between himself and judgment but had
+accompanied his proofs of identity by a suitable number of dollar bills,
+pressed inconspicuously into the official's conveniently placed hand.
+
+The twins found themselves being treated with distinction. They were
+helped into the taxi by the official himself, and what was to happen to
+them next was left entirely to the decision and discretion of Mr.
+Twist--a man so much worried that at that moment he hadn't any of
+either. He couldn't even answer when asked where the taxi was to go to.
+He had missed his train, and he tried not to think of his mother's
+disappointment, the thought was so upsetting. But he wouldn't have
+caught it if he could, for how could he leave these two poor children?
+
+"I'm more than ever convinced," he said, pushing his hat still further
+off his forehead, and staring at the back of the Twinkler trunks piled
+up in front of him next to the driver, while the disregarded official at
+the door still went on asking him where he wished the cab to go to,
+"that children should all have parents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The hotel they were finally sent to by the official, goaded at
+last by Mr. Twist's want of a made-up mind into independent
+instructions to the cabman, was the Ritz. He thought this very
+suitable for the evolver of Twist's Non-Trickler, and it was only
+when they were being rushed along at what the twins, used to the
+behaviour of London taxis and not altogether unacquainted with
+the prudent and police-supervised deliberation of the taxis of
+Berlin, regarded as a skid-collision-and-mutilation-provoking
+speed, that a protest from Anna-Rose conveyed to Mr. Twist where
+they were heading for.
+
+"An hotel called Ritz sounds very expensive," she said. "I've heard
+Uncle Arthur talk of one there is in London and one there is in Paris,
+and he said that only damned American millionaires could afford to stay
+in them. Anna-Felicitas and me aren't American millionaires--"
+
+"Or damned," put in Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--but quite the contrary," said Anna-Rose, "hadn't you better take us
+somewhere else?"
+
+"Somewhere like where the Brontes stayed in London," said Anna-Felicitas
+harping on this idea. "Where cheapness is combined with historical
+associations."
+
+"Oh Lord, it don't matter," said Mr. Twist, who for the first time in
+their friendship seemed ruffled.
+
+"Indeed it does," said Anna-Rose anxiously.
+
+"You forget we've got to husband our resources," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that because we've got L200 we're
+the same as millionaires," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Felicitas, "frequently told us that L200 is a
+very vast sum; but he equally frequently told us that it isn't."
+
+"It was when he was talking about having given to us that he said it was
+such a lot," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He said that as long as we had it we would be rich," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "but directly we hadn't it we would be poor."
+
+"So we'd rather not go to the Ritz, please," said Anna-Rose, "if you
+don't mind."
+
+The taxi was stopped, and Mr. Twist got out and consulted the driver.
+The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for the twins
+floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle Charles would
+speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit, and approached
+those he did speak to with caution till they were sixty. He regarded
+them as one of the chief causes of modern unrest. He liked them so much
+that he hated them. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.
+Uncle Charles was no good as a refuge.
+
+"Well now, see here," said the driver at last, after Mr. Twist had
+rejected such varied suggestions of something small and quiet as the
+Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Biltmore, "you tell me where you want
+to go to and I'll take you there."
+
+"I want to go to the place your mother would stay in if she came up for
+a day or two from the country," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Get right in then, and I'll take you back to the Ritz," said the
+driver.
+
+But finally, when his contempt for Mr. Twist, of whose identity he was
+unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy pleasantries with
+him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in a street off the less
+desirable end of Fifth Avenue, and got rid of him.
+
+It was one of those quiet and cheap New York hotels that yet are both
+noisy and expensive. It was full of foreigners,--real foreigners, the
+twins perceived, not the merely technical sort like themselves, but
+people with yellow faces and black eyes. They looked very seedy and
+shabby, and smoked very much, and talked volubly in unknown tongues. The
+entrance hall, a place of mottled marble, with clerks behind a counter
+all of whose faces looked as if they were masks, was thick with them;
+and it was when they turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas
+passed and Anna-Rose was thinking proudly, "Yes, you don't see anything
+like that every day, do you," and herself looked fondly at her Columbus,
+that she saw that it wasn't Columbus's beauty at all but the sulphur on
+the back of her skirt.
+
+This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in the lift
+to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was trying to brush
+it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best one.
+
+"That's all your grips, ain't it?" said the youth in buttons who had
+come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom floor.
+
+"Our what?" said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. "Do you mean
+our bags?"
+
+"No. Grips. These here," said the youth.
+
+"Is that what they're called in America?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with the
+intelligent interest of a traveller determined to understand and
+appreciate everything, while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the
+condition of the best skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before
+the youth, continued to brush her down as best she could with her
+handkerchief.
+
+"I don't call them. It's what they are," said the youth. "What I want to
+know is, are they all here?"
+
+"How interesting that you don't drop your h's," said Anna-Felicitas,
+gazing at him. "The rest of you is so _like_ no h's."
+
+The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he didn't
+follow.
+
+"Those _are_ all our--grips, I think," said Anna-Rose counting them
+round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. "Thank you very much," she
+added after a pause, as he still lingered.
+
+But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in England.
+Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off the table, and
+shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle was empty. "Want some
+ice water?" he inquired.
+
+"What for?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"What for?" echoed the youth.
+
+"Thank you," said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's manner
+which seemed to her familiar, "we don't want ice water, but we should be
+glad of a little hot water."
+
+"You'll get all you want of that in there," said the youth, jerking his
+head towards a door that led into a bathroom. "It's ice water and ink
+that you get out of me."
+
+"Really?" said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more intelligent
+interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being America, a country,
+she had heard, of considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his person
+bristling with taps which only needed turning.
+
+"We don't want either, thank you," said Anna-Rose.
+
+The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brushing began to grow vehement. Why
+didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and hurt his
+feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he? Anna-Felicitas, who was
+much too pleasantly detached, thought Anna-Rose, for such a situation,
+the door being wide open to the passage and the ungetridable youth
+standing there staring, was leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing
+her hair.
+
+"Suppose you're new to this country," said the youth after a pause.
+
+"Brand," said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Then p'raps," said the youth, "you don't know that the feller who
+brings up your grips gets a tip."
+
+"Of course we know that," said Anna-Rose, standing up straight and
+trying to look stately.
+
+"Then if you know why don't you do it?"
+
+"Do it?" she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into respectfulness by
+haughtily throwing back her head. "Of course we shall do it. At the
+proper time and place."
+
+"Which is, as you must have noticed," added Anna-Felicitas gently,
+"departure and the front door."
+
+"That's all right," said the youth, "but that's only one of the times
+and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is the first
+one."
+
+"Do I understand," said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified, while
+her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one offer people
+like this?--"that to America one tips at the beginning as well?"
+
+"Yep," said the youth. "And in the middle too. Right along through.
+Never miss an opportunity, is as good a slogan as you'll get when it
+comes to tipping."
+
+"I believe you'd have liked Kipps," said Anna-Felicitas meditatively,
+shaking some dust off her hat and remembering the orgy of tipping that
+immortal young man went in for at the seaside hotel.
+
+"What I like now," said the youth, growing more easy before their
+manifest youth and ignorance, "is tips. Guess you can call it Kipps if
+it pleases you."
+
+Anna-Rose began to fumble nervously in her purse "It's horrid, I think,
+to ask for presents," she said to the youth in deep humiliation, more on
+his account than hers.
+
+"Presents? I'm not asking for presents. I'm telling you what's done,"
+said the youth. And he had spots on his face. And he was repugnant to
+her.
+
+Anna-Rose gave him what looked like a shilling. He took it, and
+remarking that he had had a lot of trouble over it, went away; and
+Anna-Rose was still flushed by this encounter when Mr. Twist knocked and
+asked if they were ready to be taken down to tea.
+
+"He might have said thank you," she said indignantly to Anna-Felicitas,
+giving a final desperate brushing to the sulphur.
+
+"I expect he'll come to a bad end," said Anna-Felicitas soothingly.
+
+They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing such a
+thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables laid for
+dinner. It wasn't the custom much in America, explained Mr. Twist, to
+have tea, and no preparations were made for it in hotels of that sort.
+The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be discouraged, were showing
+their detachment from it by sitting in a corner of the room playing
+dominoes. It was a big room, all looking-glasses and windows, and the
+street outside was badly paved and a great noise of passing motor-vans
+came in and drowned most of what Mr. Twist was saying. It was an
+unlovely place, a place in which one might easily feel homesick and that
+the world was empty of affection, if one let oneself go that way. The
+twins wouldn't. They stoutly refused, in their inward recesses, to be
+daunted by these externals. For there was Mr. Twist, their friend and
+stand-by, still with them, and hadn't they got each other? But they felt
+uneasy all the same; for Mr. Twist, though he plied them with buttered
+toast and macaroons and was as attentive as usual, had a somnambulatory
+quality in his attention. He looked like a man who is doing things in a
+dream. He looked like one who is absorbed in something else. His
+forehead still was puckered, and what could it be puckered about, seeing
+that he had got home, and was going back to his mother, and had a clear
+and uncomplicated future ahead of him, and anyhow was a man?
+
+"Have you got something on your mind?" asked Anna-Rose at last, when he
+hadn't even heard a question she asked,--he, the polite, the interested,
+the sympathetic friend of the journey across.
+
+Mr. Twist, sitting tilted back in his chair, his hands deep in his
+pockets, looked up from the macaroons he had been staring at and said,
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell us what it is," suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Both of you. You both of you go together. You're in one lump in my
+mind. And on it too," finished Mr. Twist ruefully.
+
+"That's only because," explained Anna-Felicitas, "you've got the idea
+we want such a lot of taking care of. Get rid of that, and you'll feel
+quite comfortable again. Why not regard us merely as pleasant friends?"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her in silence.
+
+"Not as objects to be protected," continued Anna Felicitas, "but as
+co-equals. Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+Mr. Twist continued to look at her in silence.
+
+"We didn't come to America to be on anybody's mind," said Anna-Rose,
+supporting Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We had a good deal of that in England," said Anna-Felicitas. "For
+instance, we're quite familiar with Uncle Arthur's mind, we were on it
+so heavily and so long."
+
+"It's our fixed determination," said Anna-Rose, "now that we're starting
+a new life, to get off any mind we find ourselves on _instantly_."
+
+"We wish to carve out our own destinies," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We more than wish to," corrected Anna-Rose, "we intend to. What were we
+made in God's image for if it wasn't to stand upright on our own feet?"
+
+"Anna-Rose and I had given this a good deal of thought," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "first and last, and we're prepared to be friends with
+everybody, but only as co-equals and of a reasonable soul and human
+flesh subsisting."
+
+"I don't know exactly," said Mr. Twist, "what that means, but it seems
+to give you a lot of satisfaction."
+
+"It does. It's out of the Athanasian Creed, and suggests such perfect
+equality. If you'll regard us as co-equals instead of as objects to be
+looked after, you'll see how happy we shall all be."
+
+"Not," said Anna-Rose, growing tender, for indeed in her heart she
+loved and clung to Mr. Twist, "that we haven't very much liked all
+you've done for us and the way you were so kind to us on the
+boat,--we've been _most_ obliged to you, and we shall miss you very much
+indeed, I know."
+
+"But we'll get over that of course in time," put in Anna-Felicitas, "and
+we've got to start life now in earnest."
+
+"Well then," said Mr. Twist, "will you two Annas kindly tell me what it
+is you propose to do next?"
+
+"Next? After tea? Go and look at the sights."
+
+"I mean to-morrow," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"To-morrow," said Anna-Rose, "we proceed to Boston."
+
+"To track the Clouston Sacks to their lair," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Ah. You've made up your minds to do that. They've behaved abominably,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps they missed the train," said Anna-Felicitas mildly.
+
+"It's the proper course to pursue," said Anna-Rose. "To proceed to
+Boston."
+
+"I suppose it is," said Mr. Twist, again thinking that the really proper
+and natural course was for him to have been able to take them to his
+mother. Pity one's mother wasn't--
+
+He pulled himself up on the brink of an unfiliality. He was on the verge
+of thinking it a pity one's mother wasn't a different one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Then," said Mr. Twist, "if this is all you're going to see of New York,
+this one evening, let us go and look at it."
+
+He beckoned to the waiter who came up with the bill. Anna-Rose pulled
+out her purse. Mr. Twist put up his hand with severe determination.
+
+"You're my guest," he said, "as long as I am with you. Useless to
+protest, young lady. You'll not get me to belie my American manhood. I
+only listened with half an ear to all the things you both said in the
+taxi, because I hadn't recovered from the surprise of finding myself
+still with you instead of on the train for Clark, and because you both
+of you do say so very many things. But understand once and for all that
+in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man. I'm
+that man till I've left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be
+Sack--confound him," finished Mr. Twist suddenly.
+
+And he silenced Anna-Rose's protests, which persisted and were
+indignant, by turning on her with, an irascibility she hadn't yet seen
+in him, and inquiring of her whether then she really wished to put him
+to public shame? "You wouldn't wish to go against an established custom,
+surely," he said more gently.
+
+So the twins gave themselves up for that one evening to what
+Anna-Felicitas called government by wealth, otherwise plutocracy, while
+reserving complete freedom of action in regard to Mr. Sack, who was, in
+their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might
+be going to be mothers' helps in the Sack _menage_ for all they
+knew,--they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured
+guests to typists.
+
+"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"No," said the twins.
+
+He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to
+the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting
+miles. The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a
+clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river. Lamps were
+being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air. Steep grass
+slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid
+that there were houses and a street above them on their right. Up and
+down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke
+hanging in the air long after they had gone their way. It was so great a
+joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the _St. Luke_ and to
+see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
+suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible not
+to be cheerful, translated from the _St. Luke_ into such a place,
+trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.
+
+The world seemed suddenly quite good,--the simplest, easiest of objects
+to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh
+rather than cry. They trotted along humming bits of their infancy's
+songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and
+macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still
+and didn't heave or lurch beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than
+he had been for some hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent
+a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in
+New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with
+her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the
+Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed
+them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind
+was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the
+Sacks. He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back
+to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from Boston.
+
+If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in
+Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he wouldn't have
+had the heart to press them to go; and then what would he have done with
+them? Their second and last line of defence, supposing they had
+considered the Sacks had failed and were to be ruled out, was in
+California, a place they spoke of as if it were next door to Boston and
+New York. How could he have let them set out alone on that four days'
+journey, with the possibility of once more at its end not being met? No
+wonder he had been abstracted at tea. He was relieved to the extent of
+his forehead going quite smooth again at their decision to proceed to
+the Sacks. For he couldn't have taken them to his mother without
+preparation and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York
+while he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist,
+the verb dropping into his mind with the _aplomb_ of an inspiration, are
+the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle. Already
+he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office
+down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had
+heard Mr. Twist's name, and because of, second, his politeness, his
+confidential manner as of an understanding sympathizer with a rich man's
+recreations, when he had. The tea, which he, had poured out of one of
+his own teapots, had been completely spoilt by the knowledge that it was
+only this teapot that had saved him from being treated as a White Slave
+Trafficker. He wouldn't have got into that hotel at all with the
+Twinklers, or into any other decent one, except for his teapot. What a
+country, Mr. Twist had thought, fresh from his work in France, fresh
+from where people were profoundly occupied with the great business of
+surviving at all. Here he came back from a place where civilization
+toppled, where deadly misery, deadly bravery, heroism that couldn't be
+uttered, staggered month after month among ruins, and found America
+untouched, comfortable, fat, still with time to worry over the suspected
+amorousness of the rich, still putting people into uniforms in order to
+buttonhole a man on landing and cross-question him as to his private
+purities.
+
+He had been much annoyed, but he too couldn't resist the extreme
+pleasure of real exercise on such a lovely evening, nor could he resist
+the infection of the cheerfulness of the Twinklers. They walked along,
+talking and laughing, and seeming to walk much faster than he did,
+especially Anna-Rose who had to break into a run every few steps because
+of his so much longer legs, his face restored to all its usual
+kindliness as he listened benevolently to their remarks, and just when
+they were beginning to feel as if they soon might be tired and hungry a
+restaurant with lamp-hung gardens appeared as punctually as if they had
+been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals.
+They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things
+to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness;
+heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class
+cooking on the _St. Luke_, and the biggest ices they had seen in their
+lives,--great dollops of pink and yellow divineness.
+
+Then Mr. Twist took them in a taxi to look at the illuminated
+advertisements in Broadway, and they forgot everything but the joy of
+the moment. Whatever the next day held, this evening was sheer
+happiness. Their eyes shone and their cheeks flushed, and Mr. Twist was
+quite worried that they were so pretty. People at the other tables at
+the restaurant had stared at them with frank admiration, and so did the
+people in the streets whenever the taxi was blocked. On the ship he had
+only sometimes been aware of it,--there would come a glint of sunshine
+and settle on Anna-Rose's little cheek where the dimple was, or he would
+lift his eyes from the Culture book and suddenly see the dark softness
+of Anna-Felicitas's eyelashes as she slept in her chair. But now,
+dressed properly, and in their dryland condition of cheerful animation,
+he perceived that they were very pretty indeed, and that Anna-Felicitas
+was more than very pretty. He couldn't help thinking they were a most
+unsuitable couple to be let loose in America with only two hundred
+pounds to support them. Two hundred pounds was just enough to let them
+slip about if it should enter their heads to slip about,--go off without
+explanation, for instance, if they wanted to leave the Clouston
+Sacks,--but of course ridiculous as a serious background to life. A girl
+should either have enough money or be completely dependent on her male
+relations. As a girl was usually young reflected Mr. Twist, his
+spectacles with the Broadway lights in them blazing on the two
+specimens opposite him, it was safest for her to be dependent. So were
+her actions controlled, and kept within the bounds of wisdom.
+
+And next morning, as he sat waiting for the twins for breakfast at ten
+o'clock according to arrangement the night before, their grape-fruit in
+little beds of ice on their plates and every sort of American dish
+ordered, from griddle cakes and molasses to chicken pie, a page came in
+with loud cries for Mr. Twist, which made him instantly conspicuous--a
+thing he particularly disliked--and handed him a letter.
+
+The twins had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+They had left early that morning for Boston, determined, as they wrote,
+no longer to trespass on his kindness. There had been a discussion in
+their bedroom the night before when they got back in which Anna-Rose
+supplied the heat and Anna-Felicitas the arguments, and it ended in
+Anna-Felicitas succeeding in restoring Anna-Rose to her original
+standpoint of proud independence, from which, lured by the comfort and
+security of Mr. Twist's companionship, she had been inclined to slip.
+
+It took some time, because of Anna-Rose being the eldest. Anna-Felicitas
+had had to be as wary, and gentle, and persistently affectionate as a
+wife whom necessity compels to try and get reason into her husband.
+Anna-Rose's feathers, even as the feathers of a husband, bristled at the
+mere breath of criticism of her superior intelligence and wisdom. She
+was the leader of the party, the head and guide, the one who had the
+dollars in her pocket, and being the eldest naturally must know best.
+Besides, she was secretly nervous about taking Anna-Felicitas about
+alone. She too had observed the stares of the public, and had never
+supposed that any of them might be for her. How was she to get to Boston
+successfully with so enchanting a creature, through all the
+complications of travel in an unknown country, without the support and
+counsel of Mr. Twist? Just the dollars and quarters and dimes and cents
+cowed her. The strangeness of everything, while it delighted her so
+long as she could peep at it from behind Mr. Twist, appalled her the
+minute she was left alone with it. America seemed altogether a foreign
+country, a strange place whose inhabitants by accident didn't talk in a
+strange language. They talked English; or rather what sounded like
+English till you found that it wasn't really.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas prevailed. She had all Anna-Rose's inborn horror of
+accepting money or other benefits from people who had no natural right
+to exercise their benevolences upon her, to appeal to. Christopher,
+after long wrestling restored at last to pride, did sit down and write
+the letter that so much spoilt Mr. Twist's breakfast next morning, while
+Columbus slouched about the room suggesting sentences.
+
+It was a letter profuse in thanks for all Mr. Twist had done for them,
+and couched in language that betrayed the particular share
+Anna-Felicitas had taken in the plan; for though they both loved long
+words Anna-Felicitas's were always a little the longer. In rolling
+sentences that made Mr. Twist laugh in spite of his concern, they
+pointed out that his first duty was to his mother, and his second was
+not to squander his possessions in paying the hotel and railway bills of
+persons who had no sort of claim on him, except those general claims of
+humanity which he had already on the _St. Luke_ so amply discharged.
+They would refrain from paying their hotel bill, remembering his words
+as to the custom of the country, though their instincts were altogether
+against this course, but they could and would avoid causing him the
+further expense and trouble and waste of his no doubt valuable time of
+taking them to Boston, by the simple process of going there without him.
+They promised to write from the Sacks and let him know of their arrival
+to the address at Clark he had given them, and they would never forget
+him as long as they lived and remained his very sincerely, A.-R., and
+A.-F. Twinkler.
+
+Mr. Twist hurried out to the office.
+
+The clerk who had been so confidential in his manner the evening before
+looked at him curiously. Yes, the young ladies had left on the 8.15 for
+Boston. They had come downstairs, baggage and all, at seven o'clock, had
+asked for a taxi, had said they wished to go to Boston, inquired about
+the station, etc., and had specially requested that Mr. Twist should not
+be disturbed.
+
+"They seemed in a slight hurry to be off," said the clerk, "and didn't
+like there being no train before the 8.15. I thought you knew all about
+it, Mr. Twist," he added inquisitively.
+
+"So I did--so I did," said Mr. Twist, turning away to go back to his
+breakfast for three.
+
+"So he did--so he did," muttered the clerk with a wink to the other
+clerk; and for a few minutes they whispered, judging from the
+expressions on their faces, what appeared to be very exciting things to
+each other.
+
+Meanwhile the twins, after a brief struggle of extraordinary intensity
+at the station in getting their tickets, trying to understand the black
+man who seized and dealt with their luggage, and closely following him
+wherever he went in case he should disappear, were sitting in a state of
+relaxation and relief in the Boston express, their troubles over for at
+least several hours.
+
+The black porter, whose heart happened not to be black and who had
+children of his own, perceived the helpless ignorance that lay behind
+the twins' assumption a of severe dignity, and took them in hand and
+got seats for them in the parlour car. As they knew nothing about cars,
+parlour or otherwise, but had merely and quite uselessly reiterated to
+the booking-clerk, till their porter intervened, that they wanted
+third-class tickets, they accepted these seats, thankful in the press
+and noise round them to get anything so roomy and calm as these
+dignified arm-chairs; and it wasn't till they had been in them some
+time, their feet on green footstools, with attendants offering them
+fruit and chocolates and magazines at intervals just as if they had been
+in heaven, as Anna-Felicitas remarked admiringly, that counting their
+money they discovered what a hole the journey had made in it. But they
+were too much relieved at having accomplished so much on their own,
+quite uphelped for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, to take it
+particularly to heart; and, as Anna-Felicitas said, there was still the
+L200, and, as Anna-Rose said, it wasn't likely they'd go in a train
+again for ages; and anyhow, as Anna-Felicitas said, whatever it had cost
+they were bound to get away from being constant drains on Mr. Twist's
+purse.
+
+The train journey delighted them. To sit so comfortably and privately in
+chairs that twisted round, so that if a passenger should start staring
+at Anna-Felicitas one could make her turn her back altogether on him; to
+have one's feet on footstools when they were the sort of feet that don't
+reach the ground; to see the lovely autumn country flying past, hills
+and woods and fields and gardens golden in the October sun, while the
+horrible Atlantic was nowhere in sight; to pass through towns so queerly
+reminiscent of English and German towns shaken up together and yet not a
+bit like either; to be able to have the window wide open without
+getting soot in one's eyes because one of the ministering angels--clad,
+this one, appropriately to heaven, in white, though otherwise
+black--pulled up the same sort of wire screen they used to have in the
+windows at home to keep out the mosquitoes; to imitate about twelve,
+when they grew bold because they were so hungry, the other passengers
+and cause the black angel to spread a little table between them and
+bring clam broth, which they ordered in a spirit of adventure and
+curiosity and concealed from each other that they didn't like; to have
+the young man who passed up and down with the candy, and whose mouth was
+full of it, grow so friendly that he offered them toffee from his own
+private supply at last when they had refused regretfully a dozen
+suggestions to buy--"Have a bit," he said, thrusting it under their
+noses. "As a gentleman to ladies--no pecuniary obligations--come on,
+now;" all this was to the twins too interesting and delightful for
+words.
+
+They accepted the toffee in the spirit in which it was offered, and
+since nobody can eat somebody's toffee without being pleasant in return,
+intermittent amenities passed between them and the young man as he
+journeyed up and down through the cars.
+
+"First visit to the States?" he inquired, when with some reluctance, for
+presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee
+didn't seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside
+them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they
+took some more.
+
+They nodded and smiled stickily.
+
+"English, I guess."
+
+They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of
+their toffee-filled jaws.
+
+Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had
+given the captain of the _St. Luke,_ and said, "Practically."
+
+"Ah," said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in
+"practically" having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but
+the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.
+
+"It's evident," said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws
+clave together because of the toffee, "that we're going to be asked that
+the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us. We'd better
+decide what we're going to say, and practise saying it without
+hesitation."
+
+Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.
+
+"That answer of yours about practically," continued Anna-Rose,
+swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it
+would stick somewhere and make her die, "causes first surprise, then
+reflection, and then suspicion."
+
+"But," said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had
+disentangled her jaws, "it's going to be difficult to say one is German
+when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn't like Germans.
+Besides, it's only in the eye of the law that we are. In God's eye we're
+not, and that's the principal eye after all."
+
+Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that parents
+when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they're going to
+place their children in."
+
+"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I mean,"
+she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the
+perfect love and forethought of their mother, "fathers don't."
+
+They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to
+sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam
+broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the
+Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful
+security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and
+clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be
+clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was
+so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of
+cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn't an
+idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now--Aunt Alice had said, "You
+must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and
+when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist's in her
+desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently
+to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what
+gentlewomen were instinctively.
+
+"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose
+repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time provided
+Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, "seeing that we're
+supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do is to behave according
+to our instincts."
+
+But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts, especially
+Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being older, but even
+hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions
+according to the other person's behaviour. Her instinct, for instance,
+when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit
+him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard
+that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant,
+teacher, visitor and relation--except her mother--in her Prussian home.
+Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman,
+for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to
+drip tact.
+
+"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when
+the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, "says
+that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been there."
+
+"Sensitive--sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup.
+"Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they
+are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including
+sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really---" He
+raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. "You merely add half as much
+again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of
+their sensitiveness, and it's all right."
+
+"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.
+
+As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's recipe for
+social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the
+meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her
+cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have been tact. But it was
+instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took
+possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in
+the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to
+Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person's _morale_,
+but she did very much wish that principles weren't such important things
+and one needn't have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr.
+Twist.
+
+"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered severely to
+Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow
+passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.
+
+On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks,--certainly one
+Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their
+faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting. But once again no
+Sacks were there. The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of
+the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the
+Twinklers.
+
+"These Sacks," remarked Anna-Felicitas patiently at last, when it was
+finally plain that there weren't any, "don't seem to have acquired the
+meeting habit."
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, vexed but relieved. "They're like what Aunt Alice
+used to complain about the housemaids,--neither punctual nor
+methodical."
+
+"But it doesn't matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "They shall not escape us.
+I'm getting quite hungry for the Sacks as a result of not having them.
+We will now proceed to track them to their lair."
+
+For one instant Anna-Rose looked longingly at the train. It was still
+there. It was going on further and further away from the Sacks. Happy
+train. One little jump, and they'd be in it again. But she resisted, and
+engaged a porter.
+
+Even as soon as this the twins were far less helpless than they had been
+the day before. The Sack address was in Anna-Rose's hand, and they knew
+what an American porter looked like. The porter and a taxi were engaged
+with comparative ease and assurance, and on giving the porter, who had
+staggered beneath the number of their grips, a dime, and seeing a cloud
+on his face, they doubled it instantly sooner than have trouble, and
+trebled it equally quickly on his displaying yet further
+dissatisfaction, and they departed for the Sacks, their grips piled up
+round them in the taxi as far as their chins, congratulating themselves
+on how much easier it was to get away from a train than to get into one.
+
+But the minute their activities were over and they had time to think,
+silence fell upon them again. They were both nervous. They both composed
+their faces to indifference to hide that they were nervous, examining
+the streets they passed through with a calm and _blase_ stare worthy of
+a lorgnette. It was the tact part of the coming encounter that was
+chiefly unnerving Anna-Rose, and Anna-Felicitas was dejected by her
+conviction that nobody who was a friend of Uncle Arthur's could possibly
+be agreeable. "By their friends ye shall know them," thought
+Anna-Felicitas, staring out of the window at the Boston buildings. Also
+the persistence of the Sacks in not being on piers and railway stations
+was discouraging. There was no eagerness about this persistence; there
+wasn't even friendliness. Perhaps they didn't like her and Anna-Rose
+being German.
+
+This was always the twins' first thought when anybody wasn't
+particularly cordial. Their experiences in England had made them a
+little jumpy. They were conscious of this weak spot, and like a hurt
+finger it seemed always to be getting in the way and being knocked.
+Anna-Felicitas once more pondered on the inscrutable behaviour of
+Providence which had led their mother, so safely and admirably English,
+to leave that blessed shelter and go and marry somebody who wasn't. Of
+course there was this to be said for it, that she wasn't their mother
+then. If she had been, Anna-Felicitas felt sure she wouldn't have. Then,
+perceiving that her thoughts were getting difficult to follow she gave
+them up, and slid her hand through Anna-Rose's arm and gave it a
+squeeze.
+
+"Now for the New World, Christopher," she said, pretending to be very
+eager and brave and like the real Columbus, as the taxi stopped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The taxi had stopped in front of a handsome apartment house, and almost
+before it was quiet a boy in buttons darted out across the intervening
+wide pavement and thrust his face through the window.
+
+"Who do you want?" he said, or rather jerked out.
+
+He then saw the contents of the taxi, and his mouth fell open; for it
+seemed to him that grips and passengers were piled up inside it in a
+seething mass.
+
+"We want Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack," said Anna-Rose in her most
+grown-up voice. "They're expecting us."
+
+"They ain't," said the boy promptly.
+
+"They ain't?" repeated Anna-Rose, echoing his language in her surprise.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That they ain't? Because they ain't," said the boy. "I bet you my
+Sunday shirt they ain't."
+
+The twins stared at him. They were not accustomed in their conversations
+with the lower classes to be talked to about shirts.
+
+The boy seemed extraordinarily vital. His speech was so quick that it
+flew out with the urgency and haste of squibs going off.
+
+"Please open the door," said Anna-Rose recovering herself. "We'll go up
+and see for ourselves."
+
+"You won't see," said the boy.
+
+"Kindly open the door," repeated Anna-Rose.
+
+"You won't see," he said, pulling it open, "but you can look. If you do
+see Sacks up there I'm a Hun."
+
+The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas,
+two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to
+American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks,
+an _attache_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.
+Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that
+they might almost as well have been grips themselves.
+
+"Do you mind taking those in?" asked Anna-Rose, getting out with
+difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and
+pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay
+and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was
+rolling.
+
+"In where?" crackled the boy.
+
+"In," said Anna-Rose severely. "In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston
+Sack are."
+
+"It's no good your saying they are when they ain't," said the boy,
+increasing the loudness of his crackling.
+
+"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
+disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
+immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
+_attache_ case.
+
+"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
+One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
+said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."
+
+"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
+you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
+them is dead?"
+
+"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
+Left. Got," said the boy.
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
+meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
+You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
+all."
+
+Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
+to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.
+
+"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
+view. "Well, I don't know about that--"
+
+"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
+Sack who is here?"
+
+"Mr.," said the boy.
+
+"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
+followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.
+
+The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
+the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
+them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
+the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
+to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.
+
+"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
+inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
+Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
+up, "when it is really a lift?"
+
+"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.
+
+"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
+a lift."
+
+The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
+but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
+stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
+then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
+obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed to have got hold of an
+idea that had not struck the squib-like boy downstairs, who was
+entertaining the taxi-driver with descriptions of the domestic life of
+the Sacks.
+
+The lift stopped at what the twins supposed was going to be the door of
+a landing or public corridor, but it was, they discovered, the actual
+door of the Sack flat. At any moment the Sacks, if they wished to commit
+suicide, could do so simply by stepping out of their own front door.
+They would then fall, infinitely far, on to the roof of the lift lurking
+at the bottom.
+
+The lift-boy pressed a bell, the door opened, and there, at once exposed
+to the twins, was the square hall of the Sack flat with a manservant
+standing in it staring at them.
+
+Obsessed by his idea, the lift-boy immediately stepped out of his lift,
+approached the servant, introduced his passengers to him by saying,
+"Young ladies to see Mr. Sack," took a step closer, and whispered in his
+ear, but perfectly audibly to the twins who, however, regarded it as
+some expression peculiarly American and were left unmoved by it, "The
+co-respondents."
+
+The servant stared uncertainly at them. His mistress had only been gone
+a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and
+authority. She wouldn't, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to
+be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she
+wasn't there. Mr. Sack was in sole possession now. Nobody knew where
+Mrs. Sack was. Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened,
+among them Mr. Twist's announcing the arrival of the Twinklers. In his
+heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the
+servant's wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was
+all for strict monogamy. He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins,
+his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there
+before Mrs. Sack's rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were,
+cold.
+
+"We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack," began Anna-Rose in her clear little
+voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open
+and the gentleman himself appeared.
+
+"I heard a noise of arrival--" he said, stopping suddenly when he saw
+them. "I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman's voice--"
+
+"It's us," said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright
+conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest. "Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?"
+
+She went up to him and held out her hand. They both went up to him and
+held out their hands.
+
+"We're the Twinklers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn't have noticed it.
+
+Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like
+a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and
+shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about
+him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder,
+and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of
+his collar.
+
+"The Twinklers," he repeated. "The Twinklers. Do I remember, I wonder?"
+
+"There hasn't been much time to forget," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's
+less than two months since there were all those letters."
+
+"Letters?" echoed Mr. Sack. "Letters?"
+
+"So now we've got here," said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was
+unnerved.
+
+"Yes. We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.
+
+Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last
+few hours, stood staring at them. Then he caught sight of the lift-boy,
+lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant's face Even
+to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.
+
+Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room.
+"Come in, come in," he said distractedly.
+
+They went in. He shut the door. The lift-boy and the servant lingered a
+moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his
+lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen. "I'm darned," was all he
+could articulate. "I'm darned."
+
+"There's our luggage," said Anna-Rose, turning to Mr. Sack on getting
+inside the room, her voice gone a little shrill in her determined
+cheerfulness. "Can it be brought up?"
+
+"Luggage?" repeated Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse
+me, but I've got such a racking headache to-day--it makes me stupid--"
+
+"Oh, I'm _very_ sorry," said Anna-Rose solicitously.
+
+"And so am I--_very_," said Anna-Felicitas, equally solicitous. "Have
+you tried aspirin? Sometimes some simple remedy like that--"
+
+"Oh thank you--it's good of you, it's good of you. The effect, you see,
+is that I can't think very clearly. But do tell me--why luggage?
+Luggage--luggage. You mean, I suppose, baggage."
+
+"Why luggage?" asked Anna-Rose nervously. "Isn't there--isn't there
+always luggage in America too when people come to stay with one?"
+
+"You've come to stay with me," said Mr. Sack, putting his hand to his
+forehead again.
+
+"You see," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know. You've told me that."
+
+"So naturally we've come."
+
+"But _is_ it natural?" asked Mr. Sack, looking at them distractedly.
+
+"We sent you a telegram," said Anna-Rose, "or rather one to Mrs. Sack,
+which is the same thing--"
+
+"It isn't, it isn't," said the distressed Mr. Sack. "I wish it were. It
+ought to be. Mrs. Sack isn't here--"
+
+"Yes--we're very sorry to have missed her. Did she go to meet us in New
+York, or where?"
+
+"Mrs. Sack didn't go to meet you. She's--gone."
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Oh," cried Mr. Sack, "somewhere else, but not to meet you. Oh," he went
+on after a moment in which, while the twins gazed at him, he fought with
+and overcame emotion, "when I heard you speaking in the hall I
+thought--I had a moment's hope--for a minute I believed--she had come
+back. So I went out. Else I couldn't have seen you. I'm not fit to see
+strangers--"
+
+The things Mr. Sack said, and his fluttering, unhappy voice, were so
+much at variance with the stern lines of his Gibson profile that the
+twins viewed him with the utmost surprise. They came to no conclusion
+and passed no judgment because they didn't know but what if one was an
+American one naturally behaved like that.
+
+"I don't think," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "that you can call us
+strangers. We're the Twinklers."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know--you keep on telling me that," said Mr. Sack. "But I
+can't call to mind--"
+
+"Don't you remember all Uncle Arthur's letters about us? We're the
+nieces he asked you to be kind to for a bit--as I'm sure,"
+Anna-Felicitas added politely, "you're admirably adapted for being."
+
+Mr. Sack turned his bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty
+girl," he said, in the same distressed voice.
+
+"You mustn't make her vain," said Anna-Rose, trying not to smile all
+over her face, while Anna-Felicitas remained as manifestly unvain as a
+person intent on something else would be.
+
+"We know you got Uncle Arthur's letters about us," she continued,
+"because he showed us your answers back. You invited us to come and stay
+with you. And, as you perceive, we've done it."
+
+"Then it must have been months ago--months ago," said Mr. Sack, "before
+all this--do I remember something about it? I've had such trouble
+since--I've been so distracted one way and another--it may have slipped
+away out of my memory under the stress--Mrs. Sack--" He paused and
+looked round the room helplessly. "Mrs. Sack--well, Mrs. Sack isn't here
+now."
+
+"We're _very_ sorry you've had trouble," said Anna-Felicitas
+sympathetically. "It's what everybody has, though. Man that is born of
+woman is full of misery. That's what the Burial Service says, and it
+ought to know."
+
+Mr. Sack again turned bewildered eyes on to her. "Oh, aren't you a
+pretty--" he again began.
+
+"When do you think Mrs. Sack will be back?" interrupted Anna-Rose.
+
+"I wish I knew--I wish I could hope--but she's gone for a long while,
+I'm afraid--"
+
+"Gone not to come back at all, do you mean?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Sack gulped. "I'm afraid that is her intention," he said miserably.
+
+There was a silence, in which they all stood looking at each other.
+
+"Didn't she like you?" then inquired Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Anna-Rose, sure that this wasn't tactful, gave her sleeve a little pull.
+
+"Were you unkind to her?" asked Anna-Felicitas, disregarding the
+warning.
+
+Mr. Sack, his fingers clasping and unclasping themselves behind his
+back, started walking up and down the room. Anna-Felicitas, forgetful of
+what Aunt Alice would have said, sat down on the edge of the table and
+began to be interested in Mrs. Sack.
+
+"The wives I've seen," she remarked, watching Mr. Sack with friendly and
+interested eyes, "who were chiefly Aunt Alice--that's Uncle Arthur's
+wife, the one we're the nieces of--seemed to put up with the utmost
+contumely from their husbands and yet didn't budge. You must have been
+something awful to yours."
+
+"I worshipped Mrs. Sack," burst out Mr. Sack. "I worshipped her. I do
+worship her. She was the handsomest, brightest woman in Boston. I was as
+proud of her as any man has ever been of his wife."
+
+"Then why did she go?" asked Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I don't think that's the sort of thing you should ask," rebuked
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"But if I don't ask I won't be told," said Ann Felicitas, "and I'm
+interested."
+
+"Mrs. Sack went because I was able--I was so constructed--that I could
+be fond of other people as well as of her," said Mr. Sack.
+
+"Well, _that's_ nothing unusual," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose, "I don't see anything in that."
+
+"I think it shows a humane and friendly spirit," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Besides, it's enjoined in the Bible," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"I'm sure when we meet Mrs. Sack," said Anna-Felicitas very politely
+indeed, "much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to
+like other people as well. You, for instance. Will she mind that?"
+
+"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
+about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
+"but that I liked other people so _much_."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
+whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
+ache."
+
+"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"
+
+"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
+of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"
+
+"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."
+
+"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
+against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
+know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"
+
+Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
+with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
+Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.
+
+"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
+situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
+people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
+other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
+it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
+afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
+beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
+have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
+with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."
+
+"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
+to her. "Were you going to?"
+
+"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
+can produce a mother--"
+
+"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
+who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
+it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
+the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
+of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
+wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to
+her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her
+own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he
+caught his foot in a rabbit trap. He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while
+she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on
+his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting
+and untwisting his fingers behind his back. Only, her Irish terrier
+hadn't had a Gibson profile. Also, he had looked much more efficient.
+
+"Can't you by any chance produce a mother?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"Of course we're very sorry," said Anna-Rose.
+
+Mr. Sack stared at her.
+
+"But you understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances--"
+
+"Do you say," said Mr. Sack, stopping still after a few more turns in
+front of Anna-Rose, and making a great effort to collect his thoughts,
+"that I--that we--had arranged to look after you?"
+
+"Arranged with Uncle Arthur," said Anna-Rose. "Uncle Arthur Abinger. Of
+course you had. That's why we're here. Why, you wrote bidding us
+welcome. He showed us the letter."
+
+"Abinger. Abinger. Oh--_that_ man," said Mr. Sack, his mind clearing.
+
+"We thought you'd probably feel like that about him," said
+Anna-Felicitas sympathetically.
+
+"Why, then," said Mr. Sack, his mind getting suddenly quite clear, "you
+must be--why, you _are_ the Twinklers."
+
+"We've been drawing your attention to that at frequent intervals since
+we got here," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But whether you now remember or still don't realize," said Anna-Rose
+with great firmness, "I'm afraid we've got to say good-bye."
+
+"That's all very well, Anna-R.," again protested Anna-Felicitas, "but
+where are we to go to?"
+
+"Go?" said Anna-Rose with a dignity very creditable in one of her size,
+"Ultimately to California, of course, to Uncle Arthur's other friends.
+But now, this afternoon, we get back into a train and go to Clark, to
+Mr. Twist. He at least has a mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+And so it came about that just as the reunited Twists, mother, son and
+daughter, were sitting in the drawing-room, a little tired after a long
+afternoon of affection, waiting for seven o'clock to strike and, with
+the striking, Amanda the head maid to appear and announce supper, but
+waiting with lassitude, for they had not yet recovered from an elaborate
+welcoming dinner, the Twinklers, in the lovely twilight of a golden day,
+were hastening up the winding road from the station towards them.
+Silent, and a little exhausted, the unconscious Twists sat in their
+drawing-room, a place of marble and antimacassars, while these light
+figures, their shoes white with the dust of a country-side that had had
+no rain for weeks, sped every moment nearer.
+
+The road wound gently upwards through fields and woods, through quiet,
+delicious evening country, and there was one little star twinkling
+encouragingly at the twins from over where they supposed Clark would be.
+At the station there had been neither porter nor conveyance, nor indeed
+anybody or anything at all except themselves, their luggage, and a thin,
+kind man who represented authority. Clark is two miles away from its
+station, and all the way to it is uninhabited. Just at the station are a
+cluster of those hasty buildings America flings down in out-of-the-way
+places till she shall have leisure to make a splendid city; but the road
+immediately curved away from these up into solitude and the evening sky.
+
+"You can't miss it," encouraged the station-master. "Keep right along
+after your noses till they knock up against Mrs. Twist's front gate.
+I'll look after the menagerie--" thus did he describe the Twinkler
+luggage. "Guess Mrs. Twist'll be sending for it as soon as you get
+there. Guess she forgot you. Guess she's shaken up by young Mr. Twist's
+arriving this very day. _I_ wouldn't have forgotten you. No, not for a
+dozen young Mr. Twists," he added gallantly.
+
+"Why do you call him young Mr. Twist," inquired Anna-Felicitas, "when he
+isn't? He must be at least thirty or forty or fifty."
+
+"You see, we know him quite well," said Anna-Rose proudly, as they
+walked off. "He's a _great_ friend of ours."
+
+"You don't say," said the station-master, who was chewing gum; and as
+the twins had not yet seen this being done they concluded he had been
+interrupted in the middle of a meal by the arrival of the train.
+
+"Now mind," he called after them, "you do whatever the road does. Give
+yourselves up to it, and however much it winds about stick to it. You'll
+meet other roads, but don't you take any notice of them."
+
+Freed from their luggage, and for a moment from all care, the twins went
+up the hill. It was the nicest thing in the world to be going to see
+their friend again in quite a few minutes. They had, ever since the
+collapse of the Sack arrangements, been missing him very much. As they
+hurried on through the scented woods, past quiet fields, between
+yellow-leaved hedges, the evening sky growing duskier and the beckoning
+star lighter, they remembered Mr. Twist's extraordinary kindness, his
+devoted and unfailing care, with the warmest feelings of gratitude and
+affection. Even Anna-Felicitas felt warm. How often had he rearranged
+her head when it was hopelessly rolling about; how often had he fed her
+when she felt better enough to be hungry. Anna-Felicitas was very
+hungry. She still thought highly of pride and independence, but now
+considered their proper place was after a good meal. And Anna-Rose, with
+all the shameless cheerfulness of one who for a little has got rid of
+her pride and is feeling very much more comfortable in consequence
+remarked that one mustn't overdo independence.
+
+"Let's hurry," said Anna-Felicitas. "I'm so dreadfully hungry. I do so
+terribly want supper. And I'm sure it's supper-time, and the Twists will
+have finished and we mightn't get any."
+
+"As though Mr. Twist wouldn't see to that!" exclaimed Anna-Rose, proud
+and confident.
+
+But she did begin to run, for she too was very hungry, and they raced
+the rest of the way; which is why they arrived on the Twist doorstep
+panting, and couldn't at first answer Amanda the head maid's surprised
+and ungarnished inquiry as to what they wanted, when she opened the door
+and found them there.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, as soon as she could speak.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "You from the village?" she asked, thinking perhaps
+they might be a deputation of elder school children sent to recite
+welcoming poems to Mr. Twist on his safe return from the seat of war.
+Yet she knew all the school children and everybody else in Clark, and
+none of them were these.
+
+"No--from the station," panted Anna-Rose.
+
+"We didn't see any village," panted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"We want Mr. Twist please," said Anna-Rose struggling with her breath.
+
+Amanda eyed them. "Having supper," she said curtly.
+
+"Fortunate creature," gasped Anna-Felicitas, "I hope he isn't eating it
+all."
+
+"Will you announce us please?" said Anna-Rose putting on her dignity.
+"The Miss Twinklers."
+
+"The who?" said Amanda.
+
+"The Miss Twinklers," said Anna-Rose, putting on still more dignity, for
+there was that in Amanda's manner which roused the Junker in her.
+
+"Can't disturb him at supper," said Amanda briefly.
+
+"I assure you," said Anna-Felicitas, with the earnestness of conviction,
+"that he'll like it. I think I can undertake to promise he'll show no
+resentment whatever."
+
+Amanda half shut the door.
+
+"We'll come in please," said Anna-Rose, inserting herself into what was
+left of the opening. "Will you kindly bear in mind that we're totally
+unaccustomed to the doorstep?"
+
+Amanda, doubtful, but unpractised in such a situation, permitted
+herself, in spite of having as she well knew the whole of free and equal
+America behind her, to be cowed. Well, perhaps not cowed, but taken
+aback. It was the long words and the awful politeness that did it. She
+wasn't used to beautiful long words like that, except on Sundays when
+the clergyman read the prayers in church, and she wasn't used to
+politeness. That so much of it should come out of objects so young
+rendered Amanda temporarily dumb.
+
+She wavered with the door. Instantly Anna-Rose slipped through it;
+instantly Anna-Felicitas followed her.
+
+"Kindly tell your master the Miss Twinklers have arrived," said
+Anna-Rose, looking every inch a Junker. There weren't many inches of
+Anna-Rose, but every one of them at that moment, faced by Amanda's want
+of discipline, was sheer Junker.
+
+Amanda, who had never met a Junker in her happy democratic life, was
+stirred into bristling emotion by the word master. She was about to
+fling the insult of it from her by an impetuous and ill-considered
+assertion that if he was her master she was his mistress and so there
+now, when the bell which had rung once already since they had been
+standing parleying rang again and more impatiently, and the dining-room
+door opened and a head appeared. The twins didn't know that it was
+Edith's head, but it was.
+
+"Amanda--" began Edith, in the appealing voice that was the nearest
+she ever dared get to rebuke without Amanda giving notice; but she
+stopped on seeing what, in the dusk of the hall, looked like a crowd.
+"Oh--" said Edith, taken aback. "Oh--" And was for withdrawing her head
+and shutting the door.
+
+But the twins advanced towards her and the stream of light shining
+behind her and the agreeable smell streaming past her, with outstretched
+hands.
+
+"How do you do," they both said cordially. "_Don't_ go away again."
+
+Edith, feeling that here was something to protect her quietly feeding
+mother from, came rather hastily through the door and held it to behind
+her, while her unresponsive and surprised hand was taken and shaken even
+as Mr. Sack's had been.
+
+"We've come to see Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"He's our friend," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"He's our best friend," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Is he in there?" asked Anna-Felicitas, appreciatively moving her nose,
+a particularly delicate instrument, round among the various really
+heavenly smells that were issuing from the dining-room and sorting them
+out and guessing what they probably represented, the while water rushed
+into her mouth.
+
+The sound of a chair being hastily pushed back was heard and Mr. Twist
+suddenly appeared in the doorway.
+
+"What is it, Edward?" a voice inside said.
+
+Mr. Twist was a pale man, whose skin under no circumstances changed
+colour except in his ears. These turned red when he was stirred, and
+they were red now, and seemed translucent with the bright light behind
+him shining through them.
+
+The twins flew to him. It was wonderful how much pleased they were to
+see him again. It was as if for years they had been separated from their
+dearest friend. The few hours since the night before had been enough to
+turn their friendship and esteem for him into a warm proprietary
+affection. They felt that Mr. Twist belonged to them. Even
+Anna-Felicitas felt it, and her eyes as she beheld him were bright with
+pleasure.
+
+"Oh there you are," cried Anna-Rose darting forward, gladness in her
+voice, and catching hold of his arm.
+
+"We've come," said Anna-Felicitas, beaming and catching hold of his
+other arm.
+
+"We got into difficulties," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We got into them at once," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"They weren't our difficulties--"
+
+"They were the Sacks'--"
+
+"But they reacted on us--"
+
+"And so here we are."
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" asked the voice inside.
+
+"Mrs. Sack ran away yesterday from Mr. Sack," went on Anna-Rose eagerly.
+
+"Mr. Sack was still quite warm and moist from it when we got there,"
+said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Aunt Alice said we weren't ever to stay in a house where they did
+that," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Where there wasn't a lady," said Anna-Felicitas
+
+"So when we saw that she wasn't there because she'd gone, we turned
+straight round to you," said Anna. Rose.
+
+"Like flowers turning to the sun," said Anna-Felicitas, even in that
+moment of excitement not without complacency at her own aptness.
+
+"And left our things at the station," Anna-Rose rushed on.
+
+"And ran practically the whole way," said Anna-Felicitas, "because of
+perhaps being late for supper and you're having eaten it all, and we so
+dreadfully hungry--"
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" again called the voice inside, louder and more
+insistently.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't answer. He was quickly turning over the situation in
+his mind.
+
+He had not mentioned the twins to his mother, which would have been
+natural, seeing how very few hours he had of reunion with her, if she
+hadn't happened to have questioned him particularly as to his
+fellow-passengers on the boat. Her questions had been confined to the
+first-class passengers, and he had said, truthfully, that he had hardly
+spoken to one of them, and not at all to any of the women.
+
+Mrs. Twist had been relieved, for she lived in dread of Edward's
+becoming, as she put it to herself, entangled with ladies. Sin would be
+bad enough--for Mrs. Twist was obliged reluctantly to know that even
+with ladies it is possible to sin--but marriage for Edward would be even
+worse, because it lasted longer. Sin, terrible though it was, had at
+least this to be said for it, that it could be repented of and done
+with, and repentance after all was a creditable activity; but there was
+no repenting of marriage with any credit. It was a holy thing, and you
+don't repent of holy things,--at least, you oughtn't to. If, as
+ill-advised young men so often would, Edward wanted as years went on to
+marry in spite of his already having an affectionate and sympathetic
+home with feminine society in it, then it seemed to Mrs. Twist most
+important, most vital to the future comfort of the family, that it
+should be someone she had chosen herself. She had observed him from
+infancy, and knew much better than he what was needed for his happiness;
+and she also knew, if there must be a wife, what was needed for the
+happiness of his mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about
+the second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of
+hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the slums of
+a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the Twinklers into
+her mental range. Not during those first hours, anyhow. There would be
+plenty of hours, and he felt that sufficient unto the day would be the
+Twinklers thereof.
+
+But the part that was really making his ears red was that he had said
+nothing about the evening with the twins in New York. When his mother
+asked with the fondness of the occasion what had detained him, he said
+as many another honest man, pressed by the searching affection of
+relations, has said before him, that it was business. Now it appeared
+that he would have to go into the dining-room and say, "No. It wasn't
+business. It was these."
+
+His ears glowed just to think of it. He hated to lie. Specially he hated
+to have lied,--at the moment, one plunged in spurred by sudden
+necessity, and then was left sorrowfully contemplating one's
+degradation. His own desire was always to be candid; but his mother, he
+well knew, could not bear the pains candour gave her. She had been so
+terribly hurt, so grievously wounded when, fresh from praying,--for
+before he went to Harvard he used to pray--he had on one or two
+occasions for a few minutes endeavoured not to lie to her that sheer
+fright at the effect of his unfiliality made him apologize and beg her
+to forget it and forgive him. Now she was going to be still more wounded
+by his having lied.
+
+The meticulous tortuousness of family life struck Mr. Twist with a
+sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in France, to
+come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling one's way about
+among tender places ...
+
+"Who is it, Edward?" called the voice inside for the third time.
+
+"There's someone in there seems quite particularly to want to know who
+we are," said Anna-Felicitas. "Why not tell her?"
+
+"I expect it's your mother," said Anna-Rose, feeling the full
+satisfaction of having got to a house from which the lady hadn't run
+anywhere.
+
+"It is," said Mr. Twist briefly.
+
+"Edith!" called the voice, much more peremptorily.
+
+Edith started and half went in, but hesitated and quite stayed out. She
+was gazing at the Twinklers with the same kind eyes her brother had,
+but without the disfiguring spectacles. Astonishment and perplexity and
+anxiety were mixed with the kindness. Amanda also gazed; and if the
+twins hadn't been so sure of their welcome, even they might gradually
+have begun to perceive that it wasn't exactly open-armed.
+
+"Edith--Edward--Amanda," called the voice, this time with unmistakable
+anger.
+
+For one more moment Mr. Twist stood uncertain, looking down at the happy
+confident faces turned up to him exactly, as Anna-Felicitas had just
+said, like flowers turning to the sun. Visions of France flashed before
+him, visions of what he had known, what he had just come back from. His
+friends over there, the gay courage, the helpfulness, the ready,
+uninquiring affection, the breadth of outlook, the quick friendliness,
+the careless assumption that one was decent, that one's intentions were
+good,--why shouldn't he pull some of the splendid stuff into his poor,
+lame little home? Why should he let himself drop back from heights like
+those to the old ridiculous timidities, the miserable habit of avoiding
+the truth? Rebellion, hope, determination, seized Mr. Twist. His eyes
+shone behind his spectacles. His ears were two red flags of revolution.
+He gripped hold of the twins, one under each arm.
+
+"You come right in," he said, louder than he had ever spoken in his
+life. "Edith, see these girls? They're the two Annas. Their other name
+is Twinkler, but Anna'll see you through. They want supper, and they
+want beds, and they want affection, and they're going to get it all. So
+hustle with the food, and send the Cadillac for their baggage, and fix
+up things for them as comfortably as you know how. And as for Mrs.
+Sack," he said, looking first at one twin and then at the other, "if it
+hadn't been for her running away from her worthless husband--I'm
+convinced that fellow Sack is worthless--you might never have come here
+at all. So you see," he finished, laughing at Anna-Rose, "how good comes
+out of evil."
+
+And with the sound of these words preceding him he pushed open the
+dining-room door and marched them in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+At the head of the table sat his mother; long, straight, and grave. She
+was in the seat of authority, the one with its back to the windows and
+its face to the door, from whence she could see what everybody did,
+especially Amanda. Having seen what Amanda did, she then complained to
+Edith. She didn't complain direct to Amanda, because Amanda could and
+did give notice.
+
+Her eyes were fixed on the door. Between it and her was the table,
+covered with admirable things to eat, it being supper and therefore,
+according to a Twist tradition surviving from penurious days, all the
+food, hot and cold, sweet and salt, being brought in together, and
+Amanda only attending when rung for. Half-eaten oyster patties lay on
+Mrs. Twist's plate. In her glass neglected champagne had bubbled itself
+flat. Her hand still held her fork, but loosely, as an object that had
+lost its interest, and her eyes and ears for the last five minutes had
+not departed from the door.
+
+At first she had felt mere resigned annoyance that Amanda shouldn't have
+answered the bell, but she didn't wish to cast a shadow over Edward's
+homecoming by drawing poor Edith's attention before him to how very
+badly she trained the helps, and therefore she said nothing at the
+moment; then, when Edith, going in search of Amanda, had opened the door
+and let in sounds of argument, she was surprised, for she knew no one so
+intimately that they would be likely to call at such an hour; but when
+Edward too leapt up, and went out and stayed out and failed to answer
+her repeated calls, she was first astonished, then indignant, and then
+suddenly was overcome by a cold foreboding.
+
+Mrs. Twist often had forebodings, and they were always cold. They seized
+her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief functions was to
+comfort and reassure her for as long a while each time as was required
+to reach the stage of being able to shake them off. Here was one,
+however, too icily convincing to be shaken off. It fell upon her with
+the swiftness of a revelation. Something unpleasant was going to happen
+to her; something perhaps worse than unpleasant,--disastrous. And
+something immediate.
+
+Those excited voices out in the hall,--they were young, surely, and they
+were feminine. Also they sounded most intimate with Edward. What had he
+been concealing from her? What disgracefulness had penetrated through
+him, through the son the neighbourhood thought so much of, into her very
+home? She was a widow. He was her only son. Impossible to believe he
+would betray so sacred a position, that he whom she had so lovingly and
+proudly welcomed a few hours before would allow his--well, she really
+didn't know what to call them, but anyhow female friends of whom she had
+been told nothing, to enter that place which to every decent human being
+is inviolable, his mother's home. Yet Mrs. Twist did instantly believe
+it.
+
+Then Edward's voice, raised and defiant--surely defiant?--came through
+the crack in the door, and every word he said was quite distinct. Anna;
+supper; affection ... Mrs. Twist sat frozen. And then the door was
+flung open and Edward tumultuously entered, his ears crimson, his face
+as she had never seen it and in each hand, held tightly by the arm, a
+girl.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her.
+
+"Mother--" he began.
+
+"How do you do," said the girls together, and actually with smiles.
+
+Edward had been deceiving her. That whole afternoon how quiet he had
+been, how listless. Quite gentle, quite affectionate, but listless and
+untalkative. She had thought he must be tired; worn out with his long
+journey across from Europe. She had made allowances for him; been
+sympathetic, been considerate. And look at him now. Never had she seen
+him with a face like that. He was--Mrs. Twist groped for the word and
+reluctantly found it--rollicking. Yes; that was the word that exactly
+described him--rollicking. If she hadn't observed his languor up to a
+few minutes ago at supper, and seen him with her own eyes refuse
+champagne and turn his back on cocktails, she would have been forced to
+the conclusion, dreadful though it was to a mother, that he had been
+drinking. And the girls! Two of them. And so young.
+
+Mrs. Twist had known Edward, as she sometimes informed Edith, all his
+life, and had not yet found anything in his morals which was not
+blameless. Watch him with what loving care she might she had found
+nothing; and she was sure her mother's instinct would not have failed
+her. Nevertheless, even with that white past before her--he hadn't told
+her about "Madame Bovary"--she now instantly believed the worst.
+
+It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst. Clark was very small,
+and therefore also very virtuous. Each inhabitant was the careful
+guardian of his neighhour's conduct. Nobody there ever did anything
+that was wrong; there wasn't a chance. But as Nature insists on a
+balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil. They were minds
+active in suspicion. They leapt with an instantaneous agility at the
+worst conclusions. Nothing was ever said in Clark, but everything was
+thought. The older inhabitants, made fast prisoners in their mould of
+virtue by age, watched with jealous care the behaviour of those still
+young enough to attract temptation. The younger ones, brought up in
+inhibitions, settled down to wakefulness in regard to each other.
+Everything was provided and encouraged in Clark, a place of pleasant
+orchards and gentle fields, except the things that had to do with love.
+Husbands were there; and there was a public library, and social
+afternoons, and an Emerson society. The husbands died before the wives,
+being less able to cope with virtue; and a street in Clark of smaller
+houses into which their widows gravitated had been christened by the
+stationmaster--a more worldly man because of his three miles off and all
+the trains--Lamentation Lane.
+
+In this village Mrs. Twist had lived since her marriage, full of dignity
+and honour. As a wife she had been full of it, for the elder Mr. Twist
+had been good even when alive, and as a widow she had been still fuller,
+for the elder Mr. Twist positively improved by being dead. Not a breath
+had ever touched her and her children. Not the most daring and
+distrustful Clark mind had ever thought of her except respectfully. And
+now here was this happening to her; at her age; when she was least able
+to bear it.
+
+She sat in silence, staring with sombre eyes at the three figures.
+
+"Mother--" began Edward again; but was again interrupted by the
+twins, who said together, as they had now got into the habit of saying
+when confronted by silent and surprised Americans, "We've come."
+
+It wasn't that they thought it a particularly good conversational
+opening, it was because silence and surprise on the part of the other
+person seemed to call for explanation on theirs, and they were
+constitutionally desirous of giving all the information in their power.
+
+"How do you do," they then repeated, loosening themselves from Mr. Twist
+and advancing down the room with outstretched hands.
+
+Mr. Twist came with them. "Mother," he said, "these are the Twinkler
+girls. Their name's Twinkler. They---"
+
+Freed as he felt he was from his old bonds, determined as he felt he was
+on emulating the perfect candour and simplicity of the twins and the
+perfect candour and simplicity of his comrades in France, his mother's
+dead want of the smallest reaction to this announcement tripped him up
+for a moment and prevented his going on.
+
+But nothing ever prevented the twins going on. If they were pleased and
+excited they went on with cheerful gusto, and if they were unnerved and
+frightened they still went on,--perhaps even more volubly, anxiously
+seeking cover behind a multitude of words.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not yet unnerved and frightened them, because they were
+too much delighted that they had got to her at all. The relief Anna-Rose
+experienced at having safely piloted that difficult craft, the clumsy if
+adorable Columbus, into a respectable Port was so immense that it
+immediately vented itself in words of warmest welcome to the lady in the
+chair to her own home.
+
+"We're _so_ glad to see you here," she said, smiling till her dimple
+seemed to be everywhere at once hardly able to refrain from giving the
+lady a welcome hug instead of just inhospitably shaking her hand. She
+couldn't even shake her hand, however, because it still held, immovably,
+the fork. "It would have been too awful," Anna-Rose therefore finished,
+putting the heartiness of the handshake she wanted to give into her
+voice instead, "if _you_ had happened to have run away too."
+
+"As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband," Anna-Felicitas explained,
+smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who actually having got
+oyster patties on her plate hadn't bothered to eat them. "But of course
+you couldn't," she went on, remembering in time to be tactful and make a
+Sympathetic reference to the lady's weeds; which, indeed, considering
+Mr. Twist had told her and Anna-Rose that his father had died when he
+was ten, nearly a quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their
+heads up astonishingly and stayed very fresh. And true to her German
+training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose in her
+contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist's right hand, fork
+and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious kiss of a well
+brought up Junker.
+
+Like Amanda's, Mrs. Twist's life had been up to this empty of Junkers.
+She had never even heard of them till the war, and pronounced their
+name, and so did the rest of Clark following her lead, as if it had been
+junket, only with an r instead of a t at the end. She didn't therefore
+recognize the action; but even she, outraged as she was, could not but
+see its grace. And looking up in sombre hostility at the little head
+bent over her hand and at the dark line of eyelashes on the the flushed
+face, she thought swiftly, "_She's_ the one."
+
+"You see, mother," said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously and
+sitting on it with determination, "it's like this. (Sit down, you two,
+and get eating. Start on anything you see in this show that hits your
+fancy. Edith'll be fetching you something hot, I expect--soup, or
+something--but meanwhile here's enough stuff to go on with.) You see,
+mother--" he resumed, turning squarely to her, while the twins obeyed
+him with immense alacrity and sat down and began to eat whatever
+happened to be nearest them, "these two girls--well, to start with
+they're twins--"
+
+Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother's face. She couldn't conceive
+why he should lie. Twins the world over matched in size and features; it
+was notorious that they did. Also, it was the custom for them to match
+in age, and the tall one of these was at least a year older than the
+other one. But still, thought Mrs. Twist, let that pass. She would
+suffer whatever it was she had to suffer in silence.
+
+The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating. Perfectly
+at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved with an easy
+naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous. But still--let that
+too pass. These strangers helped themselves and helped each other, as if
+everything belonged to them; and the tall one actually asked her--her,
+the mistress of the house--if she could get _her_ anything. Well, let
+that pass too.
+
+"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.
+
+He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous hold
+one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words;
+what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in
+one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her quickly
+wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could
+do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him
+till he was seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking
+off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's childhood.
+
+Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster
+himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to
+come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the
+sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he
+rejected that as priggish.
+
+"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across them--across these
+two girls--they're both called Anna, by the way, which seems confusing
+but isn't really--I came across them on the boat----"
+
+He again stopped dead.
+
+Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed on
+Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of oyster
+patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what Mrs. Twist was
+accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas was behaving badly
+with the patties, and not even attempting to conceal, as the decent do,
+how terribly they interested her.
+
+"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her eyes on her
+son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he had told her
+that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody except men. Another
+lie. Well, let that pass too ...
+
+Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming spectacles.
+He well knew the weakness of his position from his mother's point of
+view; but why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling,
+narrow one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
+stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the old
+system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid
+offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive. Let her for
+once take the chance offered her of doing a big, kind thing. But as he
+stared at her it entered his mind that he couldn't very well start
+moving her heart on behalf of the twins in their presence. He couldn't
+tell her they were orphans, alone in the world, helpless, poor, and so
+unfortunately German, with them sitting there. If he did, there would be
+trouble. The twins seemed absorbed for the moment in getting fed, but he
+had no doubt their ears were attentive, and at the first suggestion of
+sympathy being invoked for them they would begin to say a few of those
+things he was so much afraid his mother mightn't be able to understand.
+Or, if she understood, appreciate.
+
+He decided that he would be quiet until Edith came back, and then ask
+his mother to go to the drawing-room with him, and while Edith was
+looking after the Annas he would, well out of earshot, explain them to
+his mother, describe their situation, commend them to her patience and
+her love. He sat silent therefore, wishing extraordinarily hard that
+Edith would be quick.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas's eyes were upon him now, as well as his mother's.
+"Is it possible," she asked with her own peculiar gentleness, balancing
+a piece of patty on her fork, "that you haven't yet mentioned us to your
+mother?"
+
+And Anna-Rose, struck in her turn at such an omission, paused too with
+food on the way to her mouth, and said, "And we such friends?"
+
+"Almost, as it were, still red-not from being with you?" said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Both the twins looked at Mrs. Twist in their surprise.
+
+"I thought the first thing everybody did when they got back to their
+mother," said Anna-Rose, addressing her, "was to tell her everything
+from the beginning."
+
+Mrs. Twist, after an instant's astonishment at this unexpected support,
+bowed her head--it could hardly be called a nod--in her son's direction.
+"You see--" the movement seemed to say, "even these ..."
+
+"And ever since the first day at sea," said Anna-Felicitas, also
+addressing Mrs. Twist, "up to as recently as eleven o'clock last night,
+he has been what I think can be quite accurately described as our
+faithful two-footed companion."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "As much as that we've been friends. Practically
+inseparable."
+
+"So that it really is _very_ surprising," said Anna-Felicitas to Mr.
+Twist, "that you didn't tell your mother about us."
+
+Mr. Twist got up. He wouldn't wait for Edith. It was unhealthy in that
+room.
+
+He took his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very wise,
+you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded, "but you may
+take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the
+drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
+ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the door,
+"but confound it all, I've only been home about a couple of hours."
+
+"Five," said Mrs. Twist.
+
+"Five then. What's five? No time at all."
+
+"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say confound,
+Edward?"
+
+"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he broke
+loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the
+drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his
+bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white
+wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled
+together as tight as it would go.
+
+His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply
+not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak,
+after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an
+incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she
+hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him,
+but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their children. It was
+stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental
+rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross
+things--she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could
+remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such
+things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode.
+Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards
+admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment,
+and that it was evident these girls were not like that.
+
+But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he
+had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as
+if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the
+twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them,
+and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy,
+as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that
+moment was so hostile to Germans. Then, continuing in candour, he had
+told his mother that here was her chance of doing a fine and beautiful
+thing, and it was at this point that Mrs. Twist suddenly began, on her
+side, to talk.
+
+She had listened practically in silence to the rest; had only started
+when he explained the girls' nationality; but when he came to offering
+her these girls as the great opportunity of her life to do something
+really good at last, she, who felt she had been doing nothing else but
+noble and beautiful things, and doing them with the most single-minded
+devotion to duty and the most consistent disregard of inclination, could
+keep silence no longer. Had she not borne her great loss without a
+murmur? Had she not devoted all her years to bringing up her son to be a
+good man? Had she ever considered herself? Had she ever flagged in her
+efforts to set an example of patience in grief, of dignity in
+misfortune? She began to speak. And just as amazed as she had been at
+the things this strange, unknown son had been saying to her and at the
+manner of their delivery, so was he amazed at the things this strange,
+unknown mother was saying to him, and at the manner of their delivery.
+
+Yet his amazement was not so great after all as hers. Because for years,
+away down hidden somewhere inside him, he had doubted his mother; for
+years he had, shocked at himself, covered up and trampled on these
+unworthy doubts indignantly. He had doubted her unselfishness; he had
+doubted her sympathy and kindliness; he had even doubted her honesty,
+her ordinary honesty with money and accounts; and lately, before he went
+to Europe, he had caught himself thinking she was cruel. Nevertheless
+this unexpected naked justification of his doubts was shattering to him.
+
+But Mrs. Twist had never doubted Edward. She thought she knew him inside
+out. She had watched him develop. Watched him during the long years of
+his unconsciousness. She had been quite secure; and rather disposed,
+also somewhere down inside her, to a contempt for him, so easy had he
+been to manage, so ready to do everything she wished. Now it appeared
+that she no more knew Edward than if he had been a stranger in the
+street.
+
+The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible
+thing to them both. Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger
+generation to support him: he couldn't shrug his shoulder and take
+comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his
+mother's fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the
+belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black
+pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So
+naturally kind was he--weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at
+him--that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had
+been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and
+affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think
+it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only
+he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the
+painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
+humiliated.
+
+That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his
+room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen,
+trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the
+future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope for that yet. The future
+seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that
+he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the
+other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then
+turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of
+life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or
+they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and
+she had said, "I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
+she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much
+of it in him?
+
+Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could
+fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of
+suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through
+his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the
+twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and
+goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave
+them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an
+innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of
+his mother's age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his
+instinct knew it.
+
+The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, "You
+have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of
+those girls."
+
+And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find,
+search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother's point of view.
+It simply wasn't true. It simply was delusion.
+
+Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn't try
+to, it was so manifestly unforgivable. All she could do, faced by this
+bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God. Sternly, as he flung out of
+the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she
+used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to
+herself she must leave her son to God. God knew. God would judge. And
+Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.
+
+Left alone in the drawing-room on this terrible night of her second
+great bereavement, Mrs. Twist was yet able, she was thankful to feel, to
+resolve she would try to protect her son as long as she could from
+Clark. From God she could not, if she would, protect him; but she would
+try to protect him even now, as she had always protected him, from
+earthly harm and hurt. Clark would, however, surely know in time,
+protect as she might, and judge between her and Edward. God knew
+already, and was already judging. God and Clark.... Poor Edward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The twins, who had gone to bed at half-past nine, shepherded by Edith,
+in the happy conviction that they had settled down comfortably for some
+time, were surprised to find at breakfast that they hadn't.
+
+They had taken a great fancy to Edith, in spite of a want of restfulness
+on her part that struck them while they were finishing their supper, and
+to which at last they drew her attention. She was so kind, and so like
+Mr. Twist; but though she looked at them with hospitable eyes and wore
+an expression of real benevolence, it didn't escape their notice that
+she seemed to be listening to something that wasn't, anyhow, them, and
+to be expecting something that didn't, anyhow, happen. She went several
+times to the door through which her brother and mother had disappeared,
+and out into whatever part of the house lay beyond it, and when she came
+back after a minute or two was as wanting in composure as ever.
+
+At last, finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any
+real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was
+impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and
+inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the
+inhabitants of America, to keep on being somewhere else. Edith smiled
+abstractedly at them, said nothing, and went out again.
+
+She was longer away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other
+things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they
+hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those
+they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
+and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there
+weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring
+listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed
+murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you
+were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
+now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of them.
+
+Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very
+tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their
+rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she
+was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.
+
+The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to
+seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the
+ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were
+expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for
+them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that
+astonished Edith, who didn't know how naturally Junkers make speeches,
+she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it
+was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy
+indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr.
+Twist's voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately
+as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.
+
+Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.
+
+They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each
+bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and
+pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur's, and at
+home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all. The baths there had been
+vessels brought into one's bedroom every night, into which servants next
+morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water
+into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in
+possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and
+plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
+conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other
+countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from
+Pomerania.
+
+Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the
+ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she
+went to school, and no doubt still was. She became more thoughtful than
+ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it?
+Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if
+they didn't happen to be one's own dear brother's _protegees_. And when
+they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath,
+she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed
+them good-night.
+
+Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,--one of the
+satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn't argue with you.
+Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things,
+thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which,
+being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.
+
+"You remind me so of Mr. Twist," murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as
+Edith tucked her up and kissed her.
+
+"You do all the sorts of things he does," murmured Anna-Rose, also
+sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite
+of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical
+faith. Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the
+drawing-room door a little surprised.
+
+At breakfast the twins learnt to their astonishment that, though
+appearances all pointed the other way what they were really doing was
+not being stationary at all, but merely having a night's lodging and
+breakfast between, as it were, two trains.
+
+Mr. Twist, who looked pale and said shortly when the twins remarked
+solicitously on it that he felt pale, briefly announced the fact.
+
+"What?" exclaimed Anna-Rose, staring at Mr. Twist and then at
+Edith--Mrs. Twist, they were told, was breakfasting in bed--"Why, we've
+unpacked."
+
+"You will re-pack," said Mr. Twist.
+
+They found difficulty in believing their ears.
+
+"But we've settled in," remonstrated Anna-Felicitas, after an astonished
+pause.
+
+"You will settle out," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He frowned. He didn't look at them, he frowned at his own teapot. He had
+made up his mind to be very short with the Annas until they were safely
+out of the house, and not permit himself to be entangled by them in
+controversy. Also, he didn't want to look at them if he could help it.
+He was afraid that if he did he might be unable not to take them both in
+his arms and beg their pardon for the whole horridness of the world.
+
+But if he didn't look at them, they looked at him. Four round, blankly
+surprised eyes were fixed, he knew, unblinkingly on him.
+
+"We're seeing you in quite a new light," said Anna-Rose at last,
+troubled and upset.
+
+"Maybe," said Mr. Twist, frowning at his teapot.
+
+"Perhaps you will be so good," said Anna-Felicitas stiffly, for at all
+times she hated being stirred up and uprooted, "as to tell us where you
+think we're going to."
+
+"Because," said Anna-Rose, her voice trembling a little, not only at the
+thought of fresh responsibilities, but also with a sense of outraged
+faith, "our choice of residence, as you may have observed, is strictly
+limited."
+
+Mr. Twist, who had spent an hour before breakfast with Edith, whose eyes
+were red, informed them that they were _en route_ for California.
+
+"To those other people," said Anna-Rose. "I see."
+
+She held her head up straight.
+
+"Well, I expect they'll be very glad to see us," she said after a
+silence; and proceeded, her chin in the air, to look down her nose,
+because she didn't want Mr. Twist, or Edith or Anna-Felicitas, to notice
+that her eyes had gone and got tears in them. She angrily wished she
+hadn't got such damp eyes. They were no better than swamps, she
+thought--undrained swamps; and directly fate's foot came down a little
+harder than usual, up oozed the lamentable liquid. Not thus should the
+leader of an expedition behave. Not thus, she was sure, did the original
+Christopher. She pulled herself together; and after a minute's struggle
+was able to leave off looking down her nose.
+
+But meanwhile Anna-Felicitas had informed Mr. Twist with gentle dignity
+that he was obviously tired of them.
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Felicitas persisted. "In view of the facts," she said gently, "I'm
+afraid your denial carries no weight."
+
+"The facts," said Mr. Twist, taking up his teapot and examining it with
+care, "are that I'm coming with you."
+
+"Oh are you," said Anna-Felicitas much more briskly; and it was here
+that Anna-Rose's eyes dried up.
+
+"That rather dishes your theory," said Mr. Twist, still turning his
+teapot about in his hands. "Or would if it didn't happen that I--well, I
+happen to have some business to do in California, and I may as well do
+it now as later. Still, I could have gone by a different route or train,
+so you see your theory _is_ rather dished, isn't it?"
+
+"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if you
+really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere
+else so soon?"
+
+Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of
+his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said shortly, "but
+you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts.
+I'm going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
+That's all you know, and all you need to know."
+
+"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose
+
+"And if our friends have run away?" suggested Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with
+a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in America?"
+
+"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the
+Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if
+they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves
+to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth,
+almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left
+alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the
+mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war
+began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
+Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
+retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the
+days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in
+Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine
+trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at the elusiveness
+of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be caught up with and at the
+trouble it was giving them.
+
+They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to
+have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already
+however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other
+that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their
+real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their
+plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't even know it existed. It was a
+side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped
+in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had hoped to stay there
+some time, perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their
+stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how
+new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go
+to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of
+Clark at a moment's notice.
+
+"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the train and
+have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as the car moved
+away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the
+doorstep.
+
+Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent her many
+messages.
+
+"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.
+
+But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he really
+began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day, and the next
+morning in New York where he took them to the bank their L200 was in and
+saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in
+the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California--Mr.
+Twist was taciturn.
+
+They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening with
+cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in their
+compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that their
+spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till breakfast next
+morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted a little; and as
+the day went on it lifted still more. They were going to be three days
+together in that train, and it would be impossible for Mr. Twist, they
+were sure, to go on being taciturn as long as that. It wasn't his
+nature. His nature was conversational. And besides, shut up like that in
+a train, the sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want
+to talk.
+
+So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
+observation car, though there was nothing to observe except limitless
+flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins suggested that he
+should now begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was
+bound to get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that
+his mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
+with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously long
+ago, when they landed in America.
+
+"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting another
+cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week yet."
+
+And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty serious
+havoc in America considering they had only been in it five days. He and
+his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at Clark sitting
+there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his return, with
+nothing at all that he could see to look forward to and live for except
+the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as duty; every plan upset;
+the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his sister and of himself
+completely altered,--it was a pretty big bag in the time, he thought,
+flinging the match back towards Chicago.
+
+Mr. Twist felt sore. He felt like somebody who had had a bad tumble, and
+is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that these great ruptures
+cannot take place without aches and doubts. He ached, and he doubted and
+he also knew through his aches and doubts that he was free at last from
+what of late years he had so grievously writhed under--the shame of
+pretence. And the immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely,
+the Annas.
+
+It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had happened; and
+who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark and the immediate
+effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn't have lapsed after all,
+in spite of the feelings and determinations he had brought back with
+him from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and
+gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when
+he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He might have
+trailed on like that for years--Mr. Twist didn't like the picture of his
+own weakness, but he was determined to look at himself as he
+was--trailed along languidly when he was at home, living another life
+when he was away, getting what he absolutely must have, the irreducible
+minimum of personal freedom necessary to sanity, by means of small and
+shabby deceits. My goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of
+the littleness of them!
+
+He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas sitting
+alongside him. His heart suddenly grew warm within him. They had on the
+blue caps again which made them look so bald and cherubic, and their
+eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines of rails that went back
+and back to a point in the distance. The dear little things; the dear,
+dear little things,--so straightforward, so blessedly straight and
+simple, thought Mr. Twist. Fancy his mother losing a chance like this.
+Fancy _anybody_, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an
+opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.
+
+The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned and
+looked at him. When they saw his expression they knew the cloud had
+lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of welcome.
+
+"It's pleasant to see you back again," said Anna-Felicitas heartily, who
+was next to him.
+
+"We've missed you very much," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"It hasn't been like the same place, the world hasn't," said
+Anna-Felicitas, "since you've been away."
+
+"Since you walked out of the dining-room that night at Clark," said
+Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course we know you can't always be with us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Which we deeply regret," interjected Anna-Rose.
+
+"But while you are with us," said Anna-Felicitas, "for these last few
+days, I would suggest that we should be happy. As happy as we used to be
+on the _St. Luke_ when we weren't being sea-sick." And she thought she
+might even go so far as to enjoy hearing the "Ode to Dooty," now.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, leaning forward. "In three days we shall have
+disappeared into the maw of the Delloggs. Do let us be happy while we
+can. Who knows what their maw will be like? But whatever it's like," she
+added firmly, "we're going to stick in it."
+
+"And perhaps," said Anna-Felicitas, "now that you're a little restored
+to your normal condition, you'll tell us what has been the matter."
+
+"For it's quite clear," said Anna-Rose, "that something _has_ been the
+matter."
+
+"We've been talking it over," said Anna-Felicitas, "and putting two and
+two together, and perhaps you'll tell us what it was, and then we shall
+know if we're right."
+
+"Perhaps I will," said Mr. Twist, cogitating, as he continued
+benevolently to gaze at them. "Let's see--" He hesitated, and pushed
+his hat off his forehead. "I wonder if you'd understand--"
+
+"We'll give our minds to it," Anna-Felicitas assured him.
+
+"These caps make us look more stupid than we are," Anna-Rose assured
+him, deducing her own appearance from that of Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Encouraged, but doubtful of their capabilities of comprehension on
+this particular point, Mr. Twist embarked rather gingerly on his
+explanations. He was going to be candid from now on for the rest of his
+days, but the preliminary plunges were, he found, after all a little
+difficult. Even with the pellucidly candid Annas, all ready with ears
+pricked up attentively and benevolently and minds impartial, he found it
+difficult. It was because, on the subject of mothers, he feared he was
+up against their one prejudice. He felt rather than knew that their
+attitude on this one point might be uncompromising,--mothers were
+mothers, and there was an end of it; that sort of attitude, coupled with
+extreme reprobation of himself for supposing anything else.
+
+He was surprised and relieved to find he was wrong. Directly they got
+wind of the line his explanations were taking, which was very soon for
+they were giving their minds to it as they promised and Mr. Twist's
+hesitations were illuminating, they interrupted.
+
+"So we were right," they said to each other.
+
+"But you don't know yet what I'm going to say," said Mr. Twist. "I've
+only started on the preliminaries."
+
+"Yes we do. You fell out with your mother," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Quarrelled," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding
+
+"We didn't think so at the time," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark," said
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had
+happened."
+
+Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only say
+"Oh." Then he said, "And you're terribly shocked, I suppose."
+
+"Oh no," they said airily and together.
+
+"No?"
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You see--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"You see, as a general principle," said Anna-Felicitas, "it's
+reprehensible to quarrel with one's mother."
+
+"But we've not been able to escape observing--" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"In the course of our brief and inglorious career," put in
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"--that there are mothers and mothers," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist; and as they didn't go on he presently added,
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh, that's all," said the twins, once more airily and together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+After this brief _eclaircissement_ the rest of the journey was happy.
+Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to California and not be
+happy.
+
+Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up or no
+break up of his home he couldn't but have a pleasant feeling of
+adventure. Every now and then the realization of this feeling gave his
+conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke. He was having the
+best of it in this business; he was the party in the quarrel who went
+away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its
+corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who
+had never heard of him. Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on
+to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there
+would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has
+burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side,
+naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was
+gone, and she could say and do nothing more to him. In a quarrel,
+thought Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the
+desert at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint
+colours,--in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the best of
+it. Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who don't know
+him and haven't yet judged and condemned him are ready to be friendly.
+He must, of course, go far enough; not stay near at hand in some
+familiar place and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful. Well,
+he was going far enough. Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far
+as he could go. Certainly he was having the best of it in being the one
+in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself cynically
+thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then, take care to be
+the one who did go.
+
+But the desert has a peculiarly exhilarating air. It came in everywhere,
+and seemed to tickle him out of the uneasy mood proper to one who has
+been cutting himself off for good and all from his early home. For the
+life of him he couldn't help feeling extraordinarily light and free.
+Edith--yes, there was Edith, but some day he would make up to Edith for
+everything. There was no helping her now: she was fast bound in misery
+and iron, and didn't even seem to know it. So would he have been, he
+supposed, if he had never left home at all. As it was, it was bound to
+come, this upheaval. Just the mere fact of inevitable growth would have
+burst the bands sooner or later. There oughtn't, of course, to have been
+any bands; or, there being bands, he ought long ago to have burst them.
+
+He pulled his kind slack mouth firmly together and looked determined.
+Long ago, repeated Mr. Twist, shaking his head at his own weak past.
+Well, it was done at last, and never again--never, never again, he said
+to himself, sniffing in through his open window the cold air of the
+desert at sunrise.
+
+By that route, the Santa Fe, it is not till two or three hours before
+you get to the end of the journey that summer meets you. It is waiting
+for you at a place called San Bernardino. There is no trace of it
+before. Up to then you are still in October; and then you get to the
+top of the pass, and with a burst it is June,--brilliant, windless,
+orange-scented.
+
+The twins and Mr. Twist were in the restaurant-car lunching when the
+miracle happened. Suddenly the door opened and in came summer, with a
+great warm breath of roses. In a moment the car was invaded by the scent
+of flowers and fruit and of something else strange and new and very
+aromatic. The electric fans were set twirling, the black waiters began
+to perspire, the passengers called for cold things to eat, and the twins
+pulled off their knitted caps and jerseys.
+
+From that point on to the end of the line in Los Angeles the twins could
+only conclude they were in heaven. It was the light that did it, the
+extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there were orchards after
+orchards of orange trees covered with fruit, white houses smothered in
+flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall groups of eucalyptus trees
+giving an impression of elegant nakedness, long lines of pepper trees
+with frail fern-like branches, and these things continued for the rest
+of the way; but they would have been as nothing without that beautiful,
+great bland light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and
+their July days in England, but had not yet seen anything like this.
+Here was summer without sultriness, without gnats, mosquitoes,
+threatening thunderstorms, or anything to spoil it; it was summer as it
+might be in the Elysian fields, perfectly clear, and calm, and radiant.
+When the train stopped they could see how not a breath of wind stirred
+the dust on the quiet white roads, and the leaves of the magnolia trees
+glistened motionless in the sun. The train went slowly and stopped
+often, for there seemed to be one long succession of gardens and
+villages. After the empty, wind-driven plains they had come through,
+those vast cold expanses without a house or living creature in sight,
+what a laughing plenty, what a gracious fruitfulness, was here. And when
+they went back to their compartment it too was full of summer
+smells,--the smell of fruit, and roses, and honey.
+
+For the first time since the war began and with it their wanderings, the
+twins felt completely happy. It was as though the loveliness wrapped
+them round and they stretched themselves in it and forgot. No fear of
+the future, no doubt of it at all, they thought, gazing out of the
+window, the soft air patting their faces, could possibly bother them
+here. They never, for instance, could be cold here, or go hungry. A
+great confidence in life invaded them. The Delloggs, sun-soaked and
+orange-fed for years in this place, couldn't but be gentle too, and kind
+and calm. Impossible not to get a sort of refulgence oneself, they
+thought, living here, and absorb it and give it out again. They pictured
+the Delloggs as bland pillars of light coming forward effulgently to
+greet them, and bathing them in the beams of their hospitality. And the
+feeling of responsibility and anxiety that had never left Anna-Rose
+since she last saw Aunt Alice dropped off her in this place, and she
+felt that sun and oranges, backed by L200 in the bank, would be
+difficult things for misfortune to get at.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he was even more entranced than the twins as he gazed
+out of the window, for being older he had had time to see more ugly
+things, had got more used to them and to taking them as principally
+making up life. He stared at what he saw, and thought with wonder of his
+mother's drawing-room at Clark, of its gloomy, velvet-upholstered
+discomforts, of the cold mist creeping round the house, and of that
+last scene in it, with her black figure in the middle of it, tall and
+thin and shaking with bitterness. He had certainly been in that
+drawing-room and heard her so terribly denouncing him, but it was very
+difficult to believe; it seemed so exactly like a nightmare, and this
+the happy normal waking up in the morning.
+
+They all three were in the highest spirits when they got out at Los
+Angeles and drove across to the Southern Pacific station--the name alone
+made their hearts leap--to catch the afternoon train on to where the
+Delloggs lived, and their spirits were the kind one can imagine in
+released souls on their first arriving in paradise,--high, yet subdued;
+happy, but reverential; a sort of rollicking awe. They were subdued, in
+fact, by beauty. And the journey along the edge of the Pacific to
+Acapulco, where the Delloggs lived, encouraged and developed this kind
+of spirits, for the sun began to set, and, as the train ran for miles
+close to the water with nothing but a strip of sand between it and the
+surf, they saw their first Pacific sunset. It happened to be even in
+that land of wonderful sunsets an unusually wonderful one, and none of
+the three had ever seen anything in the least like it. They could but
+sit silent and stare. The great sea, that little line of lovely islands
+flung down on it like a chain of amethysts, that vast flame of sky, that
+heaving water passionately reflecting it, and on the other side, through
+the other windows, a sharp wall of black mountains,--it was
+fantastically beautiful, like something in a poem or a dream.
+
+By the time they got to Acapulco it was dark. Night followed upon the
+sunset with a suddenness that astonished the twins, used to the
+leisurely methods of twilight on the Baltic; and the only light in the
+country outside the town as they got near it was the light from myriads
+of great stars.
+
+No Delloggs were at the station, but the twins were used now to not
+being met and had not particularly expected them; besides, Mr. Twist was
+with them this time, and he would see that if the Delloggs didn't come
+to them they would get safely to the Delloggs.
+
+The usual telegram had been sent announcing their arrival, and the
+taxi-driver, who seemed to know the Dellogg house well when Mr. Twist
+told him where they wanted to go, apparently also thought it natural
+they should want to go exactly there. In him, indeed, there did seem to
+be a trace of expecting them,--almost as if he had been told to look out
+for them; for hardly had Mr. Twist begun to give him the address than
+glancing at the twins he said, "I guess you're wanting Mrs. Dellogg";
+and got down and actually opened the door for them, an attention so
+unusual in the taxi-drivers the twins had up to then met in America that
+they were more than ever convinced that nothing in the way of
+unfriendliness or unkindness could stand up against sun and oranges.
+
+"Relations?" he asked them through the window as he shut the door gently
+and carefully, while Mr. Twist went with a porter to see about the
+luggage.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Relations of Delloggses?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "Friends."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Ah," said the driver, leaning with both his arms on the window-sill in
+the friendliest possible manner, and chewing gum and eyeing them with
+thoughtful interest.
+
+Then he said, after a pause during which his jaw rolled regularly from
+side to side and the twins watched the rolling with an interest equal to
+his interest in them, "From Los Angeles?"
+
+"No," said Anna-Rose. "From New York."
+
+"At least," amended Anna-Felicitas, "practically."
+
+"Well I call that a real compliment," said the driver slowly and
+deliberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that way,
+and without being relations--I call that a real compliment, and a
+friendship that's worth something. Anybody can come along from Los
+Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come from New York," and he eyed
+them now with admiration.
+
+The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
+fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them quaint.
+
+"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.
+
+"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.
+
+The twins thought this over.
+
+The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out very
+white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before getting to Los
+Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in what Anna-Felicitas
+called their favourable-impression-on-arrival garments,--those garments
+Aunt Alice had bought for them on their mother's death, expressing the
+wave of sympathy in which she found herself momentarily engulfed by
+going to a very good and expensive dressmaker; and in the black
+perfection of these clothes the twins looked like two well-got-up and
+very attractive young crows. These were the clothes they had put on on
+leaving the ship, and had been so obviously admired in, to the
+uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it was in these clothes that
+they had arrived within range of Mr. Sack's distracted but still
+appreciative vision, and in them that they later roused the suspicions
+and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was in these clothes that they were now
+about to start what they hoped would be a lasting friendship with the
+Delloggs, and remembering they had them on they decided that perhaps it
+wasn't only sun and oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but
+also the effect on him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.
+
+This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old friends,
+then," he remarked, after a period of reflective jaw-rolling. "Must be,
+to come all that way."
+
+"Well--not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her respect for
+truth and her gratification at being thought old enough to be somebody's
+old friend.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in her
+respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."
+
+The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
+observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said, "You'll
+miss Mr. Dellogg."
+
+"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up her ears, "Shall we?"
+
+"We don't mind missing Mr. Dellogg," said Anna-Felicitas. "It's Mrs.
+Dellogg we wouldn't like to miss."
+
+The driver looked puzzled.
+
+"Yes--that would be too awful," said Anna-Rose, who didn't want a
+repetition of the Sack dilemma. "You did say," she asked anxiously,
+"didn't you, that we were going to miss Mr. Dellogg?"
+
+The driver, looking first at one of them and then at the other, said,
+"Well, and who wouldn't?"
+
+And this answer seemed so odd to the twins that they could only as they
+stared at him suppose it was some recondite form of American slang,
+provided with its own particular repartee which, being unacquainted with
+the language, they were not in a position to supply. Perhaps, they
+thought, it was of the same order of mysterious idioms as in England
+such sentences as I don't think, and Not half,--forms of speech whose
+exact meaning and proper use had never been mastered by them.
+
+"There won't be another like Mr. Dellogg in these parts for many a
+year," said the driver, shaking his head. "Ah no. And that's so."
+
+"Isn't he coming back?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+The driver's jaws ceased for a moment to roll. He stared at Anna-Rose
+with unblinking eyes. Then he turned his head away and spat along the
+station, and then, again fixing his eyes on Anna-Rose, he said, "Young
+gurl, you may be a spiritualist, and a table-turner, and a
+psychic-rummager, and a ghost-fancier, and anything else you please, and
+get what comfort you can out of your coming backs and the rest of the
+blessed truck, but I know better. And what I know, being a Christian, is
+that once a man's dead he's either in heaven or he's in hell, and
+whichever it is he's in, in it he stops."
+
+Anna-Felicitas was the first to speak. "Are we to understand," she
+inquired, "that Mr. Dellogg--" She broke off.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg is--" Anna-Rose continued for her, but broke off
+too.
+
+"That Mr. Dellogg isn't--" resumed Anna-Felicitas with determination,
+"well, that he isn't alive?"
+
+"Alive?" repeated the driver. He let his hand drop heavily on the
+window-sill. "If that don't beat all," he said, staring at her. "What do
+you come his funeral for, then?"
+
+"His funeral?"
+
+"Yes, if you don't know that he ain't?"
+
+"Ain't--isn't what?"
+
+"Alive, of course. No, I mean dead. You're getting me all tangled up."
+
+"But we haven't."
+
+"But we didn't."
+
+"We had a letter from him only last month."
+
+"At least, an uncle we've got had."
+
+"And he didn't say a word in it about being dead--I mean, there was no
+sign of his being going to be--I mean, he wasn't a bit ill or anything
+in his letter--"
+
+"Now see here," interrupted the driver, sarcasm in his voice, "it ain't
+exactly usual is it--I put it to you squarely, and say it ain't
+_exactly_ usual (there may be exceptions, but it ain't exactly _usual_)
+to come to a gentleman's funeral, and especially not all the way from
+New York, without some sort of an idea that he's dead. Some sort of a
+_general_ idea, anyhow," he added still more sarcastically; for his
+admiration for the twins had given way to doubt and discomfort, and a
+suspicion was growing on him that with incredible and horrible levity,
+seeing what the moment was and what the occasion, they were filling up
+the time waiting for their baggage, among which were no doubt funeral
+wreaths, by making game of him.
+
+"Gurls like you shouldn't behave that way," he went on, his voice
+aggrieved as he remembered how sympathetically he had got down from his
+seat when he saw their mourning clothes and tired white faces and helped
+them into his taxi,--only for genuine mourners, real sorry ones, going
+to pay their last respects to a gentleman like Mr. Dellogg, would he, a
+free American have done that. "Nicely dressed gurls, well-cared for
+gurls. Daughters of decent people. Here you come all this way, I guess
+sent by your parents to represent them properly, and properly fitted out
+in nice black clothes and all, and you start making fun. Pretending.
+Playing kind of hide-and-seek with me about the funeral. Messing me up
+in a lot of words. I don't like it. I'm a father myself, and I don't
+like it. I don't like to see daughters going on like this when their
+father ain't looking. It don't seem decent to me. But I suppose you
+Easterners--"
+
+The twins, however, were not listening. They were looking at each other
+in dismay. How extraordinary, how terrible, the way Uncle Arthur's
+friends gave out. They seemed to melt away at one's mere approach.
+People who had been living with their husbands all their lives ran away
+just as the twins came on the scene; people who had been alive all their
+lives went and died, also at that very moment. It almost seemed as if
+directly anybody knew that they, the Twinklers, were coming to stay with
+them they became bent on escape. They could only look at each other in
+stricken astonishment at this latest blow of Fate. They heard no more of
+what the driver said. They could only sit and look at each other.
+
+And then Mr. Twist came hurrying across from the baggage office, wiping
+his forehead, for the night was hot. Behind him came the porter,
+ruefully balancing the piled-up grips on his truck.
+
+"I'm sorry to have been so--" began Mr. Twist, smiling cheerfully: but
+he stopped short in his sentence and left off smiling when he saw the
+expression in the four eyes fixed on him. "What has happened?" he asked
+quickly.
+
+"Only what we might have expected," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's dead," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"You don't say," said Mr. Twist; and after a pause he said again, "You
+don't say."
+
+Then he recovered himself. "I'm very sorry to hear it, of course," he
+said briskly, picking himself up, as it were, from this sudden and
+unexpected tumble, "but I don't see that it matters to you so long as
+Mrs. Dellogg isn't dead too."
+
+"Yes, but--" began Anna-Rose.
+
+"Mr. Dellogg isn't _very_ dead, you see," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist looked from them to the driver, but finding no elucidation
+there and only disapproval, looked back again.
+
+"He isn't dead and settled _down_," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not _that_ sort of being dead," said Anna-Felicitas. "He's _just_
+dead."
+
+"Just got to the stage when he has a funeral," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"His funeral, it seems, is imminent," said Anna-Felicitas. "Did you not
+give us to understand," she asked, turning to the driver, "that it was
+imminent?"
+
+"I don't know about imminent," said the driver, who wasn't going to
+waste valuable time with words like that, "but it's to-morrow."
+
+"And you see what that means for us," said Anna-Felicitas, turning to
+Mr. Twist.
+
+Mr. Twist did.
+
+He again wiped his forehead, but not this time because the night was
+hot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Manifestly it is impossible to thrust oneself into a house where there
+is going to be a funeral next day, even if one has come all the way from
+New York and has nowhere else to go. Equally manifestly it is impossible
+to thrust oneself into it after the funeral till a decent interval has
+elapsed. But what the devil, Mr. Twist asked himself in language become
+regrettably natural to him since his sojourn at the front, is a decent
+interval?
+
+This Mr. Twist asked himself late that night, pacing up and down the
+sea-shore in the warm and tranquil darkness in front of the Cosmopolitan
+Hotel, while the twins, utterly tired out by their journey and the
+emotions at the end of it, crept silently into bed.
+
+How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover, that
+is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning is it
+legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations incurred
+before she was a widow,--with, in fact, the Twinklers? Delicacy itself
+would shrink from doing it under a week thought Mr. Twist, or even under
+a fortnight, or even if you came to that, under a month; and meanwhile
+what was he to do with the Twinklers?
+
+Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he wouldn't
+have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he so passionately
+did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on to the tablecloth--was
+sometimes swept by brief but tempestuous revulsions of feeling, and
+though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment describe them
+mentally and without knowing it in the very words of Uncle Arthur, as
+those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he knew. They couldn't help
+the death of the man Dellogg. They were the victims, from first to last,
+of a cruel and pursuing fate; but it is natural to turn on victims, and
+Mr. Twist was for an instant, out of the very depth of his helpless
+sympathy, impatient with the Twinklers.
+
+He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth together,
+while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet. Across the road
+the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced by a thousand lights.
+Very few people were about and no one at all was on the sands. There was
+an immense noise of what sounded like grasshoppers or crickets, and also
+at intervals distant choruses of frogs, but these sounds seemed
+altogether beneficent,--so warm, and southern, and far away from less
+happy places where in October cold winds perpetually torment the world.
+Even in the dark Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was
+beautiful. He could imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed
+over the twins safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this
+place and seeing them every day,--perhaps even, as he had pictured to
+himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs. Now all
+that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg couldn't help
+being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help resenting it. It was
+so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was so like what one of that
+creature Uncle Arthur's friends would do.
+
+Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frankly unreasonable, but then he was
+very much taken aback and annoyed. What was he to do with the Annas? He
+was obviously not a relation of theirs--and indeed no profiles could
+have been less alike--and he didn't suppose Acapulco was behind other
+parts of America in curiosity and gossip. If he stayed on at the
+Cosmopolitan with the twins till Mrs. Dellogg was approachable again,
+whenever that might be, every sort of question would be being asked in
+whispers about who they were and what was their relationship, and
+presently whenever they sat down anywhere the chairs all round them
+would empty. Mr. Twist had seen the kind of thing happening in hotels
+before to other people,--never to himself; never had he been in any
+situation till now that was not luminously regular. And quite soon after
+this with the chairs had begun to happen, the people who created these
+vacancies were told by the manager--firmly in America, politely in
+England, and sympathetically in France--that their rooms had been
+engaged a long time ago for the very next day, and no others were
+available.
+
+The Cosmopolitan was clearly an hotel frequented by the virtuous rich.
+Mr. Twist felt that he and the Annas wouldn't, in their eyes, come under
+this heading, not, that is, when the other guests became aware of the
+entire absence of any relationship between him and the twins. Well, for
+a day or two nothing could happen; for a day or two, before his party
+had had time to sink into the hotel consciousness and the manager
+appeared to tell him the rooms were engaged, he could think things out
+and talk them over with his companions. Perhaps he might even see Mrs.
+Dellogg. The funeral, he had heard on inquiring of the hall porter was
+next day. It was to be a brilliant affair, said the porter. Mr. Dellogg
+had been a prominent inhabitant, free with his money, a supporter of
+anything there was to support. The porter talked of him as the
+taxi-driver had done, regretfully and respectfully; and Mr. Twist went
+to bed angrier than ever with a man who, being so valuable and so
+necessary, should have neglected at such a moment to go on living.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't sleep very well that night. He lay in his rosy room,
+under a pink silk quilt, and most of the time stared out through the
+open French windows with their pink brocade curtains at the great starry
+night, thinking.
+
+In that soft bed, so rosy and so silken as to have been worthy of the
+relaxations of, at least, a prima donna, he looked like some lean and
+alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business to. He hadn't
+thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of his teapot put him in
+the right position for doing so, because his soul was too simple for him
+to desire or think of anything less candid to wear in bed than flannel,
+and he still wore the blue flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In
+that beautiful bed his pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head,
+so frugal of hair, didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow
+prepared for the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And
+finding he couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
+spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as nobody
+was there to see him,--which, Mr. Twist sometimes thought when he caught
+sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time, is one of the comforts of
+being virtuously unmarried,--nobody minded.
+
+His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with and
+contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a difficult
+position who have Mr. Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
+dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer emotions,
+Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a detached and
+concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do with it; faced by
+the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness got in the ways of any
+clear vision.
+
+About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and strewn
+with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he suddenly had an
+idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real good one. He would
+place the Annas in a school.
+
+Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
+answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school would
+give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought never to have
+left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and overflowing natures
+like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing as a finishing school
+for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas should go, and once in it
+there they should stay put, thought Mr. Twist in vigorous American,
+gathering up his mouth defiantly.
+
+Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily. He would
+seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his position to the twins
+by turning himself into their guardian, and then get them at once into
+the best school there was. As their guardian he could then pay all their
+expenses, and faced by this legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon
+persuaded of the propriety of his paying whatever there was to pay.
+
+Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go to
+sleep after that. Even three months' school--the period he gave Mrs.
+Dellogg for her acutest grief--would do. Tide them over. Give them room
+to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his spectacles,
+snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with the
+instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.
+
+But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure. The
+twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to school.
+They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one of the
+trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in honour of the
+heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of heliotrope that was in the
+warm air, had put on white summer frocks.
+
+Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and more
+angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out on to the
+great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at breakfast. They
+instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr. Twist had thought this
+wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now perceived his mistake. Not
+a head that wasn't turned to look at them, not a newspaper that wasn't
+lowered. They were immediate objects of interest and curiosity, entirely
+benevolent interest and curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about
+them, and the wives of the rich husbands--those halves of the
+virtuous-rich unions which provided the virtuousness--smiled as they
+passed, and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.
+
+Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins' chairs
+for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so respectful,
+and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done it that night in
+New York at supper, and at all the meals in the train in spite of the
+train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes one
+have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this agreeable
+practice in private.
+
+They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the properly
+treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous politeness on
+a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept. They themselves had
+obviously slept well, for their faces were cherubic in their bland
+placidity, and already after one night wore what Mr. Twist later came to
+recognize as the Californian look, a look of complete unworriedness.
+
+Yet they ought to have been worried. Mr. Twist had been terribly worried
+up to the moment in the night when he got his great idea, and he was
+worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts. They didn't look as
+though they would easily be put to school. His idea still seemed to him
+magnificent, a great solution, but would the Annas be able to see it?
+They might turn out impervious to it; not rejecting it, but simply
+non-absorbent. As they slowly and contentedly ate their grape-fruit,
+gazing out between the spoonfuls at the sea shining across the road
+through palm trees, and looking unruffled itself, he felt it was going
+to be rather like suggesting to two cherubs to leave their serene
+occupation of adoring eternal beauty and learn lessons instead. Still,
+it was the one way out, as far as Mr. Twist could see, of the situation
+produced by the death of the man Dellogg. "When you've done breakfast,"
+he said, pulling himself together on their reaching the waffle stage,
+"we must have a talk."
+
+"When we've done breakfast," said Anna-Rose, "we must have a walk."
+
+"Down there," said Anna-Felicitas, pointing with her spoon. "On the
+sands. Round the curve to where the pink hills begin."
+
+"Mr. Dellogg's death," said Mr. Twist, deciding it was necessary at once
+to wake them up out of the kind of happy somnolescence they seemed to be
+falling into, "has of course completely changed--"
+
+"How unfortunate," interrupted Anna-Rose, her eyes on the palms and the
+sea and the exquisite distant mountains along the back of the bay, "to
+have to be dead on a day like this."
+
+"It's not only his missing the fine weather that makes it unfortunate,"
+said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You mean," said Anna-Rose, "it's our missing him."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Well, we know that," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"We knew it last night, and it worried us," said Anna-Rose. "Then we
+went to sleep and it didn't worry us. And this morning it still
+doesn't."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist dryly. "You don't look particularly worried, I must
+say."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, "we're not. People who find they've got to
+heaven aren't usually worried, are they."
+
+"And having got to heaven," said Anna-Rose, "we've thought of a plan to
+enable us to stay in it."
+
+"Oh have you," said Mr. Twist, pricking up his ears.
+
+"The plan seemed to think of us rather than we of it," explained
+Anna-Felicitas. "It came and inserted itself, as it were, into our minds
+while we were dressing."
+
+"Well, I've thought of a plan too," said Mr. Twist firmly, feeling sure
+that the twins' plan would be the sort that ought to be instantly nipped
+in the bud.
+
+He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have you? Is
+it about schools?"
+
+He stared at her in silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was
+very much surprised. "It is."
+
+"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it will tide
+us over."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect harmony
+of ideas.
+
+"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is---" began Anna-Rose in her clear
+little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables round them.
+
+Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of doors,"
+he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the other tables,
+and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say next.
+
+"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.
+
+On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the harmony of
+ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed, something very
+like heated argument began almost as soon as they were seated on some
+rocks round the corner of the shore to the west of the hotel and they
+became aware, through conversation, of the vital difference in the two
+plans.
+
+The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with a
+profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a school in
+the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go to it for three
+months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs. Dellogg wanted to recover
+in.
+
+Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could only nod
+approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared that the twins
+didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity except as teachers.
+Professors, they said; professors of languages and literatures. They
+could speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most
+people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an
+extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English and
+German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot about Heine,
+for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by heart and whose sad
+life in Paris--
+
+"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist. "You're not
+old enough."
+
+Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked at each
+other in surprised indignation.
+
+"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I don't see
+how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't grown up. And
+there can be no doubt as to which we are."
+
+And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their chairs
+for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things like that
+for children.
+
+"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing his hand
+down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words. "Nobody would take
+you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the pair of you--"
+
+"Perambulator--?"
+
+"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the same
+thing, anyway?"
+
+And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation became so
+heated that for a time it was molten.
+
+The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were outraged. Go to
+school? To a place they had never been to even in their suitable years?
+They, two independent grown-ups with L200 in the bank and nobody with
+any right to stop their doing anything they wanted to? Go to school now,
+like a couple of little suck-a-thumbs?
+
+It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this
+expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had
+perambulator faces if he liked--they didn't care, but they did desire
+him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they would be now
+taking their proper place in society, that they had already done a
+course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not open to any but adults,
+and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not given them all that money to
+fritter away on paying for belated schooling.
+
+"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the
+discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how
+completely she had been stirred.
+
+"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose icily.
+
+"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and
+undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting chronologically
+confused as well?"
+
+Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the Twinklers
+when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his rock, his face
+supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while the twins watched
+him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he pushed his hat back
+and began slowly to rub his ear.
+
+"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said,
+continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.
+
+The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest against
+any necessity for such knowledge on his part, but he interrupted them.
+"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when
+you're both a little more composed."
+
+"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Less ruffled, then."
+
+"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as this is
+important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say, to-morrow. I
+suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood and steadying our
+minds--"
+
+"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."
+
+"--and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I haven't told
+you all my plan yet"--Mr. Twist hadn't had time to inform them of his
+wish to become their guardian, owing to the swiftness with which he had
+been engulfed in their indignation,--"but whether you approve of it or
+not, what is quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much
+longer."
+
+"Because it's so dear?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't so much _that_,--the proprietor is a friend of mine, or
+anyhow he very well might be--"
+
+"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid bedroom
+and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in silken beds, and
+the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be pure gold.
+
+"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending money,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find a salaried
+position in a school without loss of time."
+
+"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we ought to
+start looking for such a situation at once" said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Not to-day," said Mr. Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope
+of getting them, once they were used to it, to come round to his plan.
+"To-day, this one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us
+all good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And
+it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."
+
+He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off theirs.
+
+"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he added
+artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those hills."
+
+And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having spent the
+whole day exploring the charming environs of Acapulco,--having been seen
+at different periods going over the Old Mission in tow of a monk who
+wouldn't look at them but kept his eyes carefully fixed on the ground,
+sitting on high stools eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in
+the town that has the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at
+the foot of a cliff along the top of which a great hedge of
+rose-coloured geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove
+of ilexes on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from
+somewhere in the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through
+eucalyptus woods across the fields towards the foot of the
+mountains,--they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking of tea,
+to a delightful group of flowery cottages clustering round a restaurant
+and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one of the many
+American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people not living in the
+cottages can come and have meals at the restaurant, so we'll go right in
+and have tea."
+
+And it was just because they couldn't get tea--any other meal, the
+proprietress said, but no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help
+Eight Hours Bill which obliged her to do without domestics during the
+afternoon hours--that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+But she didn't come by it at once.
+
+They got into the car first, which was waiting for them in the scented
+road at the bottom of the field they had walked across, and they got
+into it in silence and were driven back to their hotel for tea, and her
+brain was still unvisited by inspiration.
+
+They were all tired and thirsty, and were disappointed at being thwarted
+in their desire to sit at a little green table under whispering trees
+and rest, and drink tea, and had no sort of wish to have it at the
+Cosmopolitan. But both Mr. Twist, who had been corrupted by Europe, and
+the twins, who had the habits of their mother, couldn't imagine doing
+without it in the afternoon, and they would have it in the hotel sooner
+than not have it at all. It was brought to them after a long time of
+waiting. Nobody else was having any at that hour, and the waiter, when
+at last one was found, had difficulty apparently in believing that they
+were serious. When at last he did bring it, it was toast and marmalade
+and table-napkins, for all the world as though it had been breakfast.
+
+Then it was that, contemplating this with discomfort and distaste, as
+well as the place they were sitting in and its rocking-chairs and marble
+and rugs, Anna-Felicitas was suddenly smitten by her idea.
+
+It fell upon her like a blow. It struck her fairly, as it were, between
+the eyes. She wasn't used to ideas, and she stopped dead in the middle
+of a piece of toast and looked at the others. They stopped too in their
+eating and looked at her.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Anna-Rose. "Has another button come off?"
+
+At this Mr. Twist considered it wisest to turn his head away, for
+experience had taught him that Anna-Felicitas easily came undone.
+
+"I've thought of something," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist turned his head back again. "You don't say," he said, mildly
+sarcastic.
+
+"_Ich gratuliere_," said Anna-Rose, also mildly sarcastic.
+
+"I've got an idea," said Anna-Felicitas. "But it's so luminous," she
+said, looking from one to the other in a kind of surprise. "Of course.
+That's what we'll do. Ridiculous to waste time bothering about schools."
+
+There was a new expression on her face that silenced the comments rising
+to Anna-Rose's and Mr. Twist's tongues, both of whom had tired feet and
+were therefore disposed to sarcasm.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at them, and they looked at her, and her face
+continued to become visibly more and more illuminated, just as if a
+curtain were being pulled up. Animation and interest shone in her
+usually dreamy eyes. Her drooping body sat up quite straight. She
+reminded Anna-Rose, who had a biblically well-furnished mind, of Moses
+when he came down from receiving the Law on the mountain.
+
+"Well, tell us," said Anna-Rose. "But not," she added, thinking of
+Moses, "if it's only more commandments."
+
+Anna-Felicitas dropped the piece of toast she was still holding in her
+fingers, and pushed back her cup. "Come out on to the rocks," she said
+getting up--"where we sat this morning." And she marched out, followed
+by the other two with the odd submissiveness people show towards any one
+who is thoroughly determined.
+
+It was dark and dinner-time before they got back to the hotel.
+Throughout the sunset Anna-Felicitas sat on her rock, the same rock she
+had sat on so unsatisfactorily eight hours earlier, and expounded her
+idea. She couldn't talk fast enough. She, so slow and listless, for once
+was shaken into burning activity. She threw off her hat directly she got
+on to the sands, climbed up the rock as if it were a pulpit, and with
+her hands clasped round her knees poured out her plan, the long shafts
+of the setting sun bathing her in bright flames and making her more like
+Moses than ever,--if, that is, one could imagine Moses as beautiful as
+Anna-F., thought Anna-Rose, and as felicitously without his nose and
+beard.
+
+It was wonderful how complete Anna-Felicitas's inspiration was. It
+reminded Mr. Twist of his own about the teapot. It was, of course, a far
+more complicated matter than that little device of his, and would have
+to be thought out very carefully and approached very judiciously, but
+the wealth of detail she was already ready with immensely impressed him.
+She even had a name for the thing; and it was when he heard this name,
+when it flashed into her talk with the unpremeditatedness of an
+inspiration, that Mr. Twist became definitely enthusiastic.
+
+He had an American eye for advertisement. Respect for it was in his
+blood. He instantly saw the possibilities contained in the name. He saw
+what could be done with it, properly worked. He saw it on hoarding-on
+signposts, in a thousand contrivances for catching the public attention
+and sticking there.
+
+The idea, of course, was fantastic, unconventional, definitely outside
+what his mother and that man Uncle Arthur would consider proper, but it
+was outside the standards of such people that life and fruitfulness and
+interest and joy began. He had escaped from the death-like grip of his
+mother, and Uncle Arthur had himself forcibly expulsed the Annas from
+his, and now that they were all so far away, instead of still timorously
+trying to go on living up to those distant sterile ideas why shouldn't
+they boldly go out into the light and colour that was waiting everywhere
+for the free of spirit?
+
+Mr. Twist had often observed how perplexingly much there is to be said
+for the opposite sides of a question. He was now, but with no
+perplexity, for Anna-Felicitas had roused his enthusiasm, himself taking
+the very opposite view as to the proper thing for the twins to do from
+the one he had taken in the night and on the rocks that morning. School?
+Nonsense. Absurd to bury these bright shoots of everlastingness--this is
+what they looked like to him, afire with enthusiasm and the setting
+sun--in such a place of ink. If the plan, owing to the extreme youth of
+the Annas, were unconventional, conventionality could be secured by
+giving a big enough salary to a middle-aged lady to come and preside. He
+himself would hover beneficently in the background over the undertaking.
+
+Anna-Felicitas's idea was to use Uncle Arthur's L200 in renting one of
+the little wooden cottages that seemed to be plentiful, preferably one
+about five miles out in the country, make it look inside like an English
+cottage, all pewter and chintz and valances, make it look outside like
+the more innocent type of German wayside inn, with green tables and
+spreading trees, get a cook who would concentrate on cakes, real lovely
+ones, various, poetic, wonderful cakes, and start an inn for tea alone
+that should become the fashion. It ought to be so arranged that it
+became the fashion. She and Anna-Rose would do the waiting. The prices
+would be very high, indeed exorbitant--this Mr. Twist regarded as
+another inspiration,--so that it should be a distinction, give people a
+_cachet_, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position
+in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see
+it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England
+always have, with its name on it.
+
+"If people here were really neutral you might have the Imperial arms of
+Germany and England emblazoned on it," interrupted Mr. Twist, "just to
+show your own extreme and peculiar neutrality."
+
+"We might call it The Christopher and Columbus," interrupted Anna-Rose,
+who had been sitting open-mouthed hanging on Anna-Felicitas's words.
+
+"Or you might call it The Cup and Saucer," said Mr. Twist, "and have a
+big cup brimming with tea and cream painted on it--"
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas. "It is The Open Arms. That is its name."
+
+And Mr. Twist, inclined to smile and criticise up to this, bowed his
+head in instantaneous recognition and acceptance.
+
+He became definitely enthusiastic. Of course he would see to it that not
+a shadow of ambiguousness was allowed to rest on such a name. The whole
+thing as he saw it, his mind working rapidly while Anna-Felicitas still
+talked, would be a happy joke, a joyous, gay little assault on the
+purses of millionaires, in whom the district abounded judging from the
+beautiful houses and gardens he had passed that day,--but a joke and a
+gay assault that would at the same time employ and support the Annas;
+solve them, in fact, saw Mr. Twist, who all day long had been regarding
+them much as one does a difficult mathematical problem.
+
+It was Mr. Twist who added the final inspiration to Anna-Felicitas's
+many, when at last she paused for want of breath. The inn, he said,
+should be run as a war philanthropy. All that was over after the
+expenses were paid and a proper percentage reserved by the Annas as
+interest on their invested capital--they listened with eager respect to
+these business-like expressions--would be handed over to the American
+Red Cross. "That," explained Mr. Twist, "would seal the inn as both
+respectable and fashionable, which is exactly what we would want to make
+it."
+
+And he then announced, and they accepted without argument or questioning
+in the general excitement, that he would have himself appointed their
+legal guardian.
+
+They didn't go back to the Cosmopolitan till dinnertime, there was so
+much to say, and after dinner, a meal at which Mr. Twist had to suppress
+them a good deal because The Open Arms kept on bursting through into
+their talk and, as at breakfast, the people at the tables round them
+were obviously trying to hear, they went out once again on to the
+sea-front and walked up and down till late continuing the discussion,
+mostly simultaneously as regards the twins, while Mr. Twist chimed in
+with practical suggestions whenever they stopped to take breath.
+
+He had to drive them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were going
+out one by one in the Cosmopolitan bedroom windows, where the virtuous
+rich, exhausted by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with
+boredom and respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he
+stayed alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the
+next day.
+
+There was the guardianship to be arranged, the cottage to be found, and
+the middle-aged lady to be advertised for. She, indeed, must be secured
+at once; got to come at once to the Cosmopolitan and preside over the
+twins until they all proceeded in due season to The Open Arms. She must
+be a motherly middle-aged lady, decided Mr. Twist, affectionate, skilled
+in managing a cook, business-like, intellectual, and obedient. Her
+feminine tact would enable her to appear to preside while she was in
+reality obeying. She must understand that she was there for the Annas,
+and that the Annas were not there for her. She must approach the
+situation in the spirit of the enlightened king of a democratic country,
+who receives its honours, accepts its respect, but does not lose sight
+of the fact that he is merely the Chief Servant of the people. Mr. Twist
+didn't want a female Uncle Arthur let loose upon those blessed little
+girls; besides, they would have the dangerous weapon in their hands of
+being able to give her notice, and it would considerably dim the
+reputation of The Open Arms if there were a too frequent departure from
+it of middle-aged ladies.
+
+Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as he
+paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself. That
+youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament, which leaped
+about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy lamb when the
+sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great fun; and the
+business side of him was feeling that it was not only great fun but
+probably an extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.
+
+The ignorant Annas--bless their little hearts, he thought, he who only
+the night before on that very spot had been calling them
+accursed--believed that their L200 was easily going to do everything.
+This was lucky, for otherwise there would have been some thorny paths of
+argument and convincing to be got through before they would have allowed
+him to help finance the undertaking; probably they never would have, in
+their scrupulous independence. Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on
+the usefulness of his teapot. At last he was going to be able to do
+something, thanks to it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to
+France--that was duty. His lavishness to his mother--that again was
+duty. But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
+always longed for,--a chance to help and make happy, and be with and
+watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet kind
+women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....
+
+It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by Nature to
+be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through him, forgot and
+turned him into a man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later
+they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted of course,
+for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is
+_exactly_, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and
+there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.
+
+It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its
+beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green
+fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards
+the sea. Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed
+of, were close up to a thick grove of eucalyptus which continued to the
+foot of the mountains. It had an overrun little garden in front,
+separated from the fields by a riotous hedge of sweetbriar. It had a few
+orange, and lemon, and peach trees on its west side, the survivors of
+what had once been intended for an orchard, and a line of pepper trees
+on the other, between it and the road. Neglected roses and a huge
+wistaria clambered over its dilapidated face. Somebody had once planted
+syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of
+pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable
+screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road.
+
+It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being
+made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms. Every
+motorist coming up that road would see the signboard outside the pepper
+trees, and would certainly want to stop at the neat little gate, and
+pass through the flowery tunnel that would be cut through the syringas,
+and see what was inside. Other houses were offered of a far higher
+class, for this one had never been lived in by gentry, said the
+house-agent endeavouring to put them off a thing so broken down. A
+farmer had had it years back, he told them, and instead of confining
+himself to drinking the milk from his own cows, which was the only
+appropriate drink for a farmer the agent maintained--he was the
+president of the local Anti-Vice-In-All-Its-Forms League--he put his
+money as he earned it into gin, and the gin into himself, and so after a
+bit was done for.
+
+The other houses the agent pressed on them were superior in every way
+except situation; but situation being the first consideration, Mr. Twist
+agreed with the twins, who had fallen in love with the neglected little
+house whose shabbiness was being so industriously hidden by roses, that
+this was the place, and a week later it and its garden had been
+bought--Mr. Twist didn't tell the twins he had bought it, in order to
+avoid argument, but it was manifestly the simple thing to do--and over
+and round and through it swarmed workmen all day long, like so many
+diligent and determined ants. Also, before the week was out, the
+middle-aged lady had been found and engaged, and a cook of gifts in the
+matter of cakes. This is the way you do things in America. You decide
+what it is that you really want, and you start right away and get it.
+"And everything so cheap too!" exclaimed the twins gleefully, whose L200
+was behaving, it appeared, very like the widow's cruse.
+
+This belief, however, received a blow when they went without Mr. Twist,
+who was too busy now for any extra expeditions, to choose and buy
+chintzes, and it was finally shattered when the various middle-aged
+ladies who responded to Mr. Twist's cry for help in the advertising
+columns of the Acapulco and Los Angeles press one and all demanded as
+salary more than the whole Twinkler capital.
+
+The twins had a bad moment of chill fear and misgiving, and then once
+more were saved by an inspiration,--this time Anna-Rose's.
+
+"I know," she exclaimed, her face clearing. "We'll make it
+Co-operative."
+
+Mr. Twist, whose brow too had been puckered in the effort to think out a
+way of persuading the twins to let him help them openly with his money,
+for in spite of his going to be their guardian they remained difficult
+on this point, jumped at the idea. He couldn't, of course, tell what in
+Anna-Rose's mind the word co-operative stood for, but felt confident
+that whatever it stood for he could manipulate it into covering his
+difficulties.
+
+"What is co-operative?" asked Anna-Felicitas, with a new respect for a
+sister who could suddenly produce a business word like that and seem to
+know all about it. She had heard the word herself, but it sat very
+loosely in her head, at no point touching anything else.
+
+"Haven't you heard of Co-operative Stores?" inquired Anna-Rose.
+
+"Yes but--"
+
+"Well, then."
+
+"Yes, but what would a co-operative inn be?" persisted Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"One run on co-operative lines, of course," said Anna-Rose grandly.
+"Everybody pays for everything, so that nobody particular pays for
+anything."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I mean," said Anna-Rose, who felt herself that this might be clearer,
+"it's when you pay the servants and the rent and the cakes and things
+out of what you get."
+
+"Oh," said Anna-Felicitas. "And will they wait quite quietly till we've
+got it?"
+
+"Of course, if we're all co-operative."
+
+"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, who saw as little as before, but knew of
+old that Anna-Rose grew irascible when pressed.
+
+"See here now," said Mr. Twist weightily, "if that isn't an idea. Only
+you've got hold of the wrong word. The word you want is profit-sharing.
+And as this undertaking is going to be a big success there will be big
+profits, and any amount of cakes and salaries will be paid for as glibly
+and easily as you can say your ABC."
+
+And he explained that till they were fairly started he was going to stay
+in California, and that he intended during this time to be book-keeper,
+secretary, and treasurer to The Open Arms, besides Advertiser-in-Chief,
+which was, he said, the most important post of all; and if they would be
+so good as to leave this side of it unquestioningly to him, who had had
+a business training, he would undertake that the Red Cross, American or
+British, whichever they decided to support, should profit handsomely.
+
+Thus did Mr. Twist artfully obtain a free hand as financial backer of
+The Open Arms. The profit-sharing system seemed to the twins admirable.
+It cleared away every scruple and every difficulty, they now bought
+chintzes and pewter pots in the faith of it without a qualm, and even
+ceased to blench at the salary of the lady engaged to be their
+background,--indeed her very expensiveness pleased them, for it gave
+them confidence that she must at such a price be the right one, because
+nobody, they agreed, who knew herself not to be the right one would have
+the face to demand so much.
+
+This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course,
+she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard--the Miss Twinklers blushed and
+felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn't, and indistinctly
+murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt,
+though, and wouldn't he do--had a great deal of very beautiful
+snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged. She
+firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist's spectacles dwelling on
+her hair, that she wasn't yet forty, and her one fear was that she
+mightn't be middle-aged enough. The advertisement had particularly
+mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and
+fingers and feet couldn't possibly be described as coming under that
+heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as
+having overshot the mark. But its turning white had nothing to do with
+age. It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over. No hair could have
+stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step. She had
+been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every
+aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn't want to make a
+mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she
+had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and
+the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute
+average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she
+wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too
+much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle--it was a real
+sacrifice--and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers. She
+was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.
+She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her
+own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right
+balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.
+Thus she attained poise,--she was one of the most poised women her
+friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both
+philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they were war ones.
+
+Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long
+time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause in which one could
+do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored
+the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady,
+that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been
+personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping. It seemed
+years. The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but
+Mrs. Bilton's spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way
+it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and
+without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have
+dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last,
+in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist
+politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after
+lunch, and they were dying for some food.
+
+The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he knew she
+was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that
+hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield
+through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of
+purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate. He would have
+settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to
+listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to listen; and when it became
+clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the
+end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as
+it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words
+and convey to her as quickly as possible, as one swimming for his life
+against the stream, that she was engaged. "Engaged, Mrs. Bilton,"--he
+called out, raising his voice above the sound of Mrs. Bilton's rushing
+words, "engaged." She would be expected at the Cosmopolitan, swiftly
+continued Mr. Twist, who was as particularly anxious to have her at the
+Cosmopolitan as the twins were particularly anxious not to,--for for the
+life of them they couldn't see why Mrs. Bilton should be stirred up
+before they started inhabiting the cottage,--within three days--
+
+"Mr. Twist, it can't be done," broke in Mrs. Bilton a fresh and
+mountainous wave of speech gathering above Mr. Twist's head. "It
+absolutely--"
+
+"Within a week, then," he called out quickly, holding up the breaking of
+the wave for an instant while he hastened to and opened the door. "And
+goodmorning Mrs. Bilton--my apologies, my sincere apologies, but we
+have to hurry away--"
+
+The cook was engaged that afternoon. Mr. Twist appeared to have mixed up
+the answers to his advertisement, for when, after paying the
+luncheon-bill, he went to join the twins in the sitting-room, he found
+them waiting for him in the passage outside the door looking excited.
+
+"The cook's come," whispered Anna-Rose, jerking her head towards the
+shut door. "She's a man."
+
+"She's a Chinaman," whispered Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mr. Twist was surprised. He thought he had an appointment with a
+woman,--a coloured lady from South Carolina who was a specialist in
+pastries and had immaculate references, but the Chinaman assured him
+that he hadn't, and that his appointment was with him alone, with him,
+Li Koo. In proof of it, he said, spreading out his hands, here he was.
+"We make cakies--li'l cakies--many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo,
+observing doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his
+person he whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit
+out of a hat, and offered them to the twins.
+
+They ate. He was engaged. It took five minutes.
+
+After he had gone, and punctually to the minute of her appointment, an
+over-flowing Negress appeared and announced that she was the coloured
+lady from South Carolina to whom the gentleman had written.
+
+Mr. Twist uncomfortably felt that Li Koo had somehow been clever.
+Impossible, however, to go back on him, having eaten his cakes. Besides,
+they were perfect cakes, blown together apparently out of flowers and
+honey and cream,--cakes which, combined with Mrs. Bilton's hair, would
+make the fortune of The Open Arms.
+
+The coloured lady, therefore, was sent away, disappointed in spite of
+the _douceur_ and fair words Mr. Twist gave her; and she was so much
+disappointed that they could hear her being it out loud all the way
+along the passage and down the stairs, and the nature of her expression
+of her disappointment was such that Mr. Twist, as he tried by animated
+conversation to prevent it reaching the twins' ears, could only be
+thankful after all that Li Koo had been so clever. It did, however,
+reach the twins' ears, but they didn't turn a hair because of Uncle
+Arthur. They merely expressed surprise at its redness, seeing that it
+came out of somebody so black.
+
+Directly after this trip to Los Angeles advertisements began to creep
+over the countryside. They crept along the roads where motorists were
+frequent and peeped at passing cars round corners and over hedges. They
+were taciturn advertisements, and just said three words in big,
+straight, plain white letters on a sea-blue ground:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+
+People passing in their cars saw them, and vaguely thought it must be
+the name of a book. They had better get it. Other people would have got
+it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat, and was probably a
+religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were usually religious. A few
+considered it sounded a little improper, and as though the book, far
+from being religious, would not be altogether nice; but only very proper
+people who distrusted everything, even arms took this view.
+
+After a week the same advertisements appeared with three lines added:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+    YES
+    BUT
+WHY? WHERE? WHAT?
+
+and then ten days after that came fresh ones:
+
+THE OPEN ARMS
+  WILL OPEN
+    WIDE
+
+On November 20th at Four P.M.
+
+N.B. WATCH THE SIGNPOSTS.
+
+And while the countryside--an idle countryside, engaged almost wholly in
+holiday-making and glad of any new distraction--began to be interested
+and asked questions, Mr. Twist was working day and night at getting the
+thing ready.
+
+All day long he was in Acapulco or out at the cottage, urging, hurrying,
+criticizing, encouraging, praising and admonishing. His heart and soul
+and brain was in this, his business instincts and his soft domestic
+side. His brain, after working at top speed during the day with the
+architect, the painter and decorator, the furnisher, the garden expert,
+the plumbing expert, the electric-light expert, the lawyer, the estate
+agent, and numberless other persons, during the night meditated and
+evolved advertisements. There was to be a continual stream week by week
+after the inn was opened of ingenious advertisements. Altogether Mr.
+Twist had his hands full.
+
+The inn was to look artless and simple and small, while actually being
+the last word in roomy and sophisticated comfort. It was to be as like
+an old English inn to look at as it could possibly be got to be going on
+his own and the twins' recollections and the sensationally coloured
+Elizabethan pictures in the architect's portfolio. It didn't disturb Mr.
+Twist's unprejudiced American mind that an English inn embowered in
+heliotrope and arum lilies and eucalyptus trees would be odd and
+unnatural, and it wouldn't disturb anybody else there either. Were not
+Swiss mountain chalets to be found in the fertile plains along the
+Pacific, complete with fir trees specially imported and uprooted in
+their maturity and brought down with tons of their own earth attached to
+their roots and replanted among carefully disposed, apparently Swiss
+rocks, so that what one day had been a place smiling with orange-groves
+was the next a bit of frowning northern landscape? And were there not
+Italian villas dotted about also? But these looked happier and more at
+home than the chalets. And there were buildings too, like small Gothic
+cathedrals, looking as uncomfortable and depressed as a woman who has
+come to a party in the wrong clothes. But no matter. Nobody minded. So
+that an English inn added to this company, with a little German
+beer-garden--only there wasn't to be any beer--wouldn't cause the least
+surprise or discomfort to anybody.
+
+In the end, the sole resemblance the cottage had to an English inn was
+the signboard out in the road. With the best will in the world, and the
+liveliest financial encouragement from Mr. Twist, the architect couldn't
+in three weeks turn a wooden Californian cottage into an ancient
+red-brick Elizabethan pothouse. He got a thatched roof on to it by a
+miracle of hustle, but the wooden walls remained; he also found a real
+antique heavy oak front door studded with big rusty nailheads in a San
+Francisco curiosity shop, that would serve, he said, as a basis for any
+wished-for hark-back later on when there was more time to the old girl's
+epoch--thus did he refer to Great Eliza and her spacious days--and
+meanwhile it gave the building, he alleged, a considerable air; but as
+this door in that fine climate was hooked open all day long it didn't
+disturb the gay, the almost jocose appearance of the place when
+everything was finished.
+
+Houses have their expressions, their distinctive faces, very much as
+people have, meditated Mr. Twist the morning of the opening, as he sat
+astride a green chair at the bottom of the little garden, where a hedge
+of sweetbriar beautifully separated the Twinkler domain from the rolling
+fields that lay between it and the Pacific, and stared at his handiwork;
+and the conclusion was forced upon him--reluctantly, for it was the last
+thing he had wanted The Open Arms to do--that the thing looked as if it
+were winking at him.
+
+Positively, thought Mr. Twist, his hat on the back of his head, staring,
+that was what it seemed to be doing. How was that? He studied it
+profoundly, his head on one side. Was it that it was so very gay? He
+hadn't meant it to be gay like that. He had intended a restrained and
+disciplined simplicity, a Puritan unpretentiousness, with those sweet
+maidens, the Twinkler twins, flitting like modest doves in and out among
+its tea-tables; but one small thing had been added to another small
+thing at their suggestion, each small thing taken separately apparently
+not mattering at all and here it was almost--he hoped it was only his
+imagination--winking at him. It looked a familiar little house; jocular;
+very open indeed about the arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Various things had happened, however, before this morning of the great
+day was reached, and Mr. Twist had had some harassing experiences.
+
+One of the first things he had done after the visit to Los Angeles was
+to take steps in the matter of the guardianship. He had written to Mrs.
+Bilton that he was the Miss Twinklers' guardian, though it was not at
+that moment true. It was clear, he thought, that it should be made true
+as quickly as possible, and he therefore sought out a lawyer in Acapulco
+the morning after the interview. This was not the same lawyer who did
+his estate business for him; Mr. Twist thought it best to have a
+separate one for more personal affairs.
+
+On hearing Mr. Twist's name announced, the lawyer greeted him as an old
+friend. He knew, of course, all about the teapot, for the Non-Trickler
+was as frequent in American families as the Bible and much more
+regularly used; but he also knew about the cottage at the foot of the
+hills, what it had cost--which was little--and what it would cost--which
+was enormous--before it was fit to live in. The only thing he didn't
+know was that it was to be used for anything except an ordinary
+_pied-a-terre_. He had heard, too, of the presence at the Cosmopolitan
+of the twins, and on this point, like the rest of Acapulco, was a little
+curious.
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper hadn't been able to give
+any accurate description of the relationship of the Twinklers to Mr.
+Twist. Its paragraph announcing his arrival had been obliged merely to
+say, while awaiting more detailed information, that Mr. Edward A. Twist,
+the well-known Breakfast Table Benefactor and gifted inventor of the
+famous Non-Trickler Teapot, had arrived from New York and was staying at
+the Cosmopolitan Hotel with _entourage_; and the day after this the
+lawyer, who got about a bit, as everybody else did in that encouraging
+climate, happening to look in at the Cosmopolitan to have a talk with a
+friend, had seen the _entourage_.
+
+It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way upstairs,
+followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage. Even without the boy and
+the canary it was a conspicuous object. The lawyer asked his friend who
+the cute little girls were, and was interested to hear he was beholding
+Mr. Edward A. Twist's _entourage_. His friend told him that opinion in
+the hotel was divided about the precise nature of this _entourage_ and
+its relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally
+supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by
+parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put to
+one of the young ladies' finishing schools in that agreeable district.
+The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the Cosmopolitan
+mind with the Twinklers. Houses were always being taken in that paradise
+by wealthy persons from unkinder climates. He would live in it three
+months in the year, thought the Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep
+in this way an occasional eye on his charges. The hotel guests regarded
+the Twinklers at this stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill,
+for they had up to then only been seen and not heard; and as one of
+their leading characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if
+anybody looked a little surprised, which everybody usually did quite
+early in conversation with them, this was at that moment, the delicate
+moment before Mrs. Bilton's arrival, fortunate.
+
+The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much as other
+honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly congratulating
+him, when he heard what he had come for, on his taste in wards.
+
+Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a matter of
+taste but of necessity. The Miss Twinklers were orphans, and he had been
+asked--he cleared his throat--asked by their relatives, by, in fact,
+their uncle in England, to take over their guardianship and see that
+they came to no harm.
+
+The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had wards at all
+they might as well be cute wards.
+
+Mr. Twist didn't like this either, and said briefly that he had had no
+choice.
+
+The lawyer said, "Quite so. Quite so," and continued to look at him
+intelligently.
+
+Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as might
+have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the purchase
+of the cottage because this was a private and personal matter--
+
+"Quite so. Quite so," interrupted the lawyer, with really almost too
+much intelligence.
+
+Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified, but the
+lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank. Friendliness was natural to
+him when visited for the first time by a new client, and that there
+should be frankness between lawyers and clients he considered essential.
+If, he held, the client wouldn't be frank, then the lawyer must be; and
+he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.
+
+Mr. Twist, however, was so obstinate in his reserve that the lawyer
+cheerfully and unhesitatingly jumped to the conclusion that the
+_entourage_ must have some very weak spots about it somewhere.
+
+"There's another way out of it of course, Mr. Twist," he said, when he
+had done rapidly describing the different steps to be taken. There were
+not many steps. The process of turning oneself into a guardian was
+surprisingly simple and swift.
+
+"Out of it?" said Mr. Twist, his spectacles looking very big and
+astonished. "Out of what?"
+
+"Out of your little difficulty. I wonder it hasn't occurred to you. Upon
+my word now, I do wonder."
+
+"But I'm not in any little diff--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"The elder of these two girls, now--"
+
+"There isn't an elder," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Come, come," said the lawyer patiently, waiting for him to be sensible.
+
+"There isn't an elder," repeated Mr. Twist, "They're twins."
+
+"Twins, are they? Well I must say we manage to match up our twins better
+than that over here. But come now--hasn't it occurred to you you might
+marry one of them, and so become quite naturally related to them both?"
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles seemed to grow gigantic.
+
+"Marry one of them?" he repeated, his mouth helplessly opening.
+
+"Yep," said the lawyer, giving him a lead in free-and-easiness.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Twist suddenly gathering his mouth together, "cut
+that line of joke out. I'm here on serious business. I haven't come to
+be facetious. Least of all about those children--"
+
+"Quite so, quite so," interrupted the lawyer pleasantly. "Children, you
+call them. How old are they? Seventeen? My wife was sixteen when we
+married. Oh quite so, quite so. Certainly. By all means. Well then,
+they're to be your wards. And you don't want it known how recently
+they've become your wards--"
+
+"I didn't say that," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Quite so, quite so. But it's your wish, isn't it. The relationship is
+to look as grass-grown as possible. Well, I shall be dumb of course, but
+most things get into the press here. Let me see--" He pulled a sheet
+of paper towards him and took up his fountain pen. "Just oblige me with
+particulars. Date of birth. Place of birth. Parentage--"
+
+He looked up ready to write, waiting for the answers.
+
+None came.
+
+"I can't tell you off hand," said Mr. Twist presently, his forehead
+puckered.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer, laying down his pen. "Quite so. Not known your
+young friends long enough yet."
+
+"I've known them quite long enough," said Mr. Twist stiffly, "but we
+happen to have found more alive topics of conversation than dates and
+parents."
+
+"Ah. Parents not alive."
+
+"Unfortunately they are not. If they were, these poor children wouldn't
+be knocking about in a strange country."
+
+"Where would they be?" asked the lawyer, balancing his pen across his
+forefinger.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at him very straight. Vividly he remembered his
+mother's peculiar horror when he told her the girls he was throwing away
+his home life for and breaking her heart over were Germans. It had acted
+upon her like the last straw. And since then he had felt everywhere,
+with every one he talked to, in every newspaper he read, the same strong
+hostility to Germans, so much stronger than when he left America the
+year before.
+
+Mr. Twist began to perceive that he had been impetuous in this matter of
+the guardianship. He hadn't considered it enough. He suddenly saw
+innumerable difficulties for the twins and for The Open Arms if it was
+known it was run by Germans. Better abandon the guardianship idea than
+that such difficulties should arise. He hadn't thought; he hadn't had
+time properly to think; he had been so hustled and busy the last few
+days....
+
+"They come from England," he said, looking at the lawyer very straight.
+
+"Ah," said the lawyer.
+
+Mr. Twist wasn't going to lie about the twins, but merely, by evading,
+he hoped to put off the day when their nationality would be known.
+Perhaps it never would be known; or if known, known later on when
+everybody, as everybody must who knew them, loved them for themselves
+and accordingly wouldn't care.
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer again, nodding. "I asked because I overheard
+them talking the other day as they passed through the hall of your
+hotel. They were talking about a canary. The r in the word seemed a
+little rough. Not quite English, Mr. Twist? Not quite American?"
+
+"Not quite," agreed Mr. Twist. "They've been a good deal abroad."
+
+"Quite so. At school, no doubt."
+
+He was silent a moment, intelligently balancing his pen on his
+forefinger.
+
+"Then these particulars," he went on, looking up at Mr. Twist,--"could
+you let me have them soon? I tell you what. You're in a hurry to fix
+this. I'll call round to-night at the hotel, and get them direct from
+your young friends. Save time. And make me acquainted with a pair of
+charming girls."
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist. He got on to his feet and held out his hand. "Not
+to-night. We're engaged to-night. To-morrow will be soon enough. I'll
+send round. I'll let you know. I believe I'm going to think it over a
+bit. There isn't any such terrible hurry, anyhow."
+
+"There isn't? I understood--"
+
+"I mean, a day or two more or less don't figure out at much in the long
+run."
+
+"Quite so, quite so," said the lawyer, getting up too. "Well, I'm always
+at your service, at any time." And he shook hands heartily with Mr.
+Twist and politely opened the door for him.
+
+Then he went back to his writing-table more convinced than ever that
+there was something very weak somewhere about the _entourage_.
+
+As for Mr. Twist, he perceived he had been a fool. Why had he gone to
+the lawyer at all? Why not simply have announced to the world that he
+was the Twinkler guardian? The twins themselves would have believed it
+if he had come in one day and said it was settled, and nobody outside
+would ever have dreamed of questioning it. After all, you couldn't see
+if a man was a guardian or not just by looking at him. Well, he would do
+no more about it, it was much too difficult. Bother it. Let Mrs. Bilton
+go on supposing he was the legal guardian of her charges. Anyway he had
+all the intentions of a guardian. What a fool he had been to go to the
+lawyer. Curse that lawyer. Now he knew, however distinctly and
+frequently he, Mr. Twist, might say he was the Twinkler guardian, that
+he wasn't.
+
+It harassed Mr. Twist to perceive, as he did perceive with clearness,
+that he had been a fool; but the twins, when he told them that evening
+that owing to technical difficulties, with the details of which he
+wouldn't trouble them, the guardianship was off, were pleased.
+
+"We want to be bound to you," said Anna-Felicitas her eyes very soft and
+her voice very gentle, "only by ties of affection and gratitude."
+
+And Anna-Rose, turning red, opened her mouth as though she were going to
+say something handsome like that too, but seemed unable after all to get
+it out, and only said, rather inaudibly, "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the end of
+that week.
+
+It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing should occur
+at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud; yet it did get under
+a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too, before Mrs. Bilton's
+arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her snowy-haired respectability
+would have spread over the twins like a white whig. They would have been
+safe. His party would have been unassailable. But no; those Twinklers,
+in spite of his exhortation whenever he had a minute left to exhort in,
+couldn't, it seemed, refrain from twinkling,--the word in Mr. Twist's
+mind covered the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of
+language, their affable desire to explain.
+
+He had kept them with him as much as he could, and luckily the excited
+interest they took in the progress of the inn made them happy to hang
+about it most of the time of the delicate and dangerous week before Mrs.
+Bilton came; but they too had things to do,--shopping in Acapulco
+choosing the sea-blue linen frocks and muslin caps and aprons in which
+they were to wait at tea, and buying the cushions and flower-pots and
+canary that came under the general heading, in Anna-Rose's speech, of
+feminine touches. So they sometimes left him; and he never saw them go
+without a qualm.
+
+"Mind and not say anything to anybody about this, won't you," he would
+say hastily, making a comprehensive gesture towards the cottage as they
+went.
+
+"Of course we won't."
+
+"I meant, nobody is to know what it's really going to be. They're to
+think it's just a _pied-a-terre._ It would most ruin my advertisement
+scheme if they--"
+
+"But of _course_ we won't. Have we ever?" the twins would answer,
+looking very smug and sure of themselves.
+
+"No. Not yet. But--"
+
+And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with
+whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as he
+needs must, to God and their own discretion.
+
+Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic.
+But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton's arrival grew near, and nothing had
+happened. It was plain to the watchful Mr. Twist, from the pleasant
+looks of the other guests when the twins went in and out of the
+restaurant to meals, that nothing had happened. His heart grew lighter.
+On the last afternoon, when Mrs. Bilton was actually due next day, his
+heart was quite light, and he saw them leave him to go back and rest at
+the hotel, because they were tired by the accumulated standing about of
+the week, altogether unconcernedly.
+
+The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was, indeed,
+one of complete benevolence. They didn't even mind the canary. Who would
+not be indulgent towards two such sweet little girls and their pet bird,
+even if it did sing all day and most of the night without stopping? The
+Twinkler girls were like two little bits of snapped-off sunlight, or
+bits of white blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their shining
+youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently. But if the
+guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive. Everybody knew who
+Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers? Were they relations of
+his? _Protegees_? Charges?
+
+The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which information as
+to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in its embarrassment
+at being ignorant to take refuge in French, because French may so easily
+be supposed to mean something. The paper had little knowledge of, but
+much confidence in, French. _Entourage_ had seemed to it as good a word
+as any other, as indeed did _clientele_. It had hesitated between the
+two, but finally chose _entourage_ because there happened to be no
+accent in its stock of type. The Cosmopolitan guests were amused at the
+word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable; and, until the
+last afternoon, only the manager didn't like the Twinklers. He didn't
+like them because of the canary. His sympathies had been alienated from
+the Miss Twinklers the moment he heard through the chambermaid that they
+had tied the heavy canary cage on to the hanging electric light in their
+bedroom. He said nothing, of course. One doesn't say anything if one is
+an hotel manager, until the unique and final moment when one says
+everything.
+
+On the last afternoon before Mrs. Bilton's advent the twins, tired of
+standing about for days at the cottage and in shops, appeared in the
+hall of the hotel and sat down to rest. They didn't go to their room to
+rest because they didn't feel inclined for the canary, and they sat down
+very happily in the comfortable rocking-chairs with which the big hall
+abounded, and, propping their dusty feet on the lower bar of a small
+table, with friendly and interested eyes they observed the other guests.
+
+The other guests also observed them.
+
+It was the first time the _entourage_ had appeared without its
+companion, and the other guests were dying to know details about it. It
+hadn't been sitting in the hall five minutes before a genial old
+gentleman caught Anna-Felicitas's friendly eye and instantly drew up his
+chair.
+
+"Uncle gone off by himself to-day?" he asked; for he was of the party in
+the hotel which inclined, in spite of the marked difference in profiles,
+to the relationship theory, and he made a shot at the relationship being
+that of uncle.
+
+"We haven't got an uncle nearer than England," said Anna-Felicitas
+affably.
+
+"And we only got him by accident," said Anna-Rose, equally affably.
+
+"It was an unfortunate accident," said Anna-Felicitas, considering her
+memories.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed. How was that?"
+
+"By the usual method, if an uncle isn't a blood uncle," said Anna-Rose.
+"We happened to have a marriageable aunt, and he married her. So we have
+to have him."
+
+"It was sheer bad luck," said Anna-Felicitas, again brooding on that
+distant image.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Just bad luck. He might so easily have married
+some one else's aunt. But no. His roving glance must needs go and fall
+on ours."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated on this,
+with an affectionate eye--he was affectionate--resting in turn on each
+Anna.
+
+"Then Mr. Twist," he went on presently--"we all know him of course--a
+public benefactor--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose radiantly.
+
+"A boon to the breakfast-table--"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ he," said Anna-Rose again, all asparkle. "He _is_ so
+pleasant at breakfast."
+
+"Then he--Mr. Twist--Teapot Twist we call him where I live--"
+
+"Teapot Twist?" said Anna-Rose. "I think that's irreverent."
+
+"Not at all. It's a pet name. A sign of our affection and gratitude.
+Then he isn't your uncle?"
+
+"We haven't got a real uncle nearer than heaven," said Anna-Felicitas,
+her cheek on her hand, dreamily reconstructing the image of Onkel Col.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "Indeed." And he ruminated, on this
+too, his thirsty heart--he had a thirsty heart, and found difficulty in
+slaking it because of his wife--very indulgent toward the twins.
+
+Then he said: "That's a long way off."
+
+"What is?" asked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The place your uncle's in."
+
+"Not too far really," said Anna-Felicitas softly. "He's safe there. He
+was very old, and was difficult to look after. Why, he got there at last
+through his own carelessness."
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Sheer carelessness," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Indeed," said the old gentleman. "How was that?"
+
+"Well, you see where we lived they didn't have electric light," began
+Anna-Rose, "and one night--the the night he went to heaven--he put the
+petroleum lamp--"
+
+And she was about to relate that dreadful story of Onkle Col's end
+which has already been described in these pages as unfit for anywhere
+but an appendix for time had blunted her feelings, when Anna-Felicitas
+put out a beseeching hand and stopped her. Even after all these years
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't bear to remember Onkle Col's end. It had haunted
+her childhood. It had licked about her dreams in leaping tongues of
+flame. And it wasn't only tongues of flame. There were circumstances
+connected with it.... Only quite recently, since the war had damped down
+lesser horrors, had she got rid of it. She could at least now talk of
+him calmly, and also speculate with pleasure on the probable aspect of
+Onkle Col in glory, but she still couldn't bear to hear the details of
+his end.
+
+At this point an elderly lady of the spare and active type, very upright
+and much wrinkled, that America seems so freely to produce, came down
+the stairs; and seeing the twins talking to the old gentleman, crossed
+straight over and sat down briskly next to them smiling benevolently.
+
+"Well, if Mr. Ridding can talk to you I guess so can I," she said,
+pulling her knitting out of a brocaded bag and nodding and smiling at
+the group.
+
+She was knitting socks for the Allied armies in France the next winter,
+but it being warm just then in California they were cotton socks because
+wool made her hands too hot.
+
+The twins were all polite, reciprocal smiles.
+
+"I'm just crazy to hear about you," said the brisk lady, knitting with
+incredible energy, while her smiles flicked over everybody. "You're
+fresh from Europe, aren't you? What say? Quite fresh? My, aren't you
+cute little things. Thinking of making a long stay in the States? What
+say? For the rest of your lives? Why now, I call that just splendid.
+Parents coming out West soon too? What say? Prevented? Well, I guess
+they won't let themselves be prevented long. Mr. Twist looking after you
+meanwhile? What say? There isn't any meanwhile? Well, I don't quite--Mr.
+Twist your uncle, or cousin? What say? No relation at all? H'm, h'm. No
+relation at all, is he. Well, I guess he's an old friend of your
+parents, then. What say? They didn't know him? H'm, h'm. They didn't
+know him, didn't they. Well, I don't quite--What say? But you know him?
+Yes, yes, so I see. H'm, h'm. I don't quite--" Her needles flew in and
+out, and her ball of cotton rolled on to the floor in her surprise.
+
+Anna-Rose got up and fetched it for her before the old gentleman, who
+was gazing with thirsty appreciation at Anna-Felicitas, could struggle
+out of his chair.
+
+"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, taking advantage of the silence
+that had fallen on the lady, "Mr. Twist, regarded as a man, is old, but
+regarded as a friend he is new."
+
+"Brand new," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"H'm, h'm," said the lady, knitting faster than ever, and looking first
+at one twin and then at the other. "H'm, h'm, h'm. Brand new, is he.
+Well, I don't quite--" Her smiles had now to struggle with the
+uncertainty and doubt, and were weakening visibly.
+
+"Say now, where did you meet Teapot Twist?" asked the old gentleman, who
+was surprised too, but remained quite benevolent owing to his
+affectionate heart and his not being a lady.
+
+"We met Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose, who objected to this way of alluding
+to him, "on the steamer."
+
+"Not before? You didn't meet Mr. Twist before the steamer?" exclaimed
+the lady, the last of her smiles flickering out. "Not before the
+steamer, didn't you. Just a steamship acquaintance. Parents never seen
+him. H'm, h'm, h'm."
+
+"We would have met him before if we could," said Anna-Felicitas
+earnestly.
+
+"I should think so," said Anna-Rose. "It has been the great
+retrospective loss of our lives meeting him so late in them."
+
+"Why now," said the old gentleman smiling, "I shouldn't call it so
+particularly late in them."
+
+But the knitting lady didn't smile at all, and sat up very straight and
+said "H'm, h'm, h'm" to her flashing needles as they flew in and out;
+for not only was she in doubt now about the cute little things, but she
+also regretted, on behalf of the old gentleman's wife who was a friend
+of hers, the alert interest of his manner. He sat there so very much
+awake. With his wife he never seemed awake at all. Up to now she had not
+seen him except with his wife.
+
+"You mustn't run away with the idea that we're younger than we really
+are," Anna-Rose said to the old gentleman.
+
+"Why no, I won't," he answered with a liveliness that deepened the
+knitting lady's regret on behalf of his wife. "When I run away you bet
+it won't be with an idea."
+
+And he chuckled. He was quite rosy in the face, and chuckled; he whom
+she knew only as a quiet man with no chuckle in him. And wasn't what he
+had just said very like what the French call a _double entendre?_ She
+hadn't a husband herself, but if she had she would wish him to be at
+least as quiet when away from her as when with her, and at least as free
+from _double entendres_. At least. Really more. "H'm, h'm, h'm," she
+said, clicking her needles and looking first at the twins and then at
+the old gentleman.
+
+"Do you mean to say you crossed the Atlantic quite alone, you two?" she
+asked, in order to prevent his continuing on these remarkable and
+unusual lines of _badinage_.
+
+"Quite," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"That is to say, we had Mr. Twist of course," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Once we had got him," amended Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the knitting lady, "so you say. H'm, h'm, h'm. Once you
+had got him. I don't quite--"
+
+"Well, I call you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the old
+gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can say is I
+wish I had been on that boat."
+
+"Here's Mrs. Ridding," said the knitting lady quickly, relief in her
+voice; whereupon he suddenly grew quiet. "My, Mrs. Ridding," she added
+when the lady drew within speaking distance, "you do look as though you
+needed a rest."
+
+Mrs. Ridding, the wife of the old gentleman, Mr. Ridding, had been
+approaching slowly for some time from behind. She had been out on the
+verandah since lunch, trying to recover from it. That was the one
+drawback to meals, she considered, that they required so much recovering
+from; and the nicer they were the longer it took. The meals at the
+Cosmopolitan were particularly nice, and really all one's time was taken
+up getting over them.
+
+She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman
+had married her in her youth, when she hadn't had time to have had so
+many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone
+on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life this inability of
+his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife,
+and the older he got in years--his heart very awkwardly retained its
+early freshness--the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he
+got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman
+felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why should he have to be
+married to this old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old
+ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most
+appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious
+years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his
+heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and
+inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a
+chance pretty girl.
+
+He struggled politely out of his chair on seeing her. The twins,
+impressed by such venerable abundance, got up too.
+
+"Albert, if you try to move too quick you'll crick your back again,"
+said Mrs. Ridding in a monotonous voice, letting herself down carefully
+and a little breathlessly on to the edge of a chair that didn't rock,
+and fanning herself with a small fan she carried on the end of a massive
+gold chain. Her fatigued eyes explored the twins while she spoke.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us as young
+as we were," she went on, addressing the knitting lady but with her eyes
+continuing to explore the twins.
+
+They naturally thought she was speaking to them, and Anna-Felicitas said
+politely, "Really?" and Anna-Rose, feeling she too ought to make some
+comment, said, "Isn't that very unusual?"
+
+Aunt Alice always said, "Isn't that very unusual?" when she didn't know
+what else to say, and it worked beautifully, because then the other
+person launched into affirmations or denials with the reasons for them,
+and was quite happy.
+
+But Mrs. Ridding only stared at the twins heavily and in silence.
+
+"Because," explained Anna-Rose, who thought the old lady didn't quite
+follow, "nobody ever is. So that it must be difficult not to remember
+it."
+
+Mr. Ridding too was silent, but that was because of his wife. It was
+quite untrue to say that he forgot, seeing that she was constantly
+reminding him. "Old stranger," he thought resentfully, as he carefully
+arranged a cushion behind her back. He didn't like her back. Why should
+he have to pay bills for putting expensive clothes on it? He didn't want
+to. It was all a dreadful mistake.
+
+"You're the Twinkler girls," said the old lady abruptly.
+
+They made polite gestures of agreement.
+
+The knitting lady knitted vigorously, sitting up very straight and
+saying nothing, with a look on her face of disclaiming every
+responsibility.
+
+"Where does your family come from?" was the next question.
+
+This was unexpected. The twins had no desire to talk of Pomerania. They
+hadn't wanted to talk about Pomerania once since the war began; and they
+felt very distinctly in their bones that America, though she was a
+neutral, didn't like Germany any more than the belligerents did. It had
+been their intention to arrange together the line they would take if
+asked questions of this sort, but life had been so full and so exciting
+since their arrival that they had forgotten to.
+
+Anna-Rose found herself unable to say anything at all. Anna-Felicitas,
+therefore, observing that Christopher was unnerved, plunged in.
+
+"Our family," she said gently, "can hardly be said to come so much as to
+have been."
+
+The old lady thought this over, her lustreless eyes on Anna-Felicitas's
+face.
+
+The knitting lady clicked away very fast, content to leave the
+management of the Twinklers in more competent hands.
+
+"How's that?" asked the old lady, finally deciding that she hadn't
+understood.
+
+"It's extinct," said Anna-Felicitas. "Except us. That is, in the direct
+line."
+
+The old lady was a little impressed by this, direct lines not being so
+numerous or so clear in America as in some other countries.
+
+"You mean you two are the only Twinklers left?" she asked.
+
+"The only ones left that matter," said Anna-Felicitas. "There are
+branches of Twinklers still existing, I believe, but they're so
+unimportant that we don't know them."
+
+"Mere twigs," said Anna-Rose, recovering her nerves on seeing
+Anna-Felicitas handle the situation so skilfully; and her nose
+unconsciously gave a slight Junker lift.
+
+"Haven't you got any parents?" asked the old lady.
+
+"We used to have," said Anna-Felicitas flushing, afraid that her darling
+mother was going to be asked about.
+
+The old gentleman gave a sudden chuckle. "Why yes," he said, forgetting
+his wife's presence for an instant, "I guess you had them once, or I
+don't see how--"
+
+"Albert," said his wife.
+
+"We are the sole surviving examples of the direct line of Twinklers,"
+said Anna-Rose, now quite herself and ready to give Columbus a hand.
+"There's just us. And we--" she paused a moment, and then plunged--"we
+come from England."
+
+"Do you?" said the old lady. "Now I shouldn't have said that. I can't
+say just why, but I shouldn't. Should you, Miss Heap?"
+
+"I shouldn't say a good many things, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap
+enigmatically, her needles flying.
+
+"It's because we've been abroad a great deal with our parents, I
+expect," said Anna-Rose rather quickly. "I daresay it has left its mark
+on us."
+
+"Everything leaves its mark on one," observed Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.
+
+"Ah," said the old lady. "I know what it is now. It's the foreign r.
+You've picked it up. Haven't they, Miss Heap."
+
+"I shouldn't like to say what they haven't picked up, Mrs. Ridding,"
+said Miss Heap, again enigmatically.
+
+"I'm afraid we have," said Anna-Rose, turning red. "We've been told that
+before. It seems to stick, once one has picked it up."
+
+And the old gentleman muttered that everything stuck once one had picked
+it up, and looked resentfully at his wife.
+
+She moved her slow eyes round, and let them rest on him a moment.
+
+"Albert, if you talk so much you won't be able to sleep to-night," she
+said. "I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember we've got to be careful at
+our age," she added to the knitting lady.
+
+"You seem to be bothered by your memory," said Anna-Rose politely,
+addressing the old gentleman "Have you ever tried making notes on little
+bits of paper of the things you have to remember? I think you would
+probably be all right then. Uncle Arthur used to do that. Or rather he
+made Aunt Alice do it for him, and put them where he would see them."
+
+"Uncle Arthur," explained Anna-Felicitas to the old lady, "is an uncle
+of ours. The one," she said turning to the old gentleman, "we were just
+telling you about, who so unfortunately insisted on marrying our aunt.
+Uncle, that is, by courtesy," she added, turning to the old lady, "not
+by blood."
+
+The old lady's eyes moved from one twin to the other as each one spoke,
+but she said nothing.
+
+"But Aunt Alice," said Anna-Rose, "is our genuine aunt. Well, I was
+going to tell you," she continued briskly, addressing the old gentleman.
+"There used to be things Uncle Arthur had to do every day and every
+week, but still he had to be reminded of them each time, and Aunt Alice
+had a whole set of the regular ones written out on bits of cardboard,
+and brought them out in turn. The Monday morning one was: Wind the
+Clock, and the Sunday morning one was: Take your Hot Bath, and the
+Saturday evening one was: Remember your Pill. And there was one brought
+in regularly every morning with his shaving water and stuck in his
+looking-glass: Put on your Abdominable Belt."
+
+The knitting needles paused an instant.
+
+"Yes," Anna-Felicitas joined in, interested by these recollections, her
+long limbs sunk in her chair in a position of great ease and comfort,
+"and it seemed to us so funny for him to have to be reminded to put on
+what was really a part of his clothes every day, that once we wrote a
+slip of our own for him and left it on his dressing-table: Don't forget
+your Trousers."
+
+The knitting needles paused again.
+
+"But the results of that were dreadful," added Anna-Felicitas, her face
+sobering at the thought of them.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "You see, he supposed Aunt Alice had done it, in
+a fit of high spirits, though she never had high spirits--"
+
+"And wouldn't have been allowed to if she had," explained
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"And he thought she was laughing at him," said Anna-Rose, "though we
+have never seen her laugh--"
+
+"And I don't believe he has either," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"So there was trouble, because he couldn't bear the idea of her laughing
+at him, and we had to confess."
+
+"But that didn't make it any better for Aunt Alice."
+
+"No, because then he said it was her fault anyhow for not keeping us
+stricter."
+
+"So," said Anna-Felicitas, "after the house had been steeped in a
+sulphurous gloom for over a week, and we all felt as though we were
+being slowly and steadily gassed, we tried to make it up by writing a
+final one--a nice one--and leaving it on his plate at breakfast: Kiss
+your Wife. But instead of kissing her he--" She broke off, and then
+finished a little vaguely: "Oh well, he didn't."
+
+"Still," remarked Anna-Rose, "it must be pleasant not to be kissed by a
+husband. Aunt Alice always wanted him to, strange to say, which is why
+we reminded him of it. He used to forget that more regularly than
+almost anything. And the people who lived in the house nearest us were
+just the opposite--the husband was for ever trying to kiss the person
+who was his wife, and she was for ever dodging him."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Like the people on Keats's Grecian Urn."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "And that sort of husband, must be even worse.
+
+"Oh, much worse," agreed Anna-Felicitas.
+
+She looked round amiably at the three quiet figures in the chairs. "I
+shall refrain altogether from husbands," she said placidly. "I shall
+take something that doesn't kiss."
+
+And she fell into an abstraction, wondering, with her cheek resting on
+her hand, what he, or it, would look like.
+
+There was a pause. Anna-Rose was wondering too what sort of a creature
+Columbus had in her mind, and how many, if any, legs it would have; and
+the other three were, as before, silent.
+
+Then the old lady said, "Albert," and put out her hand to be helped on
+to her feet.
+
+The old gentleman struggled out of his chair, and helped her up. His
+face had a congested look, as if he were with difficulty keeping back
+things he wanted to say.
+
+Miss Heap got up too, stuffing her knitting as she did so into her
+brocaded bag.
+
+"Go on ahead and ring the elevator bell, Albert," said the old lady.
+"It's time we went and had our nap."
+
+"I ain't going to," said the old gentleman suddenly.
+
+"What say? What ain't you going to, Albert?" said the old lady, turning
+her slow eyes round to him.
+
+"Nap," said the old gentleman, his face very red.
+
+It was intolerable to have to go and nap. He wished to stay where he was
+and talk to the twins. Why should he have to nap because somebody else
+wanted to? Why should he have to nap with an old lady, anyway? Never in
+his life had he wanted to nap with old ladies. It was all a dreadful
+mistake.
+
+"Albert," said his wife looking at him.
+
+He went on ahead and rang the lift-bell.
+
+"You're quite right to see that he rests, Mrs. Ridding," said Miss Heap,
+walking away with her and slowing her steps to suit hers. "I should say
+it was essential that he should be kept quiet in the afternoons. You
+should see that Mr. Ridding rests more than he does. _Much_ more," she
+added significantly.
+
+"I can't get Mr. Ridding to remember that we're neither of us--"
+
+This was the last the twins heard.
+
+They too had politely got out of their chairs when the old lady began to
+heave into activity, and they stood watching the three departing
+figures. They were a little surprised. Surely they had all been in the
+middle of an interesting conversation?
+
+"Perhaps it's American to go away in the middle," remarked Anna-Rose,
+following the group with her eyes as it moved toward the lift.
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Anna-Felicitas, also gazing after it.
+
+The old gentleman, in the brief moment during which the two ladies had
+their backs to him while preceding him into the lift, turned quickly
+round on his heels and waved his hand before he himself went in.
+
+The twins laughed, and waved back; and they waved with such goodwill
+that the old gentleman couldn't resist giving one more wave. He was
+seen doing it by the two ladies as they faced round, and his wife, as
+she let herself down on to the edge of the seat, remarked that he
+mustn't exert himself like that or he would have to begin taking his
+drops again.
+
+That was all she said in the lift; but in their room, when she had got
+her breath again, she said, "Albert, there's just one thing in the world
+I hate worse than a fool, and that's an old fool."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+That evening, while the twins were undressing, a message came up from
+the office that the manager would be obliged if the Miss Twinklers'
+canary wouldn't sing.
+
+"But it can't help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of door
+she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't either if
+you were a canary," she added, reasoning with the messenger.
+
+"It's just got to help it," said he.
+
+"But why shouldn't it sing?"
+
+"Complaints."
+
+"But it always has sung."
+
+"That is so. And it has sung once too often. It's unpopular in this
+hotel, that canary of yours. It's just got to rest a while. Take it
+easy. Sit quiet on its perch and think."
+
+"But it won't sit quiet and think."
+
+"Well, I've told you," he said, going away.
+
+This was the bird that had been seen arriving at the Cosmopolitan about
+a week before by the lawyer, and it had piercingly sung ever since. It
+sang, that is, as long as there was any light, real or artificial, to
+sing by. The boy who carried it from the shop for the twins said its
+cage was to be hung in a window in the sun, or it couldn't do itself
+justice. But electric light also enabled it to do itself justice, the
+twins discovered, and if they sat up late the canary sat up late too,
+singing as loudly and as mechanically as if it hadn't been a real
+canary at all, but something clever and American with a machine inside
+it.
+
+Secretly the twins didn't like it. Shocked at its loud behaviour, they
+had very soon agreed that it was no lady, but Anna-Rose was determined
+to have it at The Open Arms because of her conviction that no house
+showing the trail of a woman's hand was without a canary. That, and a
+workbag. She bought them both the same day. The workbag didn't matter,
+because it kept quiet; but the canary was a very big, very yellow bird,
+much bigger and yellower than the frailer canaries of a more exhausted
+civilization, and quite incapable, unless it was pitch dark, of keeping
+quiet for a minute. Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great
+many lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and
+similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they
+were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the
+principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the
+canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the
+biggest and dearest kind of macaroni.
+
+The other guests at the Cosmopolitan had been rather restive from the
+first on account of this bird, but felt so indulgent toward its owners,
+those cute little relations or charges or whatever they were of Teapot
+Twist's, that they bore its singing without complaint. But on the
+evening of the day the Annas had the interesting conversation with Mr.
+and Mrs. Ridding and Miss Heap, two definite complaints were lodged in
+the office, and one was from Mrs. Ridding and the other was from Miss
+Heap.
+
+The manager, as has been said, was already sensitive about the canary.
+Its cage was straining his electric light cord, and its food,
+assiduously administered in quantities exceeding its capacity, littered
+the expensive pink pile carpet. He therefore lent a ready ear and sent
+up a peremptory message; and while the message was going up, Miss Heap,
+who had come herself with her complaint, stayed on discussing the Twist
+and Twinkler party.
+
+She said nothing really; she merely asked questions; and not one of the
+questions, now they were put to him, did the manager find he could
+answer. No doubt everything was all right. Everybody knew about Mr.
+Twist, and it wasn't likely he would choose an hotel of so high a class
+to stay in if his relations to the Miss Twinklers were anything but
+regular. And a lady companion, he understood, was joining the party
+shortly; and besides, there was the house being got ready, a permanent
+place of residence he gathered, in which the party would settle down,
+and experience had taught him that genuine illicitness was never
+permanent. Still, the manager himself hadn't really cared about the
+Twinklers since the canary came. He could fill the hotel very easily,
+and there was no need to accommodate people who spoilt carpets. Also,
+the moment the least doubt or question arose among his guests, all of
+whom he knew and most of whom came back regularly every year, as to the
+social or moral status of any new arrivals, then those arrivals must go.
+Miss Heap evidently had doubts. Her standard, it is true, was the almost
+impossibly high one of the unmarried lady of riper years, but Mrs.
+Ridding, he understood, had doubts too; and once doubts started in an
+hotel he knew from experience that they ran through it like measles. The
+time had come for him to act.
+
+Next morning, therefore, he briskly appeared in Mr. Twist's room as he
+was pulling on his boots, and cheerfully hoped he was bearing in mind
+what he had been told the day he took the rooms, that they were engaged
+for the date of the month now arrived at.
+
+Mr. Twist paused with a boot half on. "I'm not bearing it in mind," he
+said, "because you didn't tell me."
+
+"Oh yes I did, Mr. Twist," said the manager briskly. "It isn't likely
+I'd make a mistake about that. The rooms are taken every year for this
+date by the same people. Mrs. Hart of Boston has this one, and Mr. and
+Mrs.--"
+
+Mr. Twist heard no more. He finished lacing his boots in silence. What
+he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and the twins had got
+under a cloud.
+
+The twins had been saying things. Last night they told him they had made
+some friends. He had been uneasy at that, and questioned them. But it
+appeared they had talked chiefly of their Uncle Arthur. Well, damnable
+as Uncle Arthur was as a man he was safe enough as a topic of
+conversation. He was English. He was known to people in America like the
+Delloggs and the Sacks. But it was now clear they must have said things
+besides that. Probably they had expatiated on Uncle Arthur from some
+point of view undesirable to American ears. The American ear was very
+susceptible. He hadn't been born in New England without becoming aware
+of that.
+
+Mr. Twist tied his bootlaces with such annoyance that he got them into
+knots. He ought never to have come with the Annas to a big hotel. Yet
+lodgings would have been worse. Why hadn't that white-haired gasbag,
+Mrs. Bilton--Mr. Twist's thoughts were sometimes unjust--joined them
+sooner? Why had that shirker Dellogg died? He got his bootlaces
+hopelessly into knots.
+
+"I'd like to start right in getting the rooms fixed up, Mr. Twist," said
+the manager pleasantly. "Mrs. Hart of Boston is very--"
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist, straightening himself and turning the full
+light of his big spectacles on to him, "I don't care a curse for Mrs.
+Hart of Boston."
+
+The manager expressed regret that Mr. Twist should connect a curse with
+a lady. It wasn't American to do that. Mrs. Hart--
+
+"Damn Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Twist, who had become full-bodied of speech
+while in France, and when he was goaded let it all out.
+
+The manager went away. And so, two hours later, did Mr. Twist and the
+twins.
+
+"I don't know what you've been saying," he said in an extremely
+exasperated voice, as he sat opposite them in the taxi with their grips,
+considerably added to and crowned by the canary who was singing, piled
+up round him.
+
+"Saying?" echoed the twins, their eyes very round.
+
+"But whatever it was you'd have done better to say something else.
+Confound that bird. Doesn't it ever stop screeching?"
+
+It was the twins, however, who were confounded. So much confounded by
+what they considered his unjust severity that they didn't attempt to
+defend themselves, but sat looking at him with proud hurt eyes.
+
+By this time they both had become very fond of Mr. Twist, and
+accordingly he was able to hurt them. Anna-Rose, indeed, was so fond of
+him that she actually thought him handsome. She had boldly said so to
+the astonished Anna-Felicitas about a week before; and when
+Anna-Felicitas was silent, being unable to agree, Anna-Rose had heatedly
+explained that there was handsomeness, and there was the higher
+handsomeness, and that that was the one Mr. Twist had. It was infinitely
+better than mere handsomeness, said Anna-Rose--curly hair and a straight
+nose and the rest of the silly stuff--because it was real and lasting;
+and it was real and lasting because it lay in the play of the features
+and not in their exact position and shape.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't see that Mr. Twist's features played. She looked
+at him now in the taxi while he angrily stared out of the window, and
+even though he was evidently greatly stirred his features weren't
+playing. She didn't particularly want them to play. She was fond of and
+trusted Mr. Twist, and would never even have thought whether he had
+features or not ii Anna-Rose hadn't taken lately to talking so much
+about them. And she couldn't help remembering how this very Christopher,
+so voluble now on the higher handsomeness, had said on board the _St.
+Luke_ when first commenting on Mr. Twist that God must have got tired of
+making him by the time his head was reached. Well, Christopher had
+always been an idealist. When she was eleven she had violently loved the
+coachman. Anna-Felicitas hadn't ever violently loved anybody yet, and
+seeing Anna-Rose like this now about Mr. Twist made her wonder when she
+too was going to begin. Surely it was time. She hoped her inability to
+begin wasn't perhaps because she had no heart. Still, she couldn't begin
+if she didn't see anybody to begin on.
+
+She sat silent in the taxi, with Christopher equally silent beside her,
+both of them observing Mr. Twist through lowered eyelashes. Anna-Rose
+watched him with hurt and anxious eyes like a devoted dog who has been
+kicked without cause. Anna-Felicitas watched him in a more detached
+spirit. She had a real affection for him, but it was not, she was sure
+and rather regretted, an affection that would ever be likely to get the
+better of her reason. It wasn't because he was so old, of course, she
+thought, for one could love the oldest people, beginning with that
+standard example of age, the _liebe Gott_; it was because she liked him
+so much.
+
+How could one get sentimental over and love somebody one so thoroughly
+liked? The two things on reflection didn't seem to combine well. She was
+sure, for instance, that Aunt Alice had loved Uncle Arthur, amazing as
+it seemed, but she was equally sure she hadn't liked him. And look at
+the _liebe Gott_. One loves the _liebe Gott_, but it would be going too
+far, she thought, to say that one likes him.
+
+These were the reflections of Anna-Felicitas in the taxi, as she
+observed through her eyelashes the object of Anna-Rose's idealization.
+She envied Anna-Rose; for here she had been steadily expanding every day
+more and more like a flower under the influence of her own power of
+idealization. She used to sparkle and grow rosy like that for the
+coachman. Perhaps after all it didn't much matter what you loved, so
+long as you loved immensely. It was, perhaps, thought Anna-Felicitas
+approaching this subject with some caution and diffidence, the quantity
+of one's love that mattered rather than the quality of its object. Not
+that Mr. Twist wasn't of the very first quality, except to look at; but
+what after all were faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing
+else but face, so handsome was he and so without any other
+recommendation. He couldn't even drive; and her father had very soon
+kicked him out with the vigour and absence of hesitation peculiar to
+Junkers when it comes to kicking and Anna-Rose had wept all over her
+bread and butter at tea that day, and was understood to say that she
+knew at last what it must be like to be a widow.
+
+Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window with an
+angry and worried face, his attention irritably concentrated, so it
+seemed, on the objects passing in the road, very well knew he was being
+observed. He wouldn't, however, allow his eye to be caught. He wasn't
+going to become entangled at this juncture in argument with the Annas.
+He was hastily making up his mind, and there wasn't much time to do it
+in. He had had no explanation with the twins since the manager's visit
+to his room, and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders
+to them, told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got
+them safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
+were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train from
+Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind. The
+station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage in till
+she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the parcel-room as
+easily as he could their grips--neatly labelled, put away safely on a
+shelf till called for.
+
+Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at decisions. He
+would leave the twins in the waiting room at the station till Mrs.
+Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find lodgings for them and her.
+He himself would get a room in another and less critical hotel, and stay
+in it till the cottage was habitable. So would unassailable
+respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and
+cover it up.
+
+But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the _contretemps_ that had
+occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there;
+nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the twins to be happy,
+to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was
+their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything to make it
+difficult. And, jerkily, his angry thoughts pounced, as they so often
+did, on Uncle Arthur. Fancy kicking two little things like that out into
+the world, two little breakable things like that, made to be cherished
+and watched over. Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard
+the female as an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a
+charming setting and kept brightly free from dust. If Uncle Arthur had
+had a shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would
+have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling was
+against aliens. Never would a decent man have chucked them out.
+
+He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins. Their
+eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face. With the quick
+change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose hearts are warm,
+a flood of love for them gushed up within him and put out his anger.
+After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he, Edward A. Twist, never
+would have met these blessed children. He would now have been at Clark;
+leading lightless days; hopelessly involved with his mother.
+
+His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile. Instantly the two
+faces opposite cleared into something shining.
+
+"Oh dear," said Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, "it _is_
+refreshing when you leave off being cross."
+
+"We're fearfully sorry if we've said anything we oughtn't to have," said
+Anna-Rose, "and if you tell us what it is we won't say it again."
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know what it was," said Mr. Twist, in
+his usual kind voice. "I only see the results. And the results are that
+the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we've got to find lodgings."
+
+"Lodgings?"
+
+"Till we can move into the cottage. I'm going to put you and Mrs. Bilton
+in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some hotel."
+
+The twins stared at him a moment in silence. Then Anna-Rose said with
+sudden passion, "You're not."
+
+"How's that?" asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering by the
+arrival of the taxi at the station.
+
+There followed ten minutes' tangle and confusion, at the end of which
+the twins found themselves free of their grips and being piloted into
+the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.
+
+"There," he said. "You sit here quiet and good. I'll come back about one
+o'clock with sandwiches and candy for your dinner, and maybe a
+story-book or two. You mustn't leave this, do you hear? I'm going to
+hunt for those lodgings."
+
+And he was in the act of taking off his hat valedictorily when Anna-Rose
+again said with the same passion, "You're not."
+
+"Not what?" inquired Mr. Twist, pausing with his hat in mid-air.
+
+"Going to hunt for lodgings. We won't go to them."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas, with no passion but with an
+infinitely rock-like determination.
+
+"And pray--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"Go into lodgings alone with Mrs. Bilton?" interrupted Anna-Rose her
+face scarlet, her whole small body giving the impression of indignant
+feathers standing up on end. "While you're somewhere else? Away from us?
+We won't."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost placid
+quality in her determination, it was so final and so unshakable. "Would
+you?"
+
+"See here--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We won't see anywhere," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Would you," inquired Anna-Felicitas, again reasoning with him, "like
+being alone in lodgings with Mrs. Bilton?"
+
+"This is no time for conversation," said Mr. Twist, making for the door.
+"You've got to do what I think best on this occasion. And that's all
+about it."
+
+"We won't," repeated Anna-Rose, on the verge of those tears which always
+with her so quickly followed any sort of emotion.
+
+Mr. Twist paused on his way to the door. "Well now what the devil's the
+matter with lodgings?" he asked angrily.
+
+"It isn't the devil, it's Mrs. Bilton," said Anna-Felicitas. "Would you
+yourself like--"
+
+'But you've got to have Mrs. Bilton with you anyhow from to-day on."
+
+"But not unadulterated Mrs. Bilton. You were to have been with us too.
+We can't be drowned all by ourselves in Mrs. Bilton. _You_ wouldn't like
+it."
+
+"Of course I wouldn't. But it's only for a few days anyhow," said Mr.
+Twist, who had been quite unprepared for opposition to his very
+sensible arrangement.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if it's only a few days now before we can all
+squeeze into some part of the cottage. If you don't mind dust and noise
+and workmen about all day long."
+
+A light pierced the gloom that had gathered round Anna-Felicitas's soul.
+
+"We'll go into it to-day," she said firmly, "Why not? We can camp out.
+We can live in those little rooms at the back over the kitchen,--the
+ones you got ready for Li Koo. We'd be on the spot. We wouldn't mind
+anything. It would just be a picnic."
+
+"And we--we wouldn't be--sep--separated," said Anna-Rose, getting it out
+with a gasp.
+
+Mr. Twist stood looking at them.
+
+"Well, of all the--" he began, pushing his hat back. "Are you aware,"
+he went on more calmly, "that there are only two rooms over that
+kitchen, and that you and Mrs. Bilton will have to be all together in
+one of them?"
+
+"We don't mind that as long as you're in the other one," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"Of course," suggested Anna-Felicitas, "if you were to happen to marry
+Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division."
+
+Mr. Twist's spectacles stared enormously at her.
+
+"No, no," said Anna-Rose quickly. "Marriage is a sacred thing, and you
+can't just marry so as to be more comfortable."
+
+"I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I'd be more uncomfortable," remarked
+Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.
+
+He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he fixed his
+hat properly on his head and said, sobriety in his voice and manner,
+"Come along, then. We'll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at
+the rooms. But I shouldn't be surprised," he added, "if before I've done
+with you you'll have driven me sheer out of my wits."
+
+"Oh, _don't_ say that," said the twins together, with all and more of
+their usual urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the rooms Li
+Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by the time Mrs.
+Bilton arrived. They were in an outbuilding at the back of the house,
+and consisted of a living-room with a cooking-stove in it, a bedroom
+behind it, and up a narrow and curly staircase a larger room running the
+whole length and width of the shanty. This sounds spacious, but it
+wasn't. The amount of length and width was small, and it was only just
+possible to get three camp-beds into it and a washstand. The beds nearly
+touched each other. Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going
+to be regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr.
+Twist's consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the room
+by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that there was
+lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the camp life so
+extensively practised in America, would thoroughly enjoy herself.
+
+They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making the
+little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains intended for the
+other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in great bunches of the
+pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled about everywhere in the
+garden and hiding the worst places in the rooms with them. Mr. Twist was
+in Acapulco most of the time, getting together the necessary temporary
+furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't miss him, for they
+were helped with zeal by the architect, the electrical expert, the
+garden expert and the chief plumber.
+
+These young men--they were all young, and very go-ahead--abandoned the
+main building that day to the undirected labours of the workmen they
+were supposed to control, and turned to on the shanty as soon as they
+realized what it was to be used for with a joyous energy that delighted
+the twins. They swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the
+windows and the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with
+the curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
+packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted various
+other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,--a rug or two, an easy
+chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They screwed in hooks behind the
+doors for clothes to be hung on, and they tied the canary to a
+neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it could be seen and hardly heard.
+The chief plumber found buckets and filled them with water, and the
+electrical expert rigged up a series of lanterns inside the shanty, even
+illuminating its tortuous staircase. There was much _badinage_, but as
+it was all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able
+to apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant smiles.
+But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so engaging that
+the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed when Mr. Twist came
+back.
+
+He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins, whom he
+had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with nothing at all to
+eat; and he found them looking particularly comfortable and
+well-nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they refused his
+sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.
+
+They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived, resting
+from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted with the four
+experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and the experts who were
+smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they were saying. It wouldn't
+have added to his comfort if he had heard, for they were giving the
+experts an account of their attempt to go and live with the Sacks, and
+interweaving with it some general reflections of a philosophical nature
+suggested by the Sack _menage_. The experts were keenly interested, and
+everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly if
+the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't directing the
+workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist perceived a drawback to the
+twins living on the spot while the place was being finished; another
+drawback. He had perceived several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs.
+Bilton would soon be there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He
+positively longed for her.
+
+When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the boss,"
+they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up quickly and
+departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the Twinkler family,
+but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of the country to wink,
+and they wondered whether they ought to have winked back. The young men
+were certainly deserving of every friendliness in return for all they
+had done. They decided they would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could
+wink at them if necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.
+
+Mr. Twist took them with him when he went down to the station to meet
+the Los Angeles train. It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home
+by then, but the experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished
+at the amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
+they explained to him how very active the experts had been, whereupon he
+said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them they would go
+with him to the station.
+
+"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
+finishing touches if we stayed here."
+
+"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.
+
+Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She supposed she
+was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she originally was, and
+all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was trying to tell her she
+wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say about her journey, and her
+last days among her friends, and all the pleasant new acquaintances she
+had made on the train, and her speech was so very close-knit, that he
+felt he was like a rabbit on the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running
+desperately up and down searching for a gap to get through. It was
+nothing short of amazing how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there
+wasn't at any moment the smallest pause in the flow.
+
+"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she wanted
+to say herself, and found herself hopelessly muzzled.
+
+"No wonder Mr. Bilton preferred heaven," thought Anna-Felicitas, also a
+little restless at the completeness of her muzzling.
+
+"Anyhow she'll never hear the Annas saying anything," thought Mr. Twist,
+consoling himself.
+
+"This hotel we're going to seems to be located at some distance from
+the station," said Mrs. Bilton presently, in the middle of several pages
+of rapid unpunctuated monologue. "Isolated, surely--" and off she went
+again to other matters, just as Mr. Twist had got his mouth open to
+explain at last.
+
+She arrived therefore at the cottage unconscious of the change in her
+fate.
+
+Now Mrs. Bilton was as fond of comfort as any other woman who has been
+deprived for some years of that substitute for comfort, a husband. She
+had looked forward to the enveloping joys of the Cosmopolitan, its bath,
+its soft bed and good food, with frank satisfaction. She thought it
+admirable that before embarking on active duties she should for a space
+rest luxuriously in an excellent hotel, with no care in regard to
+expense, and exchange ideas while she rested with the interesting people
+she would be sure to meet in it. Before the interview in Los Angeles,
+Mr. Twist had explained to her by letter and under the seal of
+confidence the philanthropic nature of the project he and the Miss
+Twinklers were engaged upon, and she was prepared, in return for the
+very considerable salary she had accepted, to do her duty loyally and
+unremittingly; but after the stress and hard work of her last days in
+Los Angeles she had certainly looked forward with a particular pleasure
+to two or three weeks' delicious wallowing in flesh-pots for which she
+had not to pay. She was also, however, a lady of grit; and she
+possessed, as she said her friends often told her, a redoubtable psyche,
+a genuine American free and fearless psyche; so that when, talking
+ceaselessly, her thoughts eagerly jostling each other as they streamed
+through her brain to get first to the exit of her tongue, she caught her
+foot in some builder's debris carelessly left on the path up to the
+cottage and received in this way positively her first intimation that
+this couldn't be the Cosmopolitan, she did not, as a more timid female
+soul well might have, become alarmed and suppose that Mr. Twist, whom
+after all she didn't know, had brought her to this solitary place for
+purposes of assassination, but stopped firmly just where she was, and
+turning her head in the darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll
+stand right here till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to
+what's at my feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm
+not going any further with this promenade till I can say. And when
+you've thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
+information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming to."
+
+"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give it you
+ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your getting out of
+the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been trying to offer you
+my arm along the path--"
+
+"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.
+
+At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking up and
+down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the electrical
+expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be about.
+
+Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him first
+examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave it back to
+him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to whatever it is
+has been substituted without my knowledge for that hotel," she said; and
+while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal with her grips, she walked
+carefully toward the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
+immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's not
+having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from her
+itinerary.
+
+The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without further
+struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without answering to
+the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept her in the dark,
+raised her voice at last and called out, "But he wanted to--he wanted to
+all the time--you wouldn't listen--you wouldn't stop--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her tongue
+and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert had lit all
+the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its lighted windows
+gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no amount of light and
+bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its discomforts, its dreadful
+smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which the twins were accustomed to
+regard as precious, as things brought up lovingly in pots, were nothing
+but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's experienced Californian eye.
+
+She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet fell on the twins with
+a great sense of refreshment. Standing in the doorway--for Mrs. Bilton
+and the electrical expert between them filled up most of the
+kitchen--they heaved a deep sigh. "And see how beautiful the stars are,"
+whispered Anna-Felicitas in Anna-Rose's ear; she hadn't been able to see
+them before somehow, Mrs. Bilton's voice had so much ruffled the night.
+
+"Do you think she talks in her sleep?" Anna-Rose anxiously whispered
+back.
+
+But Mr. Twist, arriving with his hands full, was staggered to find Mrs.
+Bilton not talking. An icy fear seized his heart. She was going to
+refuse to stay with them. And she would be within her rights if she did,
+for certainly what she called her itinerary had promised her a
+first-rate hotel, in which she was to continue till a finished and
+comfortable house was stepped into.
+
+"I wish you'd say something," he said, plumping down the bags he was
+carrying on the kitchen floor.
+
+The twins from the doorway looked at him and then at each other in great
+surprise. Fancy _asking_ Mrs. Bilton to say something.
+
+"They would come," said Mr. Twist, resentfully, jerking his head toward
+the Annas in the doorway.
+
+"It's worse upstairs," he went on desperately as Mrs. Bilton still was
+dumb.
+
+"Worse upstairs?" cried the twins, as one woman.
+
+"It's perfect upstairs," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"It's like camping out without _being_ out," said Anna-Rose.
+
+"The only drawback is that there are rather a lot of beds in our room,"
+said Anna-Felicitas, "but that of course"--she turned to Mr.
+Twist--"might easily be arranged--"
+
+"I wish you'd _say_ something, Mrs. Bilton," he interrupted quickly and
+loud.
+
+Mrs. Bilton drew a deep breath and looked round her. She looked round
+the room, and she looked up at the ceiling, which the upright feather in
+her hat was tickling, and she looked at the faces of the twins, lit
+flickeringly by the uncertain light of the lanterns. Then, woman of
+grit, wife who had never failed him of Bruce D. Bilton, widow who had
+remained poised and indomitable on a small income in a circle of
+well-off friends, she spoke; and she said:
+
+"Mr. Twist, I can't say what this means, and you'll furnish me no doubt
+with information, but whatever it is I'm not the woman to put my hand to
+a plough and then turn back again. That type of behaviour may have been
+good enough for Pharisees and Sadducees, who if I remember rightly had
+to be specially warned against the practice, but it isn't good enough
+for me. You've conducted me to a shack instead of the hotel I was
+promised, and I await your explanation. Meanwhile, is there any supper?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was only a fortnight after this that the inn was ready to be opened,
+and it was only during the first days of this fortnight that the party
+in the shanty had to endure any serious discomfort. The twins didn't
+mind the physical discomfort at all; what they minded, and began to mind
+almost immediately, was the spiritual discomfort of being at such close
+quarters with Mrs. Bilton. They hardly noticed the physical side of that
+close association in such a lovely climate, where the whole of
+out-of-doors can be used as one's living-room; and their morning
+dressing, a difficult business in the shanty for anybody less young and
+more needing to be careful, was rather like the getting up of a dog
+after its night's sleep--they seemed just to shake themselves, and there
+they were.
+
+They got up before Mrs. Bilton, who was, however, always awake and
+talking to them while they dressed, and they went to bed before she did,
+though she came up with them after the first night and read aloud to
+them while they undressed; so that as regarded the mysteries of Mrs.
+Bilton's toilette they were not, after all, much in her way. It was like
+caravaning or camping out: you managed your movements and moments
+skilfully, and if you were Mrs. Bilton you had a curtain slung across
+your part of the room, in case your younger charges shouldn't always be
+asleep when they looked as if they were.
+
+Gradually one alleviation was added to another, and Mrs. Bilton forgot
+the rigours of the beginning. Li Koo arrived, for instance, fetched by a
+telegram, and under a tent in the eucalyptus grove at the back of the
+house set up an old iron stove and produced, with no apparent exertion,
+extraordinarily interesting and amusing food. He went into Acapulco at
+daylight every morning and did the marketing. He began almost
+immediately to do everything else in the way of housekeeping. He was
+exquisitely clean, and saw to it that the shanty matched him in
+cleanliness. To the surprise and gratification of the twins, who had
+supposed it would be their lot to go on doing the housework of the
+shanty, he took it over as a matter of course, dusting, sweeping, and
+tidying like a practised and very excellent housemaid. The only thing he
+refused to do was to touch the three beds in the upper chamber. "Me no
+make lady-beds," he said briefly.
+
+Li Koo's salary was enormous, but Mr. Twist, with a sound instinct,
+cared nothing what he paid so long as he got the right man. He was,
+indeed, much satisfied with his two employees, and congratulated himself
+on his luck. It is true in regard to Mrs. Bilton his satisfaction was
+rather of the sorrowful sort that a fresh ache in a different part of
+one's body from the first ache gives: it relieved him from one by
+substituting another. Mrs. Bilton overwhelmed him; but so had the Annas
+begun to. Her overwhelming, however, was different, and freed him from
+that other worse one. He felt safe now about the Annas, and after all
+there were parts of the building in which Mrs. Bilton wasn't. There was
+his bedroom, for instance. Thank God for bedrooms, thought Mr. Twist. He
+grew to love his. What a haven that poky and silent place was; what a
+blessing the conventions were, and the proprieties. Supposing
+civilization were so far advanced that people could no longer see the
+harm there is in a bedroom, what would have become of him? Mr. Twist
+could perfectly account for Bruce D. Bilton's death. It wasn't diabetes,
+as Mrs. Bilton said; it was just bedroom.
+
+Still, Mrs. Bilton was an undoubted find, and did immediately in those
+rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them with her in
+the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did to Mrs. Bilton
+they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the peculiar ease of the
+Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans approach with care. Never
+would they be able to tell her things about Uncle Arthur, the kind of
+things that had caused the Cosmopolitan to grow so suddenly cool. There
+was, most happily for this particular case, no arguing with Mrs. Bilton.
+The twins couldn't draw her out because she was already, as it were, so
+completely out. This was a great thing, Mr. Twist felt, and made up for
+any personal suffocation he had to bear; and when on the afternoon of
+Mrs. Bilton's first day the twins appeared without her in the main
+building in search of him, having obviously given her the slip, and said
+they were sorry to disturb him but they wanted his advice, for though
+they had been trying hard all day, remembering they were ladies and
+practically hostesses, they hadn't yet succeeded in saying anything at
+all to Mrs. Bilton and doubted whether they ever would, he merely smiled
+happily at them and said to Anna-Rose, "See how good comes out of
+evil"--a remark that they didn't like when they had had time to think
+over it.
+
+But they went on struggling. It seemed so unnatural to be all alone all
+day long with someone and only listen. Mrs. Bilton never left their
+side, regarding it as proper and merely fulfilling her part of the
+bargain, in these first confused days when there was nothing for ladies
+to do but look on while perspiring workmen laboured at apparently
+producing more and more chaos, to become thoroughly acquainted with her
+young charges. This she did by imparting to them intimate and meticulous
+information about her own life, with the whole of the various uplifts,
+as she put it, her psyche had during its unfolding experienced. There
+was so much to tell about herself that she never got to inquiring about
+the twins. She knew they were orphans, and that this was a good work,
+and for the moment had no time for more.
+
+The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they
+didn't know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she
+didn't answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete
+experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr.
+Bilton. They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and
+find out what he had thought of things. Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her
+details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton's thoughts
+remained impenetrable. It seemed to the twins that he must have thought
+a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said
+for death.
+
+The Biltons, it appeared, had been the opposite of the Clouston-Sacks,
+and had never been separated for a single day during the whole of their
+married life. This seemed to the twins very strange, and needing a great
+deal of explanation. In order to get light thrown on it the first thing
+they wanted to find out was how long the marriage had lasted; but Mrs.
+Bilton was deaf to their inquiries, and having described Mr. Bilton's
+last moments and obsequies--obsequies scheduled by her, she said, with
+so tender a regard for his memory that she insisted on a horse-drawn
+hearse instead of the more fashionable automobile conveyance, on the
+ground that a motor hearse didn't seem sorry enough even on first
+speed--she washed along with an easy flow to descriptions of the
+dreadfulness of the early days of widowhood, when one's crepe veil keeps
+on catching in everything--chairs, overhanging branches, and passers-by,
+including it appeared on one occasion a policeman. She inquired of the
+twins whether they had ever seen a new-made widow in a wind. Chicago,
+she said, was a windy place, and Mr. Bilton passed in its windiest
+month. Her long veil, as she proceeded down the streets on the daily
+constitutional she considered it her duty toward the living to take, for
+one owes it to one's friends to keep oneself fit and not give way, was
+blown hither and thither in the buffeting cross-currents of that uneasy
+climate, and her walk in the busier streets was a series of
+entanglements. Embarrassing entanglements, said Mrs. Bilton. Fortunately
+the persons she got caught in were delicacy and sympathy itself; often,
+indeed, seeming quite overcome by the peculiar poignancy of the
+situation, covered with confusion, profuse in apologies. Sometimes the
+wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above
+her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a
+moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any
+one who happened to be near, like a cord. It did this once about the
+body of the policeman directing the traffic, by whose side she had
+paused, and she had to walk round him backwards before it could be
+unwound. The Chicago evening papers, prompt on the track of a sensation,
+had caused her friends much painful if only short-lived amazement by
+coming out with huge equivocal headlines:
+
+WELL-KNOWN SOCIETY WIDOW AND POLICEMAN CAUGHT TOGETHER
+
+and beginning their description of the occurrence by printing her name
+in full. So that for the first sentence or two her friends were a prey
+to horror and distress, which turned to indignation on discovering there
+was nothing in it after all.
+
+The twins, their eyes on Mrs. Bilton's face, their hands clasped round
+their knees, their bodies sitting on the grass at her feet, occasionally
+felt as they followed her narrative that they were somehow out of their
+depth and didn't quite understand. It was extraordinarily exasperating
+to them to be so completely muzzled. They were accustomed to elucidate
+points they didn't understand by immediate inquiry; they had a habit of
+asking for information, and then delivering comments on it.
+
+This condition of repression made them most uncomfortable. The ilex tree
+in the field below the house, to which Mrs. Bilton shepherded them each
+morning and afternoon for the first three days, became to them, in spite
+of its beauty with the view from under its dark shade across the sunny
+fields to the sea and the delicate distant islands, a painful spot. The
+beauty all round them was under these conditions exasperating. Only once
+did Mrs. Bilton leave them, and that was the first afternoon, when they
+instantly fled to seek out Mr. Twist; and she only left them then--for
+it wasn't just her sense of duty that was strong, but also her dislike
+of being alone--because something unexpectedly gave way in the upper
+part of her dress, she being of a tight well-held-in figure, depending
+much on its buttons; and she had very hastily to go in search of a
+needle.
+
+After that they didn't see Mr. Twist alone for several days. They hardly
+indeed saw him at all. The only meal he shared with them was supper, and
+on finding the first evening that Mrs. Bilton read aloud to people after
+supper, he made the excuse of accounts to go through and went into his
+bedroom, repeating this each night.
+
+The twins watched him go with agonized eyes. They considered themselves
+deserted; shamefully abandoned to a miserable fate.
+
+"And it isn't as if he didn't _like_ reading aloud," whispered
+Anna-Rose, bewildered and indignant as she remembered the "Ode to
+Dooty."
+
+"Perhaps he's one of those people who only like it if they do it
+themselves," Anna-Felicitas whispered back, trying to explain his base
+behaviour.
+
+And while they whispered, Mrs. Bilton with great enjoyment
+declaimed--she had had a course of elocution lessons during Mr. Bilton's
+life so as to be able to place the best literature advantageously before
+him--the diary of a young girl written in prison. The young girl had
+been wrongfully incarcerated, Mrs. Bilton explained, and her pure soul
+only found release by the demise of her body. The twins hated the young
+girl from the first paragraph. She wrote her diary every day till her
+demise stopped her. As nothing happens in prisons that hasn't happened
+the day before, she could only write her reflections; and the twins
+hated her reflections, because they were so very like what in their
+secret moments of slush they were apt to reflect themselves. Their
+mother had had a horror of slush. There had been none anywhere about
+her; but it is in the air in Germany, in people's blood, everywhere; and
+though the twins, owing to the English part of them, had a horror of it
+too, there it was in them, and they knew it,--genuine German slush.
+
+They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they would
+write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings they had to
+listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why didn't he come out and
+save them? What happy, what glorious evenings they used to have at the
+Cosmopolitan, spent in intelligent conversation, in a decent give and
+take--not this button-holing business, this being got into a corner and
+held down; and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to
+get sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
+now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled with
+impatience in their seats beneath the _epanchements_ of the young girl,
+the strangely and distressingly familiar _epanchements_. The diary was
+published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs. Bilton
+on laying it down announced she would go on with it while they were
+dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs. Bilton was
+awake and crept out and hid it.
+
+But Li Koo found it and restored it.
+
+Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes the third
+morning, although the twins had hidden them most carefully. Their idea
+was that while she, rendered immobile, waited indoors, they would
+zealously look for them in all the places where they well knew that they
+weren't, and perhaps get some conversation with Mr. Twist.
+
+But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the fourth
+morning, when, unable any longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran
+into the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
+at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled ditch.
+
+In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out that they
+were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though the ditch had
+nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no comment. He never
+did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made
+the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the
+opposite reason. They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather
+like the _liebe Gott_,--he saw everything, knew everything, and said
+nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to
+pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo--again, they silently
+reflected, like the _liebe Gott_--had a different sense of geniality
+from theirs; he couldn't apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever
+wanted to. Their genialities faltered and froze on their lips.
+
+Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found hiding, and
+were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in this manner to
+conciliate Li Koo. Their dignity on the walk back to the shanty seemed
+painfully shrunk. They ought never to have condescended to do the
+childish things they had been doing during the last three days. If they
+hadn't been found out it would, of course, have remained a private
+matter between them and their Maker, and then one doesn't mind so much;
+but they had been found out, and by Li Koo, their own servant. It was
+intolerable. All the blood of all the Twinklers, Junkers from time
+immemorial and properly sensitive to humiliation, surged within them.
+They hadn't felt so naughty and so young for years. They were sure Li
+Koo didn't believe them about the ditch. They had a dreadful sensation
+of being led back to Mrs. Bilton by the ear.
+
+If only they could sack Mrs. Bilton!
+
+This thought, immense and startling, came to Anna-Rose, who far more
+than Anna-Felicitas resented being cut off from Mr. Twist, besides being
+more naturally impetuous; and as they walked in silence side by side,
+with Li Koo a little ahead of them, she turned her head and looked at
+Anna-Felicitas. "Let's give her notice," she murmured, under her breath.
+
+Anna-Felicitas was so much taken aback that she stopped in her walk and
+stared at Anna-Rose's flushed face.
+
+She too hardly breathed it. The suggestion seemed fantastic in its
+monstrousness. How could they give anybody so old, so sure of herself,
+so determined as Mrs. Bilton, notice?
+
+"Give her notice?" she repeated.
+
+A chill ran down Anna-Felicitas's spine. Give Mrs. Bilton notice! It was
+a great, a breath-taking idea, magnificent in its assertion of
+independence, of rights; but it needed, she felt, to be approached with
+caution. They had never given anybody notice in their lives, and they
+had always thought it must be a most painful thing to do--far, far worse
+than tipping. Uncle Arthur usedn't to mind it a bit; did it, indeed,
+with gusto. But Aunt Alice hadn't liked it at all, and came out in a
+cold perspiration and bewailed her lot to them and wished that people
+would behave and not place her in such a painful position.
+
+Mrs. Bilton couldn't be said not to have behaved. Quite the contrary.
+She had behaved too persistently; and they had to endure it the whole
+twenty-four hours. For Mrs. Bilton had no turn, it appeared, in spite
+of what she had said at Los Angeles, for solitary contemplation, and
+after the confusion of the first night, when once she had had time to
+envisage the situation thoroughly, as she said, she had found that to
+sit alone downstairs in the uncertain light of the lanterns while the
+twins went to bed and Mr. Twist wouldn't come out of his room, was not
+good for her psyche; so she had followed the twins upstairs, and
+continued to read the young girl's diary to them during their undressing
+and till the noises coming from their beds convinced her that it was
+useless to go on any longer. And that morning, the morning they hid in
+the ditch, she had even done this while they were getting up.
+
+"It isn't to be borne," said Anna-Rose under her breath, one eye on Li
+Koo's ear which, a little in front of her, seemed slightly slanted
+backward and sideways in the direction of her voice. "And why should it
+be? We're not in her power."
+
+"No," said Anna-Felicitas, also under her breath and also watching Li
+Koo's ear, "but it feels extraordinarily as if we were."
+
+"Yes. And that's intolerable. And it forces us to do silly baby things,
+wholly unsuited either to our age or our position. Who would have
+thought we'd ever hide from somebody in a ditch again!" Anna-Rose's
+voice was almost a sob at the humiliation.
+
+"It all comes from sleeping in the same room," said Anna-Felicitas.
+"Nobody can stand a thing that doesn't end at night either."
+
+"Of course they can't," said Anna-Rose. "It isn't fair. If you have to
+have a person all day you oughtn't to have to have the same person all
+night. Some one else should step in and relieve you then. Just as they
+do in hospitals."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Mr. Twist ought to. He ought to remove her
+forcibly from our room by marriage.
+
+"No he oughtn't," said Anna-Rose hastily, "because we can remove her
+ourselves by the simple process of giving her notice."
+
+"I don't believe it's simple," said Anna-Felicia again feeling a chill
+trickling down her spine.
+
+"Of course it is. We just go to her very politely and inform her that
+the engagement is terminated on a basis of mutual esteem but inflexible
+determination."
+
+"And suppose she doesn't stop talking enough to hear?"
+
+"Then we'll hand it to her in writing."
+
+The rest of the way they walked in silence, Anna-Rose with her chin
+thrust out in defiance, Anna-Felicitas dragging her feet along with a
+certain reluctance and doubt.
+
+Mrs. Bilton had finished her breakfast when they got back, having seen
+no sense in letting good food get cold, and was ready to sit and chat to
+them while they had theirs. She was so busy telling them what she had
+supposed they were probably doing, that she was unable to listen to
+their attempted account of what they had done. Thus they were saved from
+telling humiliating and youthful fibs; but they were also prevented, as
+by a wall of rock, from getting the speech through to her ear that
+Anna-Rose, trembling in spite of her defiance, had ready to launch at
+her. It was impossible to shout at Mrs. Bilton in the way Mr. Twist,
+when in extremity of necessity, had done. Ladies didn't shout;
+especially not when they were giving other ladies notice. Anna-Rose,
+who was quite cold and clammy at the prospect of her speech, couldn't
+help feeling relieved when breakfast was over and no opportunity for it
+had been given.
+
+"We'll write it," she whispered to Anna-Felicitas beneath the cover of a
+lively account Mrs. Bilton was giving them, _a propos_ of their being
+late for breakfast, of the time it took her, after Mr. Bilton's passing,
+to get used to his unpunctuality at meals.
+
+That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily for
+years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly astonished her
+every day, she said. The clock struck, yet Mr. Bilton continued late. It
+was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way of being reminded of her loss.
+Each day she would instinctively expect; each day would come the stab of
+recollection. The vacancy these non-appearances had made in her life was
+beyond any words of hers. In fact she didn't possess such words, and
+doubted if the completest dictionary did either. Everything went just
+vacant, she said. No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as
+to be behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr.
+Bilton simultaneously appeared. No need any more to think of him when
+ordering meals. No need any more to eat the dish he had been so fond of
+and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked beans and bacon;
+yet she found herself ordering it continually after his departure, and
+choking memorially over the mouthfuls--"And people in Europe," cried Mrs
+Bilton, herself struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, "say that
+American women are incapable of passion!"
+
+"We'll write it," whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Write what?" asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, who as usual when Mrs.
+Bilton narrated her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and
+trying to get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.
+
+But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to the
+recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth pulled out.
+The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being free from it charmed
+and thrilled her, but how painful, how alarming was the prospect of
+pulling it out!
+
+There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton's talk, and that was
+that under its voluminous cover they could themselves whisper
+occasionally to each other. Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs. Bilton didn't
+notice that they whispered neither probably would she notice if she
+wrote. She therefore under Mrs. Bilton's very nose got a pencil and a
+piece of paper, and with many pauses and an unsteady hand wrote the
+following:
+
+DEAR MRS. BILTON--For some time past my sister and I have felt that we
+aren't suited to you, and if you don't mind would you mind regarding the
+engagement as terminated? We hope you won't think this abrupt, because
+it isn't really, for we seem to have lived ages since you came, and
+we've been thinking this over ripely ever since. And we hope you won't
+take it as anything personal either, because it isn't really. It's only
+that we feel we're unsuitable, and we're sure we'll go on getting more
+and more unsuitable. Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we're
+fearfully sorry. But on the other hand we're inflexible.--Yours
+affectionately,
+
+ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER
+
+With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the table
+under cover of the breakfast _debris_ to Anna-Felicitas, who read it
+with a beating heart and cautiously pushed it back.
+
+Anna-Felicitas felt sure Christopher was being terribly impetuous, and
+she felt sure she ought to stop her. But what a joy to be without Mrs.
+Bilton! The thought of going to bed in the placid sluggishness dear to
+her heart, without having to listen, to be attentive, to remember to be
+tidy because if she weren't there would be no room for Mrs. Bilton's
+things, was too much for her. Authority pursuing her into her bedroom
+was what she had found most difficult to bear. There must be respite.
+There must be intervals in every activity or endurance. Even the _liebe
+Gott_, otherwise so indefatigable, had felt this and arranged for the
+relaxation of Sundays.
+
+She pushed the letter back with a beating heart, and told herself that
+she couldn't and never had been able to stop Christopher when she was in
+this mood of her chin sticking out. What could she do in face of such a
+chin? And besides, Mrs. Bilton's friends must be missing her very much
+and ought to have her back. One should always live only with one's own
+sort of people. Every other way of living, Anna-Felicitas was sure even
+at this early stage of her existence, was bound to come to a bad end.
+One could be fond of almost anybody, she held, if they were somewhere
+else. Even of Uncle Arthur. Even he somehow seemed softened by distance.
+But for living-together purposes there was only one kind of people
+possible, and that was one's own kind. Unexpected and various were the
+exteriors of one's own kind and the places one found them in, but one
+always knew them. One felt comfortable with them at once; comfortable
+and placid. Whatever else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't
+feeling placid. That was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with
+her own kind. With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was
+talking on happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above
+manner as she pushed back the letter, instead of, as at the back of her
+mind she felt she ought to have done, tearing it up.
+
+Anna-Rose folded it and addressed it to Mrs. Bilton. Then she got up and
+held it out to her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas got up too, her inside feeling strangely unsteady and
+stirred round and round.
+
+"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs. Bilton,
+who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand without
+apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she was saying.
+
+"We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then said,
+making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who still stood
+hesitating.
+
+She slipped out; and Anna-Felicitas, suddenly panic-stricken lest she
+should be buttonholed all by herself fled after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Mr. Twist, his mind at ease, was in the charming room that was to be the
+tea-room. It was full of scattered fittings and the noise of hammering,
+but even so anybody could see what a delightful place it would presently
+turn into.
+
+The Open Arms was to make a specialty of wet days. Those were the days,
+those consecutive days of downpour that came in the winter and lasted
+without interruption for a fortnight at a time, when visitors in the
+hotels were bored beyond expression and ready to welcome anything that
+could distract them for an hour from the dripping of the rain on the
+windows. Bridge was their one solace, and they played it from after
+breakfast till bedtime; but on the fourth or fifth day of doing this,
+just the mere steady sitting became grievous to them. They ached with
+weariness. They wilted with boredom. All their natural kindness got
+damped out of them, and they were cross. Even when they won they were
+cross, and when they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of
+course, have been in California at all at such a time if it were
+possible to know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never
+did know, and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond
+Christmas. And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and
+warmth to be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
+blizzards.
+
+Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon for
+these victims of the rain. He would come to their rescue. He made up
+his mind, clear and firm on such matters, that it should become the
+habit of these unhappy people during the bad weather to motor out to The
+Open Arms for tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way
+made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without
+being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
+made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a
+welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes, at all
+times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful. Li Koo had a
+secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite
+peculiar and original charm, and these were to be reserved for the rainy
+season only, and be made its specialty. They were to become known and
+endeared to the public under the brief designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr.
+Twist felt there was something thoroughly American about this
+name--plain and business-like, and attractively in contrast to the
+subtle, the almost immoral exquisiteness of the article itself. This
+cake had been one of those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his
+garments the day in Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the
+one of his party who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he
+decided to call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.
+
+The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace so as to
+be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in their shirt
+sleeves, deftly manipulating wood shavings and logs. There was such a
+hammering being made by the workmen fixing in the latticed windows, and
+such a crackling being made by the logs Mr. Twist and the architect kept
+on throwing on the fire, that only from the sudden broad smile on the
+architect's face as he turned to pick up another log did Mr. Twist
+realize that something that hadn't to do with work was happening behind
+his back.
+
+He looked round and saw the Annas picking their way toward him. They
+seemed in a hurry.
+
+"Hello," he called out.
+
+They made no reply to this, but continued hurriedly to pick their way
+among the obstacles in their path. They appeared to be much perturbed.
+What, he wondered, had they done with Mrs. Bilton? He soon knew.
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," panted Anna-Rose as soon as she got
+near enough to his ear for him to hear her in the prevailing noise.
+
+Her face, as usual when she was moved and excited, was scarlet, her eyes
+looking bluer and brighter than ever by contrast.
+
+"We simply can't stand it any longer," she went on as Mr. Twist only
+stared at her.
+
+"And you wouldn't either if you were us," she continued, the more
+passionately as he still didn't say anything.
+
+"Of course," said Anna-Felicitas, taking a high line, though her heart
+was full of doubt, "it's your fault really. We could have borne it if we
+hadn't had to have her at night."
+
+"Come outside," said Mr. Twist, walking toward the door that led on to
+the verandah.
+
+They followed him, Anna-Rose shaking with excitement, Anna-Felicitas
+trying to persuade herself that they had acted in the only way
+consistent with real wisdom.
+
+The architect stood with a log in each hand looking after them and
+smiling all by himself. There was something about the Twinklers that
+lightened his heart whenever he caught sight of them. He and his fellow
+experts had deplored the absence of opportunities since Mrs. Bilton came
+of developing the friendship begun the first day, and talked of them on
+their way home in the afternoons with affectionate and respectful
+familiarity as The Cutes.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Twist, having passed through the verandah and led the
+twins to the bottom of the garden where he turned and faced them,
+"perhaps you'll tell me exactly what you've done."
+
+"You should rather inquire what Mrs. Bilton has done," said
+Anna-Felicitas, pulling herself up as straight and tall as she would go.
+She couldn't but perceive that the excess of Christopher's emotion was
+putting her at a disadvantage in the matter of dignity.
+
+"I can guess pretty much what she has done," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"You can't--you can't," burst out Anna-Rose. "Nobody could--nobody ever
+could--who hadn't been with her day and night."
+
+"She's just been Mrs. Bilton," said Mr. Twist, lighting a cigarette to
+give himself an appearance of calm.
+
+"Exactly," said Anna-Felicitas. "So you won't be surprised at our having
+just been Twinklers."
+
+"Oh Lord," groaned Mr. Twist, in spite of his cigarette, "oh, Lord."
+
+"We've given Mrs. Bilton notice," continued Anna-Felicitas, making a
+gesture of great dignity with her hand, "because we find with regret
+that she and we are incompatible."
+
+"Was she aware that you were giving it her?" asked Mr. Twist,
+endeavouring to keep calm.
+
+"We wrote it."
+
+"Has she read it?"
+
+"We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should have an
+opportunity of quietly considering it."
+
+"You shouldn't have left us alone with her like this," burst out
+Anna-Rose again, "you shouldn't really. It was cruel, it was wrong,
+leaving us high and dry--never seeing you--leaving us to be talked to
+day and night--to be read to--would _you_ like to be read to while
+you're undressing by somebody still in all their clothes? We've never
+been able to open our mouths. We've been taken into the field for our
+airing and brought in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams,
+or flocks and herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape. We
+haven't had a minute to ourselves day or night. There hasn't been a
+single exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we're grown
+up. We've been followed, watched, talked to--oh, oh, how awful it has
+been! Oh, oh, how awful! Forced to be dumb for days--losing our power of
+speech--"
+
+"Anna-Rose Twinkler," interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, "you haven't lost
+it. And you not only haven't, but that power of yours has increased
+tenfold during its days of rest."
+
+He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had already heard
+several times since they landed in America. Each time it took them
+aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds as the kindest and
+gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings of his each time
+astonished them.
+
+On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished. Anna-Felicitas
+all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the depth of her heart
+that Mr. Twist wouldn't like what they had done. He would be upset, she
+felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search of him. He
+would be, she was afraid very much upset. And so he was. He was appalled
+by what had happened. Lose Mrs. Bilton? Lose the very foundation of the
+party's respectability? And how could he find somebody else at the
+eleventh hour and where and how could the twins and he live,
+unchaperoned as they would be, till he had? What a peculiar talent these
+Annas had for getting themselves and him into impossible situations! Of
+course at their age they ought to be safe under the wing of a wise and
+unusually determined mother. Well, poor little wretches, they couldn't
+help not being under it; but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to
+them--faced up to her husband, and stuck to them.
+
+"I suppose," he said angrily, "being you and not being able to see
+farther than the ends of your noses, you haven't got any sort of an idea
+of what you've done."
+
+"We--"
+
+"She--"
+
+"And I don't suppose it's much use my trying to explain, either. Hasn't
+it ever occurred to you, though I'd be real grateful if you'd give me
+information on this point--that maybe you don't know everything?"
+
+"She--"
+
+"We--"
+
+"And that till you do know everything, which I take it won't be for some
+time yet, judging from the samples I've had of your perspicacity, you'd
+do well not to act without first asking some one's advice? Mine, for
+instance?"
+
+"She--" began Anna-Rose again; but her voice was trembling, for she
+couldn't bear Mr. Twist's anger. She was too fond of him. When he looked
+at her like that her own anger was blown out as if by an icy draught and
+she could only look back at him piteously.
+
+But Anna-Felicitas, being free from the weaknesses inherent in
+adoration, besides continuing to perceive how Christopher's feelings put
+her at a disadvantage, drew Mr. Twist's attention from her by saying
+with gentleness, "But why add to the general discomfort by being
+bitter?"
+
+"Bitter!" cried Mr. Twist, still glaring at Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do you dispute that God made us?" inquired Anna-Felicitas, placing
+herself as it were like a shield between Mr. Twist's wrathful
+concentration on Christopher and that unfortunate young person's
+emotion.
+
+"See here," said Mr. Twist turning on her, "I'm not going to argue with
+you--not about _anything_. Least of all about God."
+
+"I only wanted to point out to you," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, "that
+that being so, and we not able to help it, there seems little use in
+being bitter with us because we're not different. In regard to anything
+fundamental about us that you deplore I'm afraid we must refer you to
+Providence."
+
+"Say," said Mr. Twist, not in the least appeased by this reasoning but,
+as Anna-Felicitas couldn't but notice, quite the contrary, "used you to
+talk like this to that Uncle Arthur of yours? Because if you did, upon
+my word I don't wonder--"
+
+But what Mr. Twist didn't wonder was fortunately concealed from the
+twins by the appearance at that moment of Mrs. Bilton, who, emerging
+from the shades of the verandah and looking about her, caught sight of
+them and came rapidly down the garden.
+
+There was no escape.
+
+They watched her bearing down on them without a word. It was a most
+unpleasant moment. Mr. Twist re-lit his cigarette to give himself a
+countenance, but the thought of all that Mrs. Bilton would probably say
+was dreadful to him, and his hand couldn't help shaking a little.
+Anna-Rose showed a guilty tendency to slink behind him. Anna-Felicitas
+stood motionless, awaiting the deluge. All Mr. Twist's sympathies were
+with Mrs. Bilton, and he was ashamed that she should have been treated
+so. He felt that nothing she could say would be severe enough, and he
+was extraordinarily angry with the Annas. Yet when he saw the injured
+lady bearing down on them, if he only could he would have picked up an
+Anna under each arm, guilty as they were, and run and run; so much did
+he prefer them to Mrs. Bilton and so terribly did he want, at this
+moment, to be somewhere where that lady wasn't.
+
+There they stood then, anxiously watching the approaching figure, and
+the letter in Mrs. Bilton's hand bobbed up and down as she walked, white
+and conspicuous in the sun against her black dress. What was their
+amazement to see as she drew nearer that she was looking just as
+pleasant as ever. They stared at her with mouths falling open. Was it
+possible, thought the twins, that she was longing to leave but hadn't
+liked to say so, and the letter had come as a release? Was it possible,
+thought Mr. Twist with a leap of hope in his heart, that she was taking
+the letter from a non-serious point of view?
+
+And Mr. Twist, to his infinite relief, was right. For Mrs. Bilton, woman
+of grit and tenacity, was not in the habit of allowing herself to be
+dislodged or even discouraged. This was the opening sentence of her
+remarks when she had arrived, smiling, in their midst. Had she not
+explained the first night that she was one who, having put her hand to
+the plough, held on to it however lively the movements of the plough
+might be? She would not conceal from them, she said, that even Mr. Bilton
+had not, especially, at first, been entirely without such movements. He
+had settled down, however on finding he could trust her to know better
+than he did what he wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And
+the result had been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he
+was alive, or a more devoted widow after he wasn't. She had told him one
+day, when he was drawing near the latter condition and she was
+conversing with him, as was only right, on the subject of wills, and he
+said that his affairs had gone wrong and as far as he could see she
+would be left a widow and that was about all she would be left--she had
+told him that if it was any comfort to him to know it, he might rely on
+it that he would have the most devoted widow any man had ever had, and
+he said--Mr. Bilton had odd fancies, especially toward the end--that a
+widow was the one thing a man never could have because he wasn't there
+by the time he had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies. And if she
+had managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he
+being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that encountering
+odd fancies in two very young and unformed girls--oh, it wasn't their
+fault that they were unformed, it was merely because they hadn't had
+time enough yet--she would be unable, experienced as she was, to steer
+among them too? Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb
+animals always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist,"
+Mrs. Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on Anna-Rose's
+shoulder as a more convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young
+charges aren't going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I
+don't undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting
+affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days in
+intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh young
+chatter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening day.
+
+Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear Mrs.
+Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how near his
+shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his meals with
+the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He was immensely
+grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He esteemed and
+respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then and there at the end
+of her speech, and told her he did, and the least he could do after that
+was to come to dinner. But this very genuine appreciation didn't prevent
+his finding her at close quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now
+only called temperately "a little much," and the result was a really
+frantic hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four
+days of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to
+finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense of
+having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had considerably
+slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs. Bilton they hurried up
+again, and after forty-eight of her the speed was headlong. At the end
+of forty-eight hours it seemed to Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he
+had ever known that he should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere
+with space in it, and sound-proof walls--lots of walls--and long
+passages between people's doors; and before the rooms in the inn were
+anything like finished he insisted on moving in.
+
+"You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he said to the
+twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you must just take
+off your coats to it and not mind."
+
+Mind? Turn to? It was what they were languishing for. It was what, in
+the arid hours under the ilex tree, collected so ignominiously round
+Mrs. Bilton's knee they had been panting for, like thirsty dogs with
+their tongues out. And such is the peculiar blessedness of work that
+instantly, the moment there was any to be done, everything that was
+tangled and irritating fell quite naturally into its proper place.
+Magically life straightened itself out smooth, and left off being
+difficult. _Arbeit und Liebe_, as their mother used to say, dropping
+into German whenever a sentence seemed to her to sound better that
+way--_Arbeit und Liebe_: these were the two great things of life; the
+two great angels, as she assured them, under whose spread-out wings lay
+happiness.
+
+With a hungry zeal, with the violent energy of reaction, the Annas fell
+upon work. They started unpacking. All the things they had bought in
+Acapulco, the linen, the china, the teaspoons, the feminine touches that
+had been piled up waiting in the barn, were pulled out and undone and
+carried indoors. They sorted, and they counted, and they arranged on
+shelves. Anna-Rose flew in and out with her arms full. Anna-Felicitas
+slouched zealously after her, her arms full too when she started, but
+not nearly so full when she got there owing to the way things had of
+slipping through them and dropping on to the floor. They were in a
+blissful, busy confusion. Their faces shone with heat and happiness.
+Here was liberty; here was freedom; here was true dignity--_Arbeit und
+Liebe_....
+
+When Mr. Twist, as he did whenever he could, came and looked on for a
+moment in his shirt sleeves, with his hat on the back of his head and
+his big, benevolent spectacles so kind, Anna-Rose's cup seemed full. Her
+dimple never disappeared for a moment. It was there all day long now;
+and even when she was asleep it still lurked in the corner of her mouth.
+_Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Immense was the reaction of self-respect that took hold of the twins.
+They couldn't believe they were the people who had been so crude and
+ill-conditioned as to hide Mrs. Bilton's belongings, and actually
+finally to hide themselves. How absurd. How like children. How
+unpardonably undignified. Anna-Rose held forth volubly to this effect
+while she arranged the china, and Anna-Felicitas listened assentingly,
+with a kind of grave, ashamed sheepishness.
+
+The result of this reaction was that Mrs. Bilton, whose pressure on them
+was relieved by the necessity of her too being in several places at
+once, and who was displaying her customary grit, now became the definite
+object of their courtesy. They were the mistresses of a house, they
+began to realize, and as such owed her every consideration. This bland
+attitude was greatly helped by their not having to sleep with her any
+more, and they found that the mere coming fresh to her each morning made
+them feel polite and well-disposed. Besides, they were thoroughly and
+finally grown-up now, Anna-Rose declared--never, never to lapse again.
+They had had their lesson, she said, gone through a crisis, and done
+that which Aunt Alice used to say people did after severe trials, aged
+considerably.
+
+Anna-Felicitas wasn't quite so sure. Her own recent behaviour had
+shaken and shocked her too much. Who would have thought she would have
+gone like that? Gone all to pieces, back to sheer naughtiness, on the
+first provocation? It was quite easy, she reflected while she worked,
+and cups kept on detaching themselves mysteriously from her fingers, and
+tables tumbling over at her approach, to be polite and considerate to
+somebody you saw very little of, and even, as she found herself doing,
+to get fond of the person; but suppose circumstances threw one again
+into the person's continual society, made one again have to sleep in the
+same room? Anna-Felicitas doubted whether it would be possible for her
+to stand such a test, in spite of her earnest desire to behave; she
+doubted, indeed, whether anybody ever did stand that test successfully.
+Look at husbands.
+
+Meanwhile there seemed no likelihood of its being applied again. Each of
+them had now a separate bedroom, and Mrs. Bilton had, in the lavish
+American fashion, her own bathroom, so that even at that point there was
+no collision. The twins' rooms were connected by a bathroom all to
+themselves, with no other door into it except the doors from their
+bedrooms, and Mr. Twist, who dwelt discreetly at the other end of the
+house, also had a bathroom of his own. It seemed as natural for American
+architects to drop bathrooms about, thought Anna-Rose, as for the little
+clouds in the psalms to drop fatness. They shed them just as easily, and
+the results were just as refreshing. To persons hailing from Pomerania,
+a place arid of bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to
+have one's own. Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from
+childhood to these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out
+to him, he hadn't lived in Pomerania, where nothing stood between you
+and being dirty except the pump.
+
+But it wasn't only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by Mr.
+Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the most
+wonderful magic little house in the world: the intelligent American
+spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever, simple devices
+for saving labour--so full that it almost seemed to the Annas as if it
+would get up quite unaided at six every morning and do itself; and they
+were sure that if the smallest encouragement were given to the
+kitchen-stove it would cook and dish up a dinner all alone. Everything
+in the house was on these lines. The arrangements for serving
+innumerable teas with ease were admirable. They were marvels of economy
+and clever thinking-out. The architect was surprised at the attention
+and thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the future
+housekeeping. "You seem sheer crazy on teas," he remarked; to which Mr.
+Twist merely replied that he was.
+
+The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy and
+promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a happy
+betrothal. They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in April, those
+enchanting days she had always loved the best, when the bees get busy
+for the first time, and suddenly there are wallflowers and a flowering
+currant bush and the sound of the lawn being mown and the smell of cut
+grass. How one's heart leaps up to greet them, she thought. What a
+thrill of delight rushes through one's body, of new hope, of delicious
+expectation.
+
+Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech seemed to
+feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be heard in the
+evenings singing strange songs among his pots. And what he was singing,
+only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of the two
+white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose eyes were
+deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the shores of his
+father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive and inarticulate, in
+secret seethed with passion. Which was why his cakes were so wonderful.
+He had to express himself somehow.
+
+But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr. Twist and
+his party--he always thought of them as his party--were innocently and
+happily busy full of hopefulness and mutual goodwill, down in the town
+and in the houses scattered over the lovely country round the town,
+people were talking. Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was
+doing up, for the daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had
+bought the long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt's,
+and was converting it into a little _ventre-a-terre_ for his widowed
+mother--launching once more into French, as though there were something
+about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language. Everybody knew this, and it
+was perfectly natural for a well-off Easterner to have a little place
+out West, even if the choice of the little place was whimsical. But what
+about the Miss Twinklers? Who and what were they? And also, Why?
+
+There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party from the
+Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time much had been
+done in the way of conjecture. The first waves of it flowed out from the
+Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by waves flowing in from the
+town. Good-natured curiosity gave place to excited curiosity when the
+rumour got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to ask Mr.
+Twist to take his _entourage_ somewhere else. Was it possible the cute
+little girls, so well known by sight on Main Street going from shop to
+shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed almost unbelievable, but
+luckily nothing was really unbelievable.
+
+The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest after
+the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen from the
+local press, was not to be drawn. His reserve was most interesting. Miss
+Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently enigmatic. Her silence was
+most exciting. On the other hand, Mrs. Ridding's attitude was merely one
+of contempt, dismissing the Twinklers with a heavy gesture. Why think or
+trouble about a pair of chits like that? They had gone; Albert was quiet
+again; and wasn't that the gong for dinner?
+
+But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist _entourage_ presently
+were superseded by much graver and more perturbing doubts. Nobody knew
+when exactly this development took place. Acapulco had been enjoying the
+first set of doubts. There was no denying that doubts about somebody
+else's morals were not unpleasant. They did give one, if one examined
+one's sensations carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add
+the kick to lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time
+like the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the
+life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat. But from the doubts that
+presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got nothing
+but genuine discomfort and uneasiness. Nobody knew how or when they
+started. Quite suddenly they were there.
+
+This was in the November before America's coming into the war. The
+feeling in Acapulco was violently anti-German. The great majority of the
+inhabitants, permanent and temporary, were deeply concerned at the
+conduct of their country in not having, immediately after the torpedoing
+of the _Lusitania_, joined the Allies. They found it difficult to
+understand, and were puzzled and suspicious, as well as humiliated in
+their national pride. Germans who lived in the neighbourhood, or who
+came across from the East for the winter, were politely tolerated, but
+the attitude toward them was one of growing watchfulness and distrust;
+and week by week the whispered stories of spies and gun-emplacements and
+secret stores of arms in these people's cellars or back gardens, grew
+more insistent and detailed. There certainly had been at least one spy,
+a real authentic one, afterward shot in England, who had stayed near-by,
+and the nerves of the inhabitants had that jumpiness on this subject
+with which the inhabitants of other countries have long been familiar.
+All the customary inexplicable lights were seen; all the customary
+mysterious big motor cars rushed at forbidden and yet unhindered speeds
+along unusual roads at unaccountable hours; all the customary signalling
+out to sea was observed and passionately sworn to by otherwise calm
+people. It was possible, the inhabitants found, to believe with ease
+things about Germans--those who were having difficulty with religion
+wished it were equally easy to believe things about God. There was
+nothing Germans wouldn't think of in the way of plotting, and nothing
+they wouldn't, having thought of it, carry out with deadly thoroughness
+and patience.
+
+And into this uneasy hotbed of readiness to believe the worst, arrived
+the Twinkler twins, rolling their r's about.
+
+It needed but a few inquiries to discover that none of the young
+ladies' schools in the neighbourhood had been approached on their
+behalf; hardly inquiries,--mere casual talk was sufficient, ordinary
+chatting with the principals of these establishments when one met them
+at the lectures and instructive evenings the more serious members of the
+community organized and supported. Not many of the winter visitors went
+to these meetings, but Miss Heap did. Miss Heap had a restless soul. It
+was restless because it was worried by perpetual thirst,--she couldn't
+herself tell after what; it wasn't righteousness, for she knew she was
+still worldly, so perhaps it was culture. Anyhow she would give culture
+a chance, and accordingly she went to the instructive evenings. Here she
+met that other side of Acapulco which doesn't play bridge and is proud
+to know nothing of polo, which believes in education, and goes in for
+mind training and welfare work; which isn't, that is, well off.
+
+Nobody here had been asked to educate the Twinklers. No classes had been
+joined by them.
+
+Miss Heap was so enigmatic, she who was naturally of an unquiet and
+exercise-loving tongue, that this graver, more occupied section of the
+inhabitants was instantly as much pervaded by suspicions as the idlest
+of the visitors in the hotels and country houses. It waved aside the
+innocent appearance and obvious extreme youth of the suspects. Useless
+to look like cherubs if it were German cherubs you looked like. Useless
+being very nearly children if it were German children you very nearly
+were. Why, precisely these qualities would be selected by those terribly
+clever Germans for the furtherance of their nefarious schemes. It would
+be quite in keeping with the German national character, that character
+of bottomless artfulness, to pick out two such young girls with just
+that type of empty, baby face, and send them over to help weave the
+gigantic invisible web with which America was presently to be choked
+dead.
+
+The serious section of Acapulco, the section that thought, hit on this
+explanation of the Twinklers with no difficulty whatever once its
+suspicions were roused because it was used to being able to explain
+everything instantly. It was proud of its explanation, and presented it
+to the town with much the same air of deprecating but conscious
+achievement with which one presents drinking-fountains.
+
+Then there was the lawyer to whom Mr. Twist had gone about the
+guardianship. He said nothing, but he was clear in his mind that the
+girls were German and that Mr. Twist wanted to hide it. He had thought
+more highly of Mr. Twist's intelligence than this. Why hide it? America
+was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and Germans could
+come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set tongues wagging? He
+did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness himself, a continuous
+wide-awakeness and minute consideration of consequences, realize, and if
+he had he wouldn't have believed, the affectionate simplicity and
+unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had been pointed out to him he would
+have dismissed it as a pose; for a man who makes money in any quantity
+worth handling isn't affectionately simple and unworldly--he is
+calculating and steely.
+
+The lawyer was puzzled. How did Mr. Twist manage to have a forehead and
+a fortune like that, and yet be a fool? True, he had a funny sort of
+face on him once you got down to the nose part and what came after,--a
+family sort of face, thought the lawyer; a sort of rice pudding,
+wet-nurse face. The lawyer listened intently to all the talk and
+rumours, while himself saying nothing. In spite of being a married man,
+his scruples about honour hadn't been blunted by the urge to personal
+freedom and the necessity for daily self-defence that sometimes afflicts
+those who have wives. He remained honourably silent, as he had said he
+would, but he listened; and he came to the conclusion that either there
+was a quite incredible amount of stupidity about the Twist party, or
+that there was something queer.
+
+What he didn't know, and what nobody knew, was that the house being got
+ready with such haste was to be an inn. He, like the rest of the world,
+took the newspapers _ventre-a-terre_ theory of the house for granted,
+and it was only the expectation of the arrival of that respectable lady,
+the widowed Mrs. Twist, which kept the suspicions a little damped down.
+They smouldered, hesitating, beneath this expectation; for Teapot
+Twist's family life had been voluminously described in the entire
+American press when first his invention caught on, and it was known to
+be pure. There had been snapshots of the home at Clark where he had been
+born, of the home at Clark (west aspect) where he would die--Mr. Twist
+read with mild surprise that his liveliest wish was to die in the old
+home--of the corner in the Clark churchyard where he would probably be
+entombed, with an inset showing his father's gravestone on which would
+clearly be read the announcement that he was the Resurrection and the
+Life. And there was an inset of his mother, swathed in the black symbols
+of ungluttable grief,--a most creditable mother. And there were accounts
+of the activities of another near relative, that Uncle Charles who
+presided over the Church of Heavenly Refreshment in New York, and a
+snapshot of his macerated and unrefreshed body in a cassock,--a most
+creditable uncle.
+
+These articles hadn't appeared so very long ago, and the impression
+survived and was general that Mr. Twist's antecedents were
+unimpeachable. If it were true that the house was for his mother and she
+was shortly arriving, then, although still very odd and unintelligible,
+it was probable that his being there now with the two Germans was after
+all capable of explanation. Not much of an explanation, though. Even the
+moderates who took this view felt this. One wasn't with Germans these
+days if one could help it. There was no getting away from that simple
+fact. The inevitable deduction was that Mr. Twist couldn't help it. Why
+couldn't he help it? Was he enslaved by a scandalous passion for them, a
+passion cold-bloodedly planned for him by the German Government, which
+was known to have lists of the notable citizens of the United States
+with photographs and details of their probable weaknesses, and was
+exactly informed of their movements? He had met the Twinklers, so it was
+reported, on a steamer coming over from England. Of course. All arranged
+by the German Government. That was the peculiar evil greatness of this
+dangerous people, announced the serious section of Acapulco, again with
+the drinking-fountain-presentation air, that nothing was too private or
+too petty to escape their attention, to be turned to their own wicked
+uses. They were as economical of the smallest scraps of possible
+usefulness as a French cook of the smallest scraps and leavings of food.
+Everything was turned to account. Nothing was wasted. Even the
+mosquitoes in Germany were not wasted. They contained juices, Germans
+had discovered, especially after having been in contact with human
+beings, and with these juices the talented but unscrupulous Germans made
+explosives. Could one sufficiently distrust a nation that did things
+like that? asked the serious section of Acapulco.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that they were
+less interested than they otherwise would have been in the sea-blue
+advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing that The Open Arms
+would open wide on the 29th of the month and exhorting the public to
+watch the signposts, they merely remarked that it wasn't, then, the
+title of a book after all. Mr. Twist would have been surprised and
+nettled if he had known how little curiosity his advertisements were
+exciting; he would have been horrified if he had known the reason. As it
+was, he didn't know anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to
+be vulnerable to rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe
+from it inside their magic circle of _Arbeit und Liebe_.
+
+Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco through
+which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning, looking as
+though he had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in; and
+once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also apparently very busy,
+but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton, the lady from Los
+Angeles--Acapulco knew all about her and admitted she was a lady of
+strictest integrity and unimpeachable character, but this only made the
+Twinkler problem more obscure--came too, and seemed, judging from the
+animation of her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.
+
+But once an idea has got into people's heads, remarked the lawyer, who
+was nudged by the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were
+seen approaching,--Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair
+setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean
+white frocks and shining youth,--once an idea has got into people's
+heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out. Yet on
+the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton--
+
+"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up with the
+water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"
+
+And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using
+the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.
+
+The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the
+East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with
+some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon after the
+departure--she didn't see why she shouldn't call it by its proper name
+and say right out expulsion--of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan,
+but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long
+time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered
+if the other person doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous
+interests that are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest,
+and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
+morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
+machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
+uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
+sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that his
+mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt unable to
+believe it. "Do tell your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how
+_delighted_ we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us
+in our sunny refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her.
+Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
+indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."
+
+She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got
+it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the
+exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German
+secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of
+America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found
+she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.
+
+It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till Miss
+Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two girls
+mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very morning
+after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe. That was all his
+mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the top of all her other
+sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a fearful, perhaps a finishing
+blow, but she was such a good woman that she still prayed for him. Clark
+was horrified. His mother had decided at first she would try to shield
+him and say nothing, but when she found that nobody had the least idea
+of what he had done she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and
+have no secrets from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and
+humiliation she would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up
+false appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
+a splendid woman. The girls--poor Mrs. Twist--were Germans.
+
+On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her worst suspicions
+hadn't been half bad enough. Here was everything just about as black as
+it could be; and Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected
+American citizen, had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon
+weaknesses she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe,
+from books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
+part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the German
+Government.
+
+What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go? Which
+was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to her that
+the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a real menace to
+its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of them? And if they
+were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some other part of America,
+less watchful, less perhaps able to take care of itself, to the ripening
+and furtherance of their schemes, whatever their schemes might be? Even
+at that moment Miss Heap unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go
+would be to lose thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with
+excitement and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years.
+She wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
+thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone in
+her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair,
+her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft carpet,
+hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding her knowledge
+meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether to herself, her very
+own, shared as yet by no one,--it was while she sat there, that people
+out of doors in Acapulco itself, along the main roads, out in the
+country towards Zamora on the north and San Blas on the south, became
+suddenly aware of new signposts.
+
+They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards the spot
+at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They all pointed,
+with a long white finger, in that direction. And on them all was written
+in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the distance in miles or
+fractions of a mile was clearly marked, _To The Open Arms_.
+
+Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main Street
+stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what they were, and
+decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in their cars and track
+them down. They made up parties to go and track together. It would be a
+relief to have something a little different to do. What on earth could
+The Open Arms be? Hopes were expressed that they weren't something
+religious. Awful to follow signposts out into the country only to find
+they landed you in a meeting-house.
+
+At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were together, the
+signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being discussed from her
+solitary table, but was so much taken up with her own exciting thoughts
+that she hardly noticed. After lunch, however, as she was passing out of
+the restaurant, still full of her unshared news and still uncertain as
+to whom she should tell it first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table
+and said he supposed she was going too.
+
+They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon of the
+conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called out to any one
+at that moment. He was sitting waiting while Mrs. Ridding finished her
+lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and was in the condition of
+muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of Mrs.
+Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this happened, that Mr.
+Ridding got through his meal first by at least twenty minutes and then
+sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She wasn't aware of these efforts.
+They would greatly have shocked her; for to try not to mind one's wife
+surely isn't what decent, loving husbands ever have to do.
+
+"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon Mr.
+Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.
+
+Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.
+
+"Following these new signposts that are all over the place," said Mr.
+Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."
+
+"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs. Ridding?"
+
+"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take you. Car
+at four o'clock, Albert."
+
+She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well knew
+that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals and as she
+had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her thanks and
+pleasure, and temporarily left them.
+
+This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big limousine--symbol of
+Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding couldn't for the life of him see
+why he should have to provide a strange old lady with cars, and yet did
+so on an increasing scale of splendour--arrived at the turn on the main
+road to San Blas which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the
+final signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
+Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's mind in company. So too
+did they enter Mr. Ridding's mind; and they only remained outside Mrs.
+Ridding's because of her profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged
+in aspic. That was the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at
+the Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
+and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it afterwards.
+
+The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was in Pepper
+Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should happen to be
+there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very straight and alert, her
+eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said nothing either. Not for
+worlds would he have mentioned the word Twist, which so instantly and
+inevitably suggested that other and highly controversial word Twinkler.
+But he too sat all eyes; for anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of
+the place containing those cunning little bits of youngness, the
+Twinkler sisters, and even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.
+
+Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in front of
+it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was lovely, there was no
+polo, and nobody happened to be giving a party. All the way out from
+Acapulco they had only had to follow other cars. Cars were going, and
+cars were coming back. The cars going were full of solemn people,
+pathetically anxious to be interested. The cars coming back were full of
+animated people who evidently had achieved interest.
+
+Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend in the
+lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been there
+before, making a point of getting a friend to motor her past it in
+order to see what she could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of
+his desire to go and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to,
+found Mrs. Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where
+it was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
+putting his head out--he was sitting backwards--- he saw a great,
+old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in pictures of
+ancient English village greens, with
+
+     The Open Arms
+
+in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've run it
+to earth."
+
+Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind
+blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy
+eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All
+stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless
+fatigue she dimly wondered at them.
+
+"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his
+Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on
+which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of
+brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't see one, though."
+
+He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he said.
+
+Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.
+
+A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said quickly.
+"Don't, Mr. Ridding."
+
+There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that grew behind the
+pepper trees, and some people he knew, who had been in the car in front,
+were walking up to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it,
+and were standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in
+their hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on
+to one of the gate-posts, with the words _Won't you take one_? painted
+on it.
+
+Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was Miss Heap
+laying hold of him and saying "Don't."
+
+"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the door.
+
+"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good getting
+out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in to-day.
+Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."
+
+And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and came
+over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.
+
+"Say--" he said,--"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs. Ridding, your
+humble servant--say, look at this. Teapot Twist wasn't born yesterday
+when it comes to keeping things dark. No mention of his name on this
+book of words, but it's the house he was doing up all right, and it is
+to be used as an inn. Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American
+Red Cross. Price per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea.
+Wonder where those Twinkler girls come in. Here--you have this, Ridding,
+and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a second time to
+the ladies he went back to his friends.
+
+In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
+galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly heaving
+itself free of aspic. "Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs
+Ridding," said Miss Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish
+particularly to tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly
+I knew, but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at
+the signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.
+
+"Albert--hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.
+
+And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
+suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
+speaking-tube to the chauffeur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+"It's _perfect_," said the twins, looking round the tea-room.
+
+This was next day, at a quarter to four. They had been looking round
+saying it was perfect at intervals since the morning. Each time they
+finished getting another of the little tables ready, each time they
+brought in and set down another bowl of flowers they stood back and
+gazed a moment in silence, and then said with one voice, "It's
+_perfect_."
+
+Mr. Twist, though the house was not, as we have seen, quite as sober,
+quite as restrained in its effect as he had intended, was obliged to
+admit that it did look very pretty. And so did the Annas. Especially the
+Annas. They looked so pretty in the sea-blue frocks and little Dutch
+caps and big muslin aprons that he took off his spectacles and cleaned
+them carefully so as to have a thoroughly uninterrupted view; and as
+they stood at a quarter to four gazing round the room, he stood gazing
+at them, and when they said "It's _perfect_," he said, indicating them
+with his thumb, "Same here," and then they all laughed for they were all
+very happy, and Mrs. Bilton, arrayed exactly as Mr. Twist had pictured
+her when he engaged her in handsome black, her white hair beautifully
+brushed and neat, crossed over to the Annas and gave each of them a
+hearty kiss--for luck, she said--which Mr. Twist watched with an odd
+feeling of jealousy.
+
+"I'd like to do that," he thought, filled with a sudden desire to hug.
+Then he said it out loud. "I'd like to do that," he said boldly. And
+added, "As it's the opening day."
+
+"I don't think it would afford you any permanent satisfaction," said
+Anna-Felicitas placidly. "There's nothing really to be gained, we think,
+by kissing. Of course," she added politely to Mrs. Bilton, "we like it
+very much as an expression of esteem."
+
+"Then why not in that spirit--" began Mr. Twist.
+
+"We don't hold with kissing," said Anna-Rose quickly, turning very red.
+Intolerable to be kissed _en famille_. If it had to be done at all,
+kissing should be done quietly, she thought. But she and Anna-Felicitas
+didn't hold with it anyhow. Never. Never. To her amazement she found
+tears in her eyes. Well, of all the liquid idiots.... It must be that
+she was so happy. She had never been so happy. Where on earth had her
+handkerchief got to....
+
+"Hello," said Mr. Twist, staring at her.
+
+Anna-Felicitas looked at her quickly.
+
+"It's merely bliss," she said, taking the corner of her beautiful new
+muslin apron to Christopher's eyes. "Excess of it. We are, you know,"
+she said, smiling over her shoulder at Mr. Twist, so that the corner of
+her apron, being undirected, began dabbing at Christopher's perfectly
+tearless ears, "quite extraordinarily happy, and all through you.
+Nevertheless Anna-R." she continued, addressing her with firmness while
+she finished her eyes and began her nose, "You may like to be reminded
+that there's only ten minutes left now before all those cars that were
+here yesterday come again, and you wouldn't wish to embark on your
+career as a waitress hampered by an ugly face, would you?"
+
+But half an hour later no cars had come. Pepper Lane was still empty.
+The long shadows lay across it in a beautiful quiet, and the crickets in
+the grass chirruped undisturbed. Twice sounds were heard as if something
+was coming up it, and everybody flew to their posts--Li Koo to the
+boiling water, Mrs. Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the room,
+and the twins to the door--but the sounds passed on along the road and
+died away round the next corner.
+
+At half-past four the _personnel_ of The Open Arms was sitting about
+silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when Mr. Ridding walked
+in.
+
+There had been no noise of a car to announce him; he just walked in
+mopping his forehead, for he had come in the jitney omnibus to the
+nearest point and had done the last mile on his own out-of-condition
+feet. Mrs. Ridding thought he was writing letters in the smoking-room.
+She herself was in a big chair on the verandah, and with Miss Heap and
+most of the other guests was discussing The Open Arms in all its
+probable significance. He hadn't been able to get away sooner because of
+the nap. He had gone through with the nap from start to finish so as not
+to rouse suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of
+dare-devil running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew
+that he would cool down again presently and that then the consequences
+of his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile his
+blood was up.
+
+He walked in feeling not a day older than thirty,--most gratifying
+sensation. The _personnel_, after a moment's open-mouthed surprise,
+rushed to greet him. Never was a man more welcome. Never had Mr. Ridding
+been so warmly welcomed anywhere in his life.
+
+"Now isn't this real homey," he said, beaming at Anna-Rose who took his
+stick. "Wish I'd known you were going to do it, for then I'd have had
+something to look forward to."
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas, trying to look very
+solemn and like a family butler but her voice quivering with eagerness.
+"Or perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate? Each of these beverages
+can be provided either hot or iced--"
+
+"There's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Rose, tumultuously in spite of
+also trying to look like a family butler. "_I'd_ have ice-cream if I
+were you. There's more body in it. Cold, delicious body. And you look so
+hot. Hot things should always as soon as possible be united to cold
+things, so as to restore the proper balance--"
+
+"And there's some heavenly stuff called cinnamon-toast--hot, you know,
+but if you have ice-cream at the same time it won't matter," said
+Anna-Felicitas, hanging up his hat for him. "I don't know whether you've
+studied the leaflets," she continued, "but in case you haven't I feel I
+oughtn't to conceal from you that the price is five dollars whatever you
+have."
+
+"So that," said Anna-Rose, "you needn't bother about trying to save, for
+you can't."
+
+"Then I'll have tea to start with and see how I get on," said Mr.
+Ridding, sitting down in the chair Anna-Felicitas held for him and
+beaming up at her.
+
+She flicked an imaginary grain of dust off the cloth with the corner of
+her apron to convey to him that she knew her business, and hurried away
+to give the order. Indeed, they both hurried away to give the order.
+
+"Say--" called out Mr. Ridding, for he thought one Anna would have been
+enough for this and he was pining to talk to them; but the twins weren't
+to be stopped from both giving the very first order, and they
+disappeared together into the pantry.
+
+Mrs. Bilton sat in the farthest corner at her desk, apparently absorbed
+in an enormous ledger. In this ledger she was to keep accounts and to
+enter the number of teas, and from this high seat she was to preside
+over the activities of the _personnel_. She had retired hastily to it on
+the unexpected entrance of Mr. Ridding, and pen in hand was endeavouring
+to look as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this
+was a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She
+wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had
+quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and
+talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till the room
+was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests entirely to the
+Annas.
+
+He himself was going to keep much in the background at all times, but
+through the half-open door of his office he could see and hear; and he
+couldn't help thinking, as he sat there watching and observed the
+effulgence of the beams the old gentleman just arrived turned on the
+twins, that the first guest appeared to be extraordinarily and
+undesirably affectionate. He thought he had seen him at the
+Cosmopolitan, but wasn't sure. He didn't know that the Annas, after
+their conversation with him there, felt towards him as old friends, and
+he considered their manner was a little unduly familiar. Perhaps, after
+all, he thought uneasily, Mrs. Bilton had better do the waiting and the
+Annas sit with him in the office. The ledger could be written up at the
+end of the day. Or he could hire somebody....
+
+Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear. And why was there only
+one guest? It was twenty minutes to five; and this time yesterday the
+road had been choked with cars. He felt very much worried. With every
+minute this absence of guests grew more and more remarkable. Perhaps he
+had better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary
+one there was. Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn
+for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had heard to those
+others who so unaccountably hadn't come.
+
+He got up and went into the other room; and just as Anna-Felicitas was
+reappearing with the teapot followed by Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes,
+Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up expectantly and giving his tie a little
+pat of adjustment, perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot
+Twist.
+
+This was a blow. He hadn't run risks and walked in the afternoon heat to
+sit and talk to Twist. Mr. Ridding was a friendly and amiable old man,
+and at any other time would have talked to him with pleasure; but he had
+made up his mind for the Twinklers as one makes up one's mind for a
+certain dish and is ravaged by strange fury if it isn't produced.
+Besides, hang it all, he was going to pay five dollars for his tea, and
+for that sum he ought to least to have it under the conditions he
+preferred.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist," he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist
+introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering
+Annas,--a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.
+
+It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, "If you don't mind,
+Mr.--"
+
+"Ridding is my name."
+
+"If you don't mind, Mr. Ridding, I'd like to explain our objects to
+you."
+
+But he couldn't help wondering what he would do if there were several
+tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there
+wouldn't be enough of him in such a case to go round.
+
+Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn't help wondering why the devil Teapot
+Twist sat down unasked at his table. Five dollars. Come now. For that a
+man had a right to a table to himself.
+
+But anyhow the Annas wouldn't have stayed talking for at that moment a
+car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were heard coming
+up the neatly sanded path. Mr. Ridding pricked up his ears, for from the
+things he had heard being said all the evening before and all that
+morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night from the lips of that
+strange old lady with whom by some dreadful mistake he was obliged to
+sleep, he hadn't supposed there would be exactly a rush.
+
+Four young men came in. Mr. Ridding didn't know them. No class, he
+thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of sulky
+vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm the
+Twinklers flew to meet them. They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding crossly,
+as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.
+
+"Who are they?" he asked curtly of Mr. Twist, cutting into the long
+things he was saying.
+
+"Only the different experts who helped me rebuild the place," said Mr.
+Twist a little impatiently; he too had pricked up his ears in
+expectation at the sound of all those feet, and was disappointed.
+
+He continued what Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young people,
+called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more
+abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The young
+men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking round the
+Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter
+and exclamations. One would have thought they had known each other all
+their lives. The twins were wreathed in smiles. They looked as pleased,
+Mr. Twist thought, as cats that are being stroked. Almost he could hear
+them purring. He glanced helplessly across to where Mrs. Bilton sat, as
+he had told her, bent pen in hand over the ledger. She didn't move. It
+was true he had told her to sit like that, but hadn't the woman any
+imagination? What she ought to do now was to bustle forward and take
+that laughing group in charge.
+
+"As I was telling you--" resumed Mr. Twist, returning with an effort to
+Mr. Ridding, only to find his eyes fixed on the young people and catch
+an unmistakably thwarted look in his face.
+
+In a flash Mr. Twist realized what he had come for,--it was solely to
+see and talk to the twins. He must have noticed them at the
+Cosmopolitan, and come out just for them. Just for that. "Unprincipled
+old scoundrel," said Mr. Twist under his breath, his ears flaming. Aloud
+he said, "As I was telling you--" and went on distractedly with his
+rigmarole.
+
+Then some more people came in. They had motored, but the noise the
+experts were making had drowned the sound of their arrival. Mr. Ridding
+and Mr. Twist, both occupied in glowering at the group in the middle of
+the room, were made aware of their presence by Anna-Felicitas suddenly
+dropping the pencil and tablets she had been provided with for writing
+down orders and taking an uncertain and obviously timid step forward.
+
+They both looked round in the direction of her reluctant step, and saw
+a man and two women standing on the threshold. Mr. Twist, of course,
+didn't know them; he hardly knew anybody, even by sight. But Mr. Ridding
+did. That is, he knew them well by sight and had carefully avoided
+knowing them any other way, for they were Germans.
+
+Mr. Ridding was one of those who didn't like Germans. He was a man who
+liked or disliked what his daily paper told him to, and his daily paper
+was anti-German. For reasons natural to one who disliked Germans and yet
+at the same time had a thirstily affectionate disposition, he declined
+to believe the prevailing theory about the Twinklers. Besides, he didn't
+believe it anyhow. At that age people were truthful, and he had heard
+them explain they had come from England and had acquired their rolling
+r's during a sojourn abroad. Why should he doubt? But he refrained from
+declaring his belief in their innocence of the unpopular nationality,
+owing to a desire to avoid trouble in that bedroom he couldn't call his
+but was obliged so humiliatingly to speak of as ours. Except, however,
+for the Twinklers, for all other persons of whom it was said that they
+were Germans, naturalized or not, immediate or remote, he had,
+instructed by his newspaper, what his called a healthy instinctive
+abhorrence.
+
+"And she's got it too," he thought, much gratified at this bond between
+them, as he noted Anna-Felicitas's hesitating and reluctant advance to
+meet the new guests. "There's proof that people are wrong."
+
+But what Anna-Felicitas had got was stage-fright; for here were the
+first strangers, the first real, proper visitors such as any shop or
+hotel might have. Mr. Ridding was a friend. So were the experts friends.
+This was trade coming in,--real business being done. Anna-Felicitas
+hadn't supposed she would be shy when the long-expected and prepared-for
+moment arrived, but she was. And it was because the guests seemed so
+disconcertingly pleased to see her. Even on the threshold the whole
+three stood smiling broadly at her. She hadn't been prepared for that,
+and it unnerved her.
+
+"Charming, charming," said the newcomers, advancing towards her and
+embracing the room and the tables and the Annas in one immense inclusive
+smile of appreciation.
+
+"Know those?" asked Mr. Ridding, again cutting into Mr. Twist's
+explanations.
+
+"No," said he.
+
+"Wangelbeckers," said Mr. Ridding briefly.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Twist, off whose ignorance the name glanced
+harmlessly. "Well, as I was telling yous--"
+
+"But this is delicious--this is a conception of genius," said Mr.
+Wangelbecker all-embracingly, after he had picked up Anna-Felicitas's
+tablets and restored them to her with a low bow.
+
+"Charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, looking round.
+
+"Real cunning," said Miss Wangelbecker, "as they say here." And she
+laughed at Anna-Felicitas with an air of mutual understanding.
+
+"Will you have tea or coffee?" asked Anna-Felicitas nervously. "Or
+perhaps you would prefer frothed chocolate. Each of these beverages can
+be--"
+
+"Delicious, delicious," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, enveloping
+Anna-Felicitas in her smile.
+
+"The frothed chocolate is very delicious," said Anna-Felicitas with a
+kind of grave nervousness.
+
+"Ah--charming, charming," said Mrs. Wangelbecker, obstinately
+appreciative.
+
+"And there's ice-cream as well," said Anna-Felicitas, her eyes on her
+tablets so as to avoid seeing the Wangelbecker smile. "And--and a great
+many kinds of cakes--"
+
+"Well, hadn't we better sit down first," said Mr. Wangelbecker genially,
+"or are all the tables engaged?"
+
+"Oh I _beg_ your pardon," said Anna-Felicitas, blushing and moving
+hastily towards a table laid for three.
+
+"Ah--that's better," said Mr. Wangelbecker, following closely on her
+heels. "Now we can go into the serious business of ordering what we
+shall eat comfortably. But before I sit down allow me to present myself.
+My name is Wangelbecker. An honest German name. And this is my wife. She
+too had an honest German name before she honoured mine by accepting
+it--she was a Niedermayer. And this is my daughter, with whom I trust
+you will soon be friends."
+
+And they all put out their hands to be shaken, and Anna-Felicitas shook
+them.
+
+"Look at that now," said Mr. Ridding watching.
+
+"As I was telling you--" said Mr. Twist irritably, for really why should
+Anna II. shake hands right off with strangers? Her business was to wait,
+not to get shaking hands. He must point out to her very plainly.
+
+"Pleased to meet you Miss von Twinkler," said Mrs. Wangelbecker; and at
+this Anna-Felicitas was so much startled that she dropped her tablets a
+second time.
+
+"As they say here," laughed Miss Wangelbecker, again with that air of
+mutual comprehension.
+
+"But they don't," said Anna Felicitas hurriedly, taking her tablets from
+the restoring hand of Mr. Wangelbecker and forgetting to thank him.
+
+"What?" said Mrs. Wangelbecker. "When you are both so charming that for
+once the phrase must be sincere?"
+
+"Miss von Twinkler means she finds it wiser not to use her title," said
+Mr. Wangelbecker. "Well, perhaps--perhaps. Wiser perhaps from the point
+of view of convenience. Is that where you will sit, Guestchen? Still, we
+Germans when we are together can allow ourselves the refreshment of
+being ourselves, and I hope to be frequently the means of giving you the
+relief, you and your charming sister, of hearing yourselves addressed
+correctly. It is a great family, the von Twinklers. A great family. In
+these sad days we Germans must hang together--"
+
+Anna-Felicitas stood, tablets in hand, looking helplessly from one
+Wangelbecker to the other. The situation was beyond her.
+
+"But--" she began; then stopped. "Shall I bring you tea or coffee?" she
+ended by asking again.
+
+"Well now this is amusing," said Mr. Wangelbecker, sitting down
+comfortably and leaning his elbows on the table. "Isn't it, Guestchen. To
+see a von Twinkler playing at waiting on us."
+
+"Charming, charming," said his wife.
+
+"It's real sporting," said his daughter, laughing up at Anna-Felicitas,
+again with comprehension,--with, almost, a wink. "You must let me come
+and help. I'd look nice in that costume, wouldn't I mother."
+
+"There is also frothed choc--"
+
+"I suppose, now, Mr. Twist--he must be completely sympathy--"
+interrupted Mr. Wangelbecker confidentially, leaning forward and
+lowering his voice a little.
+
+Anna-Felicitas gazed at him blankly. Some more people were coming in at
+the door, and behind them she could see on the path yet more, and
+Anna-Rose was in the pantry fetching the tea for the experts.
+
+"Would you mind telling me what I am to bring you?" she asked. "Because
+I'm afraid--"
+
+Mr. Wangelbecker turned his head in the direction she was looking.
+
+"Ah--" he said getting up, "but this is magnificent Guestchen, here are
+Mrs. Kleinbart and her sister--why, and there come the Diederichs--but
+splendid, splendid--"
+
+"Say," said Mr. Ridding, turning to Mr. Twist with a congested face,
+"ever been to Berlin?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist, annoyed by a question of such wanton irrelevance
+flung into the middle of his sentence.
+
+"Well, it's just like this."
+
+"Like this?" repeated Mr. Twist.
+
+"Those there," said Mr. Ridding, jerking his head. "That lot there--see
+'em any day in Berlin, or Frankfurt, or any other of their confounded
+towns."
+
+"I don't follow," said Mr. Twist, very shortly indeed.
+
+"Germans," said Mr. Ridding.
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans," said Ridding.
+
+"All Germans?"
+
+"Wangelbeckers are Germans," said Mr. Ridding. "Didn't you know?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"So are the ones who've just come in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans. So are those behind, just coming in."
+
+"Germans?"
+
+"All Germans."
+
+There was a pause, during which Mr. Twist stared round the room. It was
+presenting quite a populous appearance. Then he said slowly, "Well I'm
+damned."
+
+And Mr. Ridding for the first time looked pleased with Mr. Twist. He
+considered that at last he was talking sense.
+
+"Mr. Twist," he said heartily, "I'm exceedingly glad you're damned. It
+was what I was sure at the bottom of my heart you would be. Shake hands,
+sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+That evening depression reigned in The Open Arms.
+
+Mr. Twist paced up and down the tea-room deep in thought that was
+obviously unpleasant and perplexed; Mrs. Bilton went to bed abruptly,
+after a short outpour of words to the effect that she had never seen so
+many Germans at once before, that her psyche was disharmonious to
+Germans, that they made her go goose-fleshy just as cats in a room made
+Mr. Bilton go goose-fleshy in the days when he had flesh to go it with,
+that she hadn't been aware the inn was to be a popular resort and
+rendezvous for Germans, and that she wished to speak alone with Mr.
+Twist in the morning; while the twins, feeling the ominousness of this
+last sentence,--as did Mr. Twist, who started when he heard it,--and
+overcome by the lassitude that had succeeded the shocks of the
+afternoon, a lassitude much increased by their having tried to finish up
+the pailsful of left-over ices and the huge piles of cakes slowly
+soddening in their own souring cream, went out together on to the
+moonlit verandah and stood looking up in silence at the stars. There
+they stood in silence, and thought things about the immense distance and
+indifference of those bright, cold specks, and how infinitely
+insignificant after all they, the Twinklers were, and how they would
+both in any case be dead in a hundred years. And this last reflection
+afforded them somehow a kind of bleak and draughty comfort.
+
+Thus the first evening, that was to have been so happy, was spent by
+everybody in silence and apart. Li Koo felt the atmosphere of oppression
+even in his kitchen, and refrained from song. He put away, after dealing
+with it cunningly so that it should keep until a more propitious hour, a
+wonderful drink he had prepared for supper in celebration of the opening
+day--"Me make li'l celebrity," he had said, squeezing together strange
+essences and fruits--and he moved softly about so as not to disturb the
+meditations of the master. Li Koo was perfectly aware of what had gone
+wrong: it was the unexpected arrival to tea of Germans. Being a member
+of the least blood-thirsty of the nations, he viewed Germans with
+peculiar disfavour and understood his master's prolonged walking up and
+down. Also he had noted through a crack in the door the way these people
+of blood and death crowded round the white-lily girls; and was not that
+sufficient in itself to cause his master's numerous and rapid steps?
+
+Numerous indeed that evening were Mr. Twist's steps. He felt he must
+think, and he could think better walking up and down. Why had all those
+Germans come? Why, except old Ridding and the experts, had none of the
+Americans come? It was very strange. And what Germans! So cordial, so
+exuberant to the twins, so openly gathering them to their bosoms, as
+though they belonged there. And so cordial too to him, approaching him
+in spite of his withdrawals, conveying to him somehow, his disagreeable
+impression had been, that he and they perfectly understood each other.
+Then Mrs. Bilton; was she going to give trouble? It looked like it. It
+looked amazingly like it. Was she after all just another edition of his
+mother, and unable to discriminate between Germans and Germans, between
+the real thing and mere technicalities like the Twinklers? It is true he
+hadn't told her the twins were German, but then neither had he told her
+they weren't. He had been passive. In Mrs. Bilton's presence passivity
+came instinctively. Anything else involved such extreme and unusual
+exertion. He had never had the least objection to her discovering their
+nationality for herself, and indeed had been surprised she hadn't done
+so long ago, for he felt sure she would quickly begin to love the Annas,
+and once she loved them she wouldn't mind what their father had happened
+to be. He had supposed she did love them. How affectionately she had
+kissed them that very afternoon and wished them luck. Was all that
+nothing? Was lovableness nothing, and complete innocence, after all in
+the matter of being born, when weighed against the one fact of the von?
+What he would do if Mrs. Bilton left him he couldn't imagine. What would
+happen to The Open Arms and the twins in such a case, his worried brain
+simply couldn't conceive.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the open door on to
+the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge,
+their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the
+moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien
+children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was
+their mother.
+
+Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal
+side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms
+round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to
+go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told
+him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms
+round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left
+them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second
+occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested
+itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely
+went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of
+Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he
+felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was
+difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas
+continued to consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that
+feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
+mattered.
+
+Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his
+office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her
+resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of
+straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards
+herself--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.
+
+She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she
+feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to
+resist the encroachments of foreigners--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up
+with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a
+soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be,
+of that nationality--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem
+to her a pity that Mr. Twist with his well-known and respected American
+name should be mixed up--
+
+"Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+And though she had no wish to be inquisitive, still she must say it did
+seem to her peculiar that Mr. Twist should be the guardian of two girls
+who, it was clear from what she had overheard that afternoon, were
+German--
+
+Here Mr. Twist raised his voice and shouted. "Mrs. Bilton," he shouted,
+so loud that she couldn't but stop, "if you'll guarantee to keep quiet
+for just five minutes--sit down right here at this table and not say one
+single thing, not one single thing for just five minutes," he said,
+banging the table, "I'll tell you all about it. Oh yes, I'll accept your
+resignation at the end of that time if you're still set on leaving, but
+just for this once it's me that's going to do the talking."
+
+And this must be imagined as said so loud that only capital letters
+would properly represent the noise Mr. Twist made.
+
+Mrs. Bilton did sit down, her face flushed by the knowledge of how good
+her intentions had been when she took the post, and how deceitful--she
+was forced to think it--Mr. Twist's were when he offered it. She was
+prepared, however, to give him a hearing. It was only fair. But Mr.
+Twist had to burst into capitals several times before he had done, so
+difficult was it for Mrs. Bilton, even when she had agreed, even when
+she herself wished, not to say anything.
+
+It wasn't five minutes but twenty before Mrs. Bilton came out of the
+office again. She went straight into the garden, where the Annas, aware
+of the interview going on with Mr. Twist, had been lingering anxiously,
+unable at so crucial a moment to settle to anything, and with solemnity
+kissed them. Her eyes were very bright. Her face, ordinarily colourless
+as parchment, was red. Positively she kissed them without saying a
+single word; and they kissed her back with such enthusiasm, with a
+relief that made them hug her so tight and cling to her so close, that
+the brightness in her eyes brimmed over and she had to get out her
+handkerchief and wipe it away.
+
+"Gurls," said Mrs. Bilton, "I had a shock yesterday, but I'm through
+with it. You're motherless. I'm daughterless. We'll weld."
+
+And with this unusual brevity did Mrs. Bilton sum up the situation.
+
+She was much moved. Her heart was touched; and once that happened
+nothing could exceed her capacity for sticking through what she called
+thick and thin to her guns. For years Mr. Bilton had occupied the
+position of the guns; now it would be these poor orphans. No Germans
+could frighten her away, once she knew their story; no harsh judgments
+and misconceptions of her patriotic friends. Mr. Twist had told her
+everything, from the beginning on the _St. Luke_, harking back to Uncle
+Arthur and the attitude of England, describing what he knew of their
+mother and her death, not even concealing the part his own mother had
+played or that he wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs.
+Bilton's silence; and as she listened her heart melted within her, and
+the immense store of grit which was her peculiar pride came to the top
+and once and for all overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think,
+and at last she burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he
+hadn't imparted all this to her long ago.
+
+"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind before
+the outburst of her released volubility.
+
+Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked forward
+to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just happened so the
+first day, that only Germans came. It was just accident. Mr. Twist, with
+the very large part of him that wasn't his head, found himself feeling
+like this too and declining to take any notice of his intelligence,
+which continued to try to worry him.
+
+Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second afternoon
+was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and clustered round the
+Annas, and made friendly though cautious advances to Mr. Twist. The ones
+who had been there the first day came again and brought others with them
+worse than themselves, and they seemed more at home than ever, and the
+air was full of rolling r's--among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny,
+being the r's of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he
+told himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
+While as for these other people--confound it all, the place might really
+have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a _Conditorei_ Unter
+den Linden.
+
+All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed and no
+Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and straight,
+and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered, thought they
+weren't. What an aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered,
+impatient with them when first he came back from France. What folly.
+Americans. The very word was refreshing, was like clear water on a
+thirsty day. One American, even one, coming in that afternoon would have
+seemed to Mr. Twist a godsend, a purifier, an emollient--like some
+blessed unction dropped from above.
+
+But none appeared; not even Mr. Ridding.
+
+At six o'clock it was quite dark, and obviously too late to go on
+hoping. The days in California end abruptly. The sun goes down, and
+close on its heels comes night. In the tea-room the charmingly shaded
+lights had been turned on some time, and Mr. Twist, watching from the
+partly open door of his office, waited impatiently for the guests to
+begin to thin out. But they didn't. They took no notice of the signals
+of lateness, the lights turned on, the stars outside growing bright in
+the surrounding blackness.
+
+Mr. Twist watched angrily. He had been driven into his office by the
+disconcerting and incomprehensible overtures of Mr. Wangelbecker, and
+had sat there watching in growing exasperation ever since. When six
+struck and nobody showed the least sign of going away he could bear it
+no longer, and touched the little muffled electric bell that connected
+him to Mrs. Bilton in what Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union--Anna
+II. was really excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in
+his presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with
+an embarrassing abundance of imagery--by buzzing gently against her knee
+from the leg of the desk.
+
+She laid down her pen, as though she had just finished adding up a
+column, and went to him.
+
+"Now don't talk," said Mr. Twist, putting up an irritable hand directly
+she came in.
+
+Mrs. Bilton looked at him in much surprise. "Talk, Mr. Twist?" she
+repeated. "Why now, as though--"
+
+"Don't _talk_ I say, Mrs. Bilton, but listen. Listen now. I can't stand
+seeing those children in there. It sheer makes my gorge rise. I want you
+to fetch them in here--now don't talk--you and me'll do the confounded
+waiting--no, no, don't talk--they're to stay quiet in here till the last
+of those Germans have gone. Just go and fetch them, please Mrs. Bilton.
+No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they come." And he
+urged her out into the tea-room again.
+
+The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on, for they
+were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly enjoying
+themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more manifestly at
+home. They were now having a kind of supper of ices and fruit-salads.
+Five dollars, thought the sensible Germans, was after all a great deal
+to pay for afternoon tea, however good the cause might be and however
+important one's own ulterior motives; and since one had in any case to
+pay, one should eat what one could. So they kept the Annas very busy.
+There seemed to be no end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and
+thither, to what a German will hold.
+
+Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was carrying
+a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying ices to
+innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap clung damply
+to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed. What with having
+to carry so many trays, and remember so many orders, and try at the same
+time to escape from the orderers and their questions and admiration,
+she was in a condition not very far from tears.
+
+Mrs. Bilton took the tray out of her hands, and told her Mr. Twist
+wanted to speak to her; and Anna-Rose was in such a general bewilderment
+that she felt quite scared, and thought he must be going to scold her.
+She went towards the office reluctantly. If Mr. Twist were to be severe,
+she was sure she wouldn't be able not to cry. She made her way very
+slowly to the office, and Mrs. Bilton looked round the room for the
+other one. There was no sign of her. Perhaps, thought Mrs. Bilton, she
+was fetching something in the kitchen, and would appear in a minute; and
+seeing a group over by the entrance door, for whom the tray she held was
+evidently destined, gesticulating to her, she felt she had better keep
+them quiet first and then go and look for Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Mrs. Bilton set her teeth and plunged into her strange new duties. Never
+would she have dreamed it possible that she should have to carry trays
+to Germans. If Mr. Bilton could see her now he would certainly turn in
+his grave. Well, she was a woman of grit, of adhesiveness to her guns;
+if Mr. Bilton did see her and did turn in his grave, let him; he would,
+she dared say, be more comfortable on his other side after all these
+years.
+
+For the next few minutes she hurried hither and thither, and waited
+single-handed. She seemed to be swallowed up in activity. No wonder that
+child had looked so hot and bewildered. Mr. Twist didn't come and help,
+as he had promised, and nowhere was there any sign of Anna-Felicitas;
+and the guests not only wanted things to eat, they wanted to talk,--talk
+and ask questions. Well, she would wait on them, but she wouldn't talk.
+She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational
+blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful
+are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs.
+Bilton was grumbled at for not talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.
+
+"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about tired
+of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there. You're
+through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and the day after
+as well."
+
+He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for his
+business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he said
+severely, "and stay put."
+
+Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather unsteadily
+to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if you're angry or being
+kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever it is I--I wish you
+wouldn't. I--I wish you'd manage to be something that isn't either."
+And, as she had feared, she began to cry.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern mixed with
+irritation--out there all those Germans, in here the weeping child; what
+a day he was having--"for heaven's sake don't do that."
+
+"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being so
+natu--natu--naturally liquid."
+
+"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his pockets. If
+he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking her, and she
+seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
+would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great girl
+now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist could
+imagine....
+
+"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."
+
+"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"And the Germans have been too much for you."
+
+"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion that
+anybody could ever be that.
+
+"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist, setting
+his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to his natural
+kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he
+remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she come?" he asked.
+
+"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.
+
+"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."
+
+"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been much upset
+by Anna-Felicitas's prolonged disappearance and had suspected her,
+though she couldn't understand it after last night's finishings up, of
+secret unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.
+
+Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through. "I can't see her
+either," he said. "Confound them--what have they done to her? Worn her
+out too, I daresay. I shouldn't wonder if she'd crawled off somewhere
+and were crying too."
+
+"Anna-F.--doesn't crawl," sobbed Anna-Rose, "and she--doesn't cry but--I
+wish you'd find--her."
+
+"Well, will you stay where you are while I'm away, then?" he said,
+looking at her from the door uncertainly.
+
+And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair, and
+somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a
+promise not to move, that he found himself unable to resist going back
+to her for a minute in order to pat her head. "There, there," said Mr.
+Twist, very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it
+yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and
+also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.
+
+"You little bit of blessedness," murmured Mr. Twist before he knew what
+he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than ever,--grew, indeed,
+almost into small howls, so long was it since anybody had said things
+like that to her. It was her mother who used to say things like that;
+things almost exactly like that.
+
+"Hush," said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious eye on the
+half-open door, for Anna-Rose's sobs were threatening to outdo the noise
+of teacups and ice-cream plates, "hush, hush--here's a clean
+handkerchief--you just wipe up your eyes while I fetch Anna II. She'll
+worry, you know, if she sees you like this,--hush now, hush--there,
+there--and I expect she's being miserable enough already, hiding away in
+some corner. You wouldn't like to make her more miserable, would you--"
+
+And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose's hands, and feeling much
+flurried went away to search for the other one who was somewhere, he was
+sure, in a state of equal distress.
+
+He hadn't however to search. He found her immediately. As he came out of
+the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her come into the
+tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed across it towards
+the pantry. Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist. He hurried to
+intercept her. Anyhow she wasn't either about to cry or getting over
+having done it. He saw that at once with relief. Nor was she, it would
+seem, in any sort of distress. On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked
+particularly smug. He saw that once too, with surprise,--why smug?
+wondered Mr. Twist. She had a pleased look of complete satisfaction on
+her face. She was oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the
+tables, of the guests who tried in vain to attract her attention and
+detain her with orders. She wasn't at all hot, as Anna-Rose had been,
+nor rattled, nor in any way discomposed; she was just smug. And also she
+was unusually, extraordinarily pretty. How dared they all stare up at
+her like that as she passed? And try to stop her. And want to talk to
+her. And Wangelbecker actually laying his hand--no, his paw; in his
+annoyance Mr. Twist wouldn't admit that the object at the end of Mr.
+Wangelbecker's arm was anything but a paw--on her wrist to get her to
+listen to some confounded order or other. She took no notice of that
+either, but walked on towards the pantry. Placidly. Steadily. Obvious.
+Smug.
+
+"You're to come into the office," said Mr. Twist when he reached her.
+
+She turned her head and considered him with abstracted eyes. Then she
+appeared to remember him. "Oh, it's you," she said amiably.
+
+"Yes. It's me all right. And you're to come into the office."
+
+"I can't. I'm busy."
+
+"Now Anna II.," said Mr. Twist, walking beside her towards the pantry
+since she didn't stop but continued steadily on her way, "that's
+trifling with the facts. You've been in the garden. I saw you come in.
+Perhaps you'll tell me the exact line of business you've been engaged
+in."
+
+"Waiting," said Anna-Felicitas placidly.
+
+"Waiting? In the garden? Where it's pitch dark, and there's nobody to
+wait on?"
+
+They had reached the pantry, and Anna-Felicitas gave an order to Li Koo
+through the serving window before answering; the order was tea and hot
+cinnamon toast for one.
+
+"He's having his tea on the verandah," she said, picking out the most
+delicious of the little cakes from the trays standing ready, and
+carefully arranging them on a dish. "It isn't pitch dark at all there.
+There's floods of light coming through the windows. He won't come in."
+
+"And why pray won't he come in?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+"Because he doesn't like Germans."
+
+"And who pray is he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well I do," burst out Mr. Twist. "It's old Ridding, of course. His name
+is Ridding. The old man who was here yesterday. Now listen: I won't
+have--"
+
+But Anna-Felicitas was laughing, and her eyes had disappeared into two
+funny little screwed-up eyelashy slits.
+
+Mr. Twist stopped abruptly and glared at her. These Twinklers. That one
+in there shaken with sobs, this one in here shaken with what she would
+no doubt call quite the contrary. His conviction became suddenly final
+that the office was the place for both the Annas. He and Mrs. Bilton
+would do the waiting.
+
+"I'll take this," he said, laying hold of the dish of cakes. "I'll send
+Mrs. Bilton for the tea. Go into the office, Anna-Felicitas. Your sister
+is there and wants you badly. I don't know," he added, as Li Koo pushed
+the tea-tray through the serving window, "how it strikes you about
+laughter, but it strikes me as sheer silly to laugh except at
+something."
+
+"Well, I was," said Anna-Felicitas, unscrewing her eyes and with gentle
+firmness taking the plate of cakes from him and putting it on the tray.
+"I was laughing at your swift conviction that the man out there is Mr.
+Ridding. I don't know who he is but I know heaps of people he isn't, and
+one of the principal ones is Mr. Ridding."
+
+"I'm going to wait on him," said Mr. Twist, taking the tray.
+
+"It would be most unsuitable," said Anna-Felicitas, taking it too.
+
+"Let go," said Mr. Twist, pulling.
+
+"Is this to be an unseemly wrangle?" inquired Anna-Felicitas mildly; and
+her eyes began to screw up again.
+
+"If you'll oblige me by going into the office," he said, having got the
+tray, for Anna-Felicitas was never one to struggle, "Mrs. Bilton and me
+will do the rest of the waiting for to-day."
+
+He went out grasping the tray, and made for the verandah. His appearance
+in this new role was greeted by the Germans with subdued
+applause--subdued, because they felt Mr. Twist wasn't quite as cordial
+to them as they had supposed he would be, and they were accordingly
+being a little more cautious in their methods with him than they had
+been at the beginning of the afternoon. He took no notice of them,
+except that his ears turned red when he knocked against a chair and the
+tray nearly fell out of his hands and they all cried out _Houp la_.
+Damn them, thought Mr. Twist. _Houp la_ indeed.
+
+In the farthest corner of the otherwise empty and very chilly verandah,
+sitting alone and staring out at the stars, was a man. He was a young
+man. He was also an attractive young man, with a thin brown face and
+very bright blue twinkling eyes. The light from the window behind him
+shone on him as he turned his head when he heard the swing doors open,
+and Mr. Twist saw these things distinctly and at once. He also saw how
+the young man's face fell on his, Mr. Twist's, appearance with the tray,
+and he also saw with some surprise how before he had reached him it
+suddenly cleared again. And the young man got up too, just as Mr. Twist
+arrived at the table--got up with some little difficulty, for he had to
+lean hard on a thick stick, but yet obviously with _empressement._
+
+"You've forgotten the sugar," said Anna-Felicitas's gentle voice behind
+Mr. Twist as he was putting down the tray; and there she was, sure
+enough, looking smugger than ever.
+
+"This is Mr. Twist," said Anna-Felicitas with an amiable gesture. "That
+I was telling you about," she explained to the young man.
+
+"When?" asked Mr. Twist, surprised.
+
+"Before," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were talking for some time before I
+went in to order the tea, weren't we?" she said to the young man,
+angelically smiling at him.
+
+"Rather," he said; and since he didn't on this introduction remark to
+Mr. Twist that he was pleased to meet him, it was plain he couldn't be
+an American. Therefore he must be English. Unless, suddenly suspected
+Mr. Twist who had Germans badly on his nerves that day and was ready to
+suspect anything, he was German cleverly got up for evil purposes to
+appear English. But the young man dispersed these suspicions by saying
+that he was over from England on six months' leave, and that his name
+was Elliott.
+
+"Like us," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+The young man looked at her with what would have been a greater interest
+than ever if a greater interest had been possible, only it wasn't.
+
+"What, are you an Elliott too?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Anna-Felicitas shook her head. "On the contrary," she said, "I'm a
+Twinkler. And so is my sister. What I meant was, you're like us about
+coming from England. We've done that. Only our leave is for ever and
+ever. Or the duration of the war."
+
+Mr. Twist waved her aside. "Anna-Felicitas," he said, "your sister is
+waiting for you in the office and wants you badly. I'll see to Mr.
+Elliott."
+
+"Why not bring your sister here?" said the young man, who, being in the
+navy, was fertile in resourcefulness. And he smiled at Anna-Felicitas,
+who smiled back; indeed, they did nothing but smile at each other.
+
+"I think that's a brilliant idea," she said; and turned to Mr. Twist.
+"You go," she said gently, thereby proving herself, the young man
+considered, at least his equal in resourcefulness. "It's much more
+likely," she continued, as Mr. Twist gazed at her without moving, "that
+she'll come for you than for me. My sister," she explained to the young
+man, "is older than I am."
+
+"Then certainly I should say Mr. Twist is more likely--"
+
+"But only about twenty minutes older."
+
+"What? A twin? I say, how extraordinarily jolly. Two of you?"
+
+"Anna-Felicitas," interrupted Mr. Twist, "you will go to your sister
+immediately. She needs you. She's upset. I don't wish to draw Mr.
+Elliott behind the scenes of family life, but as nothing seems to get
+you into the office you force me to tell you that she is very, much
+upset indeed, and is crying."
+
+"Crying?" echoed Anna-Felicitas. "Christopher?" And she turned and
+departed in such haste that the young man, who luckily was alert as well
+as resourceful, had only just time to lean over and grab at a chair in
+her way and pull it aside, and so avert a deplorable catastrophe.
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious?" he inquired of Mr. Twist.
+
+"Oh no. Children will cry."
+
+"Children?"
+
+Mr. Twist sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. "Tell me about
+England," he said. "You've been wounded, I see."
+
+"Leg," said the young man, still standing leaning on his stick and
+looking after Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"But that didn't get you six months' leave."
+
+"Lungs," said the young man, looking down impatiently at Mr. Twist.
+
+Then the swing doors swung to, and he sat down and poured out his tea.
+
+He had been in the battle of Jutland, and was rescued after hours in the
+water. For months he was struggling to recover, but finally tuberculosis
+had developed and he was sent to California, to his sister who had
+married an American and lived in the neighbourhood of Acapulco. This Mr.
+Twist extracted out of him by diligent questioning. He had to question
+very diligently. What the young man wanted to talk about was
+Anna-Felicitas; but every time he tried to, Mr. Twist headed him off.
+
+And she didn't come back. He waited and waited, and drank and drank.
+When the teapot was empty he started on the hot water. Also he ate all
+the cakes, more and more deliberately, eking them out at last with
+slowly smoked cigarettes. He heard all about France and Mr. Twist's
+activities there; he had time to listen to the whole story of the
+ambulance from start to finish; and still she didn't come back. In vain
+he tried at least to get Mr. Twist off those distant fields, nearer
+home--to the point, in fact, where the Twinklers were. Mr. Twist
+wouldn't budge. He stuck firmly. And the swing doors remained shut. And
+the cakes were all eaten. And there was nothing for it at last but to
+go.
+
+So after half-an-hour of solid sitting he began slowly to get up, still
+spreading out the moments, with one eye on the swing doors. It was both
+late and cold. The Germans had departed, and Li Koo had lit the usual
+evening wood fire in the big fireplace. It blazed most beautifully, and
+the young man looked at it through the window and hesitated.
+
+"How jolly," he said.
+
+"Firelight is very pleasant," agreed Mr. Twist, who had got up too.
+
+"I oughtn't to have stayed so long out here," said the young man with a
+little shiver.
+
+"I was thinking it was unwise," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go in and warm myself a bit before leaving."
+
+"I should say your best plan is to get back quickly to your sister and
+have a hot bath before dinner," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes. But I think I might just go in there and have a cup of hot coffee
+first."
+
+"There is no hot coffee at this hour," said Mr. Twist, looking at his
+watch. "We close at half-past six, and it is now ten minutes after."
+
+"Then there seems nothing for it but to pay my bill and go," said the
+young man, with an air of cheerful adaptation to what couldn't be
+helped. "I'll just nip in there and do that."
+
+"Luckily there's no need for you to nip anywhere," said Mr. Twist, "for
+surely that's a type of movement unsuited to your sick leg. You can pay
+me right here."
+
+And he took the young man's five dollars, and went with him as far as
+the green gate, and would have helped him into the waiting car, seeing
+his leg wasn't as other legs and Mr. Twist was, after all, humane, but
+the chauffeur was there to do that; so he just watched from the gate
+till the car had actually started, and then went back to the house.
+
+He went back slowly, perturbed and anxious, his eyes on the ground. This
+second day had been worse than the first. And besides the continued and
+remarkable absence of Americans and the continued and remarkable
+presence of Germans, there was a slipperiness suddenly developed in the
+Annas. He felt insecure; as though he didn't understand, and hadn't got
+hold. They seemed to him very like eels. And this Elliott--what did he
+think _he_ was after, anyway?
+
+For the second time that afternoon Mr. Twist set his teeth. He defied
+Elliott. He defied the Germans. He would see this thing successful, this
+Open Arms business, or his name wasn't Twist. And he stuck out his
+jaw--or would have stuck it out if he hadn't been prevented by the
+amiable weakness of that feature. But spiritually and morally, when he
+got back into the house he was all jaw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+That night he determined he would go into Acapulco next morning and drop
+in at his bank and at his lawyer's and other places, and see if he could
+pick up anything that would explain why Americans wouldn't come and have
+tea at The Open Arms. He even thought he might look up old Ridding. He
+didn't sleep. He lay all night thinking.
+
+The evening had been spent _tete-a-tete_ with Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Rose
+was in bed, sleeping off her tears; Mrs. Bilton had another headache,
+and disappeared early; so he was left with Anna-Felicitas, who slouched
+about abstractedly eating up the remains of ice-cream. She didn't talk,
+except once to remark a little pensively that her inside was dreadfully
+full of cold stuff, and that she knew now what it must feel like to be a
+mausoleum; but, eyeing her sideways as he sat before the fire, Mr. Twist
+could see that she was still smug. He didn't talk either. He felt he had
+nothing at present to say to Anna-Felicitas that would serve a useful
+purpose, and was, besides, reluctant to hear any counter-observations
+she might make. Watchfulness was what was required. Silent watchfulness.
+And wariness. And firmness. In fact all the things that were most
+foreign to his nature, thought Mr. Twist, resentful and fatigued.
+
+Next morning he had a cup of coffee in his room, brought by Li Koo, and
+then drove himself into Acapulco in his Ford without seeing the others.
+It was another of the perfect days which he was now beginning to take
+as a matter of course, so many had there been since his arrival. People
+talked of the wet days and of their desolate abundance once they
+started, but there had been as yet no sign of them. The mornings
+succeeded each other, radiant and calm. November was merging into
+December in placid loveliness. "Oh yes," said Mr. Twist to himself
+sardonically, as he drove down the sun-flecked lane in the gracious
+light, and crickets chirped at him, and warm scents drifted across his
+face, and the flowers in the grass, standing so bright and unruffled
+that they seemed almost as profoundly pleased as Anna-Felicitas, nodded
+at him, and everything was obviously perfectly contented and happy, "Oh
+yes--I daresay." And he repeated this remark several times as he looked
+round him,--he couldn't but look, it was all so beautiful. These things
+hadn't to deal with Twinklers. No wonder they could be calm and bright.
+So could he, if--
+
+He turned a corner in the lane and saw some way down it two figures, a
+man and a girl, sitting in the grass by the wayside. Lovers, of course.
+"Oh yes--I daresay," said Mr. Twist again, grimly. They hadn't to deal
+with Twinklers either. No wonder they could sit happily in the grass. So
+could he, if--
+
+At the noise of the approaching car, with the smile of the last thing
+they had been saying still on their faces, the two turned their heads,
+and it was that man Elliott and Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Hello," called out Mr. Twist, putting on the brakes so hard that the
+Ford skidded sideways along the road towards them.
+
+"Hello," said the young man cheerfully, waving his stick.
+
+"Hello," said Anna-Felicitas mildly, watching his sidelong approach
+with complacent interest.
+
+She had no hat on, and had evidently escaped from Mrs. Bilton just as
+she was. Escaped, however, was far too violent a word Mr. Twist felt;
+sauntered from Mrs. Bilton better described her effect of natural and
+comfortable arrival at the place where she was.
+
+"I didn't know you were here," said Mr. Twist addressing her when the
+car had stopped. He felt it was a lame remark. He had torrents of things
+he wanted to say, and this was all that came out.
+
+Anna-Felicitas considered it placidly for a moment, and came to the
+conclusion that it wasn't worth answering, so she didn't.
+
+"Going into the town?" inquired Elliott pleasantly.
+
+"Yes. I'll give you a lift."
+
+"No thanks. I've just come from there."
+
+"I see. Then _you'd_ better come with me," said Mr. Twist to
+Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. I'm rather busy this morning."
+
+"Really," said Mr. Twist, in a voice of concentrated sarcasm. But it had
+no effect on Anna-Felicitas. She continued to contemplate him with
+perfect goodwill.
+
+He hesitated a moment. What could he do? Nothing, that he could see,
+before the young man; nothing that wouldn't make him ridiculous. He felt
+a fool already. He oughtn't to have pulled up. He ought to have just
+waved to them and gone on his way, and afterwards in the seclusion of
+his office issued very plain directions to Anna-Felicitas as to her
+future conduct. Sitting by the roadside like that! Openly; before
+everybody; with a young man she had never seen twenty-four hours ago.
+
+He jammed in the gear and let the clutch out with such a jerk that the
+car leaped forward. Elliott waved his stick again. Mr. Twist responded
+by the briefest touch of his cap, and whirred down the road out of
+sight.
+
+"Does he mind your sitting here?" asked Elliott.
+
+"It would be very unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas gently. "One has to
+sit somewhere."
+
+And he laughed with delight at this answer as he laughed with delight at
+everything she said, and he told her for the twentieth time that she was
+the most wonderful person he had ever met, and she settled down to
+listen again, after the interruption caused by Mr. Twist, with a ready
+ear and the utmost complacency to these agreeable statements, and began
+to wonder whether perhaps after all she mightn't at last be about to
+fall in love.
+
+In the new interest of this possibility she turned her head to look at
+him, and he told her tumultuously--for being a sailor-man he went
+straight ahead on great waves when it came to love-making--that her eyes
+were as if pansies had married stars.
+
+She turned her head away again at this, for though it sounded lovely it
+made her feel a little shy and unprovided with an answer; and then he
+said, again tumultuously, that her ear was the most perfect thing ever
+stuck on a girl's cheek, and would she mind turning her face to him so
+that he might see if she had another just like it on the other side.
+
+She blushed at this, because she couldn't remember whether she had
+washed it lately or not--one so easily forgot one's ears; there were so
+many different things to wash--and he told her that when she blushed it
+was like the first wild rose of the first summer morning of the world.
+
+At this Anna-Felicitas was quite overcome, and subsided into a
+condition of blissful, quiescent waiting for whatever might come next.
+Fancy her face reminding him of all those nice things. She had seen it
+every day for years and years in the looking-glass, and not noticed
+anything particular about it. It had seemed to her just a face.
+Something you saw out of, and ate with, and had to clean whatever else
+you didn't when you were late for breakfast, because there it was and
+couldn't be hidden,--an object remote indeed from pansies, and stars,
+and beautiful things like that.
+
+She would have liked to explain this to the young man, and point out
+that she feared his imagination ran ahead of the facts and that perhaps
+when his leg was well again he would see things more as they were, but
+to her surprise when she turned to him to tell him this she found she
+was obliged to look away at once again. She couldn't look at him. Fancy
+that now, thought Anna-Felicitas, attentively gazing at her toes. And he
+had such dear eyes; and such a dear, eager sort of face. All the more,
+then, she reasoned, should her own eyes have dwelt with pleasure on him.
+But they couldn't. "Dear me," she murmured, watching her toes as
+carefully as if they might at any moment go away and leave her there.
+
+"I know," said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff.
+I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught
+myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly
+blood and muck of the war that does it,--sends one back with a rush to
+things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God
+now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to
+mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I
+write poetry now. We all write poetry. And nobody would mind now being
+seen saying their prayers. Why, if I were back at school and my mother
+came to see me I'd hug her before everybody in the middle of the street.
+Do you realize what a tremendous change that means, you little girl
+who's never had brothers? You extraordinary adorable little lovely
+thing?"
+
+And off he was again.
+
+"When I was small," said Anna-Felicitas after a while, still watching
+her feet, "I had a governess who urged me to consider, before I said
+anything, whether it were the sort of thing I would like to say in the
+hearing of my parents. Would you like to say what you're saying to me in
+the hearing of your parents?"
+
+"Hate to," said Elliott promptly.
+
+"Well, then," said Anna-Felicitas, gentle but disappointed. She rather
+wished now she hadn't mentioned it.
+
+"I'd take you out of earshot," said Elliott.
+
+She was much relieved. She had done what she felt might perhaps be
+regarded by Aunt Alice as her duty as a lady, and could now give herself
+up with a calm conscience to hearing whatever else he might have to say.
+
+And he had an incredible amount to say, and all of it of the most highly
+gratifying nature. On the whole, looking at it all round and taking one
+thing with another, Anna-Felicitas came to the conclusion that this was
+the most agreeable and profitable morning she had ever spent. She sat
+there for hours, and they all flew. People passed in cars and saw her,
+and it didn't disturb her in the least. She perfectly remembered she
+ought to be helping Anna-Rose pick and arrange the flowers for the
+tea-tables, and she didn't mind. She knew Anna-Rose would be astonished
+and angry at her absence, and it left her unmoved. By midday she was
+hopelessly compromised in the eyes of Acapulco, for the people who had
+motored through the lane told the people who hadn't what they had seen.
+Once a great car passed with a small widow in it, who looked astonished
+when she saw the pair but had gone almost before Elliott could call out
+and wave to her.
+
+"That's my sister," he said. "You and she will love each other."
+
+"Shall we?" said Anna-Felicitas, much pleased by this suggestion of
+continuity in their relations; and remarked that she looked as if she
+hadn't got a husband.
+
+"She hasn't. Poor little thing. Rotten luck. Rotten. I hate people to
+die now. It seems so infernally unnatural of them, when they're not in
+the fighting. He's only been dead a month. And poor old Dellogg was such
+a decent chap. She isn't going anywhere yet, or I'd bring her up to tea
+this afternoon. But it doesn't matter. I'll take you to her."
+
+"Shall you?" said Anna-Felicitas, again much pleased. Dellogg. The name
+swam through her mind and swam out again. She was too busy enjoying
+herself to remark it and its coincidences now.
+
+"Of course. It's the first thing one does."
+
+"What first thing?"
+
+"To take the divine girl to see one's relations. Once one has found her.
+Once one has had"--his voice fell to a whisper--"the God-given luck to
+find her." And he laid his hand very gently on hers, which were clasped
+together in her lap.
+
+This was a situation to which Anna-Felicitas wasn't accustomed, and she
+didn't know what to do with it. She looked down at the hand lying on
+hers, and considered it without moving. Elliott was quite silent now,
+and she knew he was watching her face. Ought she, perhaps, to be going?
+Was this, perhaps, one of the moments in life when the truly judicious
+went? But what a pity to go just when everything was so pleasant. Still,
+it must be nearly lunch-time. What would Aunt Alice do in a similar
+situation? Go home to lunch, she was sure. Yet what was lunch when one
+was rapidly arriving, as she was sure now that she was, at the condition
+of being in love? She must be, or she wouldn't like his hand on hers.
+And she did like it.
+
+She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it. But would
+Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly clear about that.
+Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it up, and shake it, and
+say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like a lady. Well, perhaps she
+ought to do that. Christopher would probably think so too. But what a
+pity.... Still, behaviour was behaviour; ladies were ladies.
+
+She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
+instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing of
+the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top of his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful
+indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple
+of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track
+back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to
+proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or
+shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger
+cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The
+Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that
+Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he
+couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
+this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
+served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up
+his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.
+
+There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.
+
+At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since
+his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went
+into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after
+difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he
+couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he
+had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main
+Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the
+other way.
+
+From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of
+the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its
+mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the
+inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The
+solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the
+clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about
+it.
+
+By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask
+the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find
+anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and
+frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere
+else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
+Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent
+undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of
+this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush
+falling upon it, a holding of the breath.
+
+In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw
+that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great
+parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black
+heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and
+naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.
+Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass
+in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter,
+probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher
+mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that
+part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the
+heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of
+some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall
+in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair
+that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only
+the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two
+smouldering coals.
+
+He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he
+tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right,
+and went out quickly by the side door.
+
+There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to
+the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the
+guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was
+chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried
+away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a
+last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main
+Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of
+agitation and restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.
+
+The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his morning's
+experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being
+admitted at once. He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with
+unmistakable interest.
+
+"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.
+
+The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult him,
+but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their
+preference in conversation for the self-evident.
+
+"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr. Twist, his
+great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.
+
+"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.
+
+"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the hell--"
+
+The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said. "Sorry to
+interrupt--"
+
+And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition between his
+office and his clerks' room.
+
+"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.
+
+He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were inquiring what
+the hell--?"
+
+"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but you're so
+calm--"
+
+"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
+
+"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one. Yours is
+another."
+
+"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I want to
+know is why--"
+
+"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you. It's
+because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the
+German Government."
+
+A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a
+detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared at the
+lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left him. This
+blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank astonishment.
+
+"You know about my teapot?" he said at last.
+
+"Try me again, Mr. Twist."
+
+"It's on every American breakfast table."
+
+"Including my own."
+
+"They wouldn't use it if they thought--"
+
+"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
+proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment
+to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on an unofficial
+black list. It is to be banished from the hotels."
+
+Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The teapot his
+mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his
+happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging over America in
+great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used
+for Germany. He saw--but what didn't he see in that moment of submerged
+horror? Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason
+with a gasp. "Why?" he asked.
+
+"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"
+
+"No. Why do they think the inn--"
+
+"The Miss Twinklers are German."
+
+"Half."
+
+"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all
+about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward
+notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So
+transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk
+has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's
+women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others
+caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
+fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are
+certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw
+he had made a little joke in that last remark.
+
+Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do
+you mean to say those children--" he began.
+
+"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
+
+"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the
+wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd
+best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen
+them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
+boat."
+
+"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty
+considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being
+believed?"
+
+"Of course. It's what I've come for."
+
+"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by
+this time the whole coast--is that you threw over your widowed mother,
+of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who
+got hold of you on the boat--now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the
+boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as
+undesirable aliens--quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're
+in the pay of the German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and
+that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has
+been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't
+say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so
+familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
+complete secret understanding."
+
+For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he
+took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was
+startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort
+of lips. "You're not--" he began.
+
+Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.
+
+"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.
+
+"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his
+features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny.
+Cat's-paw. Yes--rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit
+of a bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly refused
+to compose.
+
+The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these
+beliefs may be awkward."
+
+"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.
+
+And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would
+mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless
+Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his
+conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it
+had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative
+enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side
+properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted
+on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the
+twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted.
+Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get
+them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just
+couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and
+terrible situation.
+
+"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.
+
+"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life
+of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions--"
+
+"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two
+courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You
+shut down the inn--at once, to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on
+Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open--now pray let me
+finish--close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private
+residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."
+
+"Marry what girls?"
+
+"The Miss von Twinklers."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them
+who to?"
+
+"You for one."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to
+me before."
+
+"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."
+
+"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way
+out--"
+
+But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by
+events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.
+
+"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls," said the lawyer, at each
+word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American.
+Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same
+time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you
+didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would
+want to--I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them--it's your
+plain duty, having got them into this mess."
+
+"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet
+a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.
+
+For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either or both," he
+said. "For God's sake don't be such a--"
+
+He pulled up short.
+
+"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that
+sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will
+substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"
+
+No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might
+choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out
+his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his
+mouth.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.
+
+Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard
+them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to
+them--to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he
+proposed to and the one he didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He
+hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this
+whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.
+
+"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a
+movement of his shoulder.
+
+"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My
+wife was--"
+
+"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all _that_" said Mr.
+Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're
+_children_--"
+
+"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
+negligibleness.
+
+Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said.
+"You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing
+more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the
+sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's
+the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and
+prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"
+
+Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table
+crooked. His ears flamed.
+
+"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like
+that about my wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him all up.
+His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home
+matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets
+before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was
+on the wrong side of the road. During this period, deep as he was in
+confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely notice the anger on the faces
+of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations,
+and it roused a dim wonder in him.
+
+Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the
+affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark.
+They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always disapproving.
+Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of
+not going to do or be enough.
+
+His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,--somebody kind
+and soft, who would let herself be adored. She needn't even love
+him,--he knew he wasn't the sort of man to set passion alight; she need
+only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his
+very own.
+
+His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes. But the
+Annas....
+
+When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
+propose--indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to--but
+wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to
+think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
+course,--one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny man,
+thought Mr. Twist; funny man,--yet otherwise so sagacious. It is true he
+need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could
+imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to
+be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred
+not to imagine.
+
+Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard. It
+was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and
+Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on
+which side he had been driving.
+
+The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence.
+Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when
+he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed
+flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She
+said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone
+home, and that little Christopher too might for a bit be somewhere else,
+so that when he arrived he wouldn't immediately have to face everybody
+at once. He wanted to think; he wanted to have time to think; time
+before four o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to
+any conclusion about shutting up the inn--and how could he if nobody
+gave him time to think?--those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they
+who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and their
+blasted war....
+
+At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the green
+shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the
+lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
+very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's time
+given him to think.
+
+"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had waved to
+him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to the stable, "she
+isn't with you?"
+
+"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.
+
+Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she said.
+
+"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.
+
+"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken eyes;
+for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of her mind,
+half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any moment of panic, an
+impression that the chief activities and recreations of all those
+Americans who weren't really good were two: they lynched, and they
+kidnapped. They lynched you if they didn't like you enough, and if they
+liked you too much they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and
+unsuspecting, had been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had
+alighted on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other
+explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one
+so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
+that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there was any
+shirking to be done they had always done it together. As the hours
+passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to persuade herself
+that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and
+unnatural and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
+been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she
+was convinced the worst had happened--her beautiful, her precious
+Columbus had been kidnapped.
+
+"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.
+
+Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was announcing the
+kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think of Anna-Felicitas; he
+had seen her too recently. But that Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped
+seemed to him to touch the lowest depths of American criminal enterprise
+and depravity. At the same time though he recoiled before this fresh
+blow a thought did fan through his mind with a wonderful effect of
+coolness and silence,--"Then they'll gag her," he said.
+
+"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag her?" And
+pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried
+again, "Gag Columbus?"
+
+"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
+disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you--"
+
+He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the
+lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely
+as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a distracted
+household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an
+extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality. Still
+smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one could imagine a lily
+turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down
+the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
+thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god would
+be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be worrying much
+about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd just be coming
+along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and
+his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a
+sober and abstracted radiance.
+
+"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his
+thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly, leaning
+over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found
+himself faced by both twins together, "that when next your imagination
+gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till
+it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your
+constitution going pale."
+
+And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into
+the yard.
+
+Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only living
+thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of
+one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home.
+The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave
+the twins much unacknowledged relief. It was, they thought secretly,
+quite a good plan to have one's pets inside each other,--it kept them so
+quiet. She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning
+her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order
+to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.
+
+Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.
+
+He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre
+about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it
+kept him longer away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of
+him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel
+was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
+The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he
+wouldn't hurt a fly.
+
+Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the stable,
+all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and having got it
+in he still lingered fiddling about with it, examining its engine and
+wiping its bonnet; and then when he couldn't do that any longer he went
+out and lingered in the yard, looking down at the cat with his hands in
+his pockets. "I must think," he kept on saying to himself.
+
+"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen window.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who didn't
+like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got out of it by
+lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful white stomach. She
+was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful white stomach, and she
+had discovered that nobody could see it without wanting to stroke it.
+Whenever she found herself in a situation that threatened to become
+disagreeable she just lay down and showed her stomach. Human beings in
+similar predicaments can only show their tact.
+
+"Nice pussy--nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud, stroking this
+irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as she had intended
+he should.
+
+"Lunchee get cold," said Li Koo, again putting his head out of the
+kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton say, Come in."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Twist.
+
+He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that should
+have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening
+tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up
+carefully again.
+
+Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.
+
+"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard door.
+
+"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right away and
+have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I guess you'll be
+sorry."
+
+"All right--coming," he called back very loud and cheerfully, striding
+towards her as one strides who knows there is nothing for it now but
+courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton--sorry if I've kept you waiting. You
+shouldn't have bothered about me--"
+
+And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself being
+loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house, through the
+house, and out on to the verandah.
+
+They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning was
+down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it blazed the
+garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as usual ready for
+four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding the Annas at the
+table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her back to the garden, her
+little fair head outlined against the glowing light as he had seen it
+every day since they had lived in the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably
+volubly and passionately addressing her.
+
+And there was no one.
+
+"Why--" he said, stopping short.
+
+"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before everything is
+spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed behind to give an
+order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the verandah and shaded her
+eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you can do all that talking
+better after lunch."
+
+He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most private
+place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some arum lilies
+that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood the twins facing
+each other.
+
+"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when they're
+ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's talking right
+away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more quickly for she
+plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to sally out into the
+sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often get a chance of a quiet
+chat together--"
+
+And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her chair ready
+for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning again.
+
+She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite that
+tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the eager
+gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.
+
+She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
+immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,--while Mrs.
+Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if one
+wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he gave
+himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once started
+flowing over him, on this occasion with something of the comfort of
+warm water, and he was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't
+gagged.
+
+While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at the two
+figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs. Bilton
+remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at the different
+stages, of the meal,--at the salad, at the pudding--he stopped her. She
+became more and more pleased by his evident determination to lunch alone
+with her, for after all one remains female to the end, and her
+conversation took on a gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second
+marriages. They had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had
+had no post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
+whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.
+
+The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs. Bilton
+talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she being the
+eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and, if she refused,
+proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But before proceeding to
+Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with peculiar misgiving, he would
+very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose the seriousness of the situation and
+the necessity, the urgency, the sanity of her marrying him. These
+proposals would be kept on the cool level of strict business. Every
+trace of the affection with which he was so overflowing would be sternly
+excluded. For instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel
+of Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
+comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his
+remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most
+scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful
+avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr.
+Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water,
+how difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more female than
+ever.
+
+Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the war.
+Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
+steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated Mr.
+Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of it.
+
+Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.
+
+Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it. He saw
+that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he would
+explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which after the
+war they--he meant, of course, she--could easily in that land of facile
+and honourable divorce get rid of. Meanwhile, he would point out,
+they--she, of course; bother these twins--would be safely American, and
+he would undertake never to intrude love on them--her--unless by some
+wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr. Twist's
+spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more water.
+
+Yes. That was the line to take: the austere line of self-mortification
+for the Twinkler good. One Twinkler would be his wife--again at the dear
+word he had to gulp down water--and one his sister-in-law. They would
+just have to agree to this plan. The position was too serious for
+shilly-shallying. Yes. That was the line to take; and by the time he
+had got to the coffee it was perfectly clear and plain to him.
+
+But he felt dreadfully damp. He longed for a liqueur, for anything that
+would support him....
+
+"Is there any brandy in the house?" he suddenly flung across the web of
+Mrs. Bilton's words.
+
+"Brandy, Mr. Twist?" she repeated, at this feeling altogether female,
+for what an unusual thing for him to ask for,--"You're not sick?"
+
+"With my coffee," murmured Mr. Twist, his mouth very slack, his head
+drooping. "It's nice...."
+
+"I'll go and see," said Mrs. Bilton, getting up briskly and going away
+rattling a bunch of keys.
+
+At once he looked down the garden. Anna-Felicitas was in the act of
+putting her arm round Anna-Rose's shoulder, and Anna-Rose was
+passionately disengaging herself. Yes. There was trouble there. He knew
+there would be.
+
+He gulped down more water.
+
+Anna-Felicitas couldn't expect to go off like that for a whole morning
+and give Anna-Rose a horrible fright without hearing about it. Besides,
+the expression on her face wanted explaining,--a lot of explaining. Mr.
+Twist didn't like to think so, but Anna-Felicitas's recent conduct
+seemed to him almost artful. It seemed to him older than her years. It
+seemed to justify the lawyer's scepticism when he described the twins to
+him as children. That young man Elliott--
+
+But here Mr. Twist started and lost his thread of thought, for looking
+once more down the garden he saw that Anna-Felicitas was coming towards
+the verandah, and that she was alone. Anna-Rose had vanished. Why had he
+bothered about brandy, and let Mrs. Bilton go? He had counted, somehow,
+on beginning with Anna-Rose....
+
+He seized a cigarette and lit it. He tried vainly to keep his hand
+steady. Before the cigarette was fairly plight there was Anna-Felicitas,
+walking in beneath the awning.
+
+"I'm glad you're alone," she said, "for I want to speak to you."
+
+And Mr. Twist felt that his hour had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+"Hadn't you better have lunch first?" he asked, though he knew from the
+look on her face that she wouldn't. It was a very remarkable look. It
+was as though an angel, dwelling in perfect bliss, had unaccountably got
+its feet wet. Not more troubled than that; a little troubled, but not
+more than that.
+
+"No thank you," she said politely. "But if you've finished yours, do you
+mind coming into the office? Because otherwise Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"She's fetching me some brandy," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I didn't know you drank," said Anna-Felicitas, even at this moment
+interested. "But do you mind having it afterwards? Because otherwise
+Mrs. Bilton--"
+
+"I guess the idea was to have it first," said Mr. Twist.
+
+She was however already making for the tea-room, proceeding towards it
+without hurry, and with a single-mindedness that would certainly get her
+there.
+
+He could only follow.
+
+In the office she said, "Do you mind shutting the door?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Twist; but he did mind. His hour had come, and he
+wasn't liking it. He wanted to begin with Anna-Rose. He wanted to get
+things clear with her first before dealing with this one. There was less
+of Anna-Rose. And her dear little head yesterday when he patted it....
+And she needed comforting.... Anna-Rose cried, and let herself be
+comforted.... And it was so sweet to Mr. Twist to comfort....
+
+"Christopher--" began Anna-Felicitas, directly he had shut the door.
+
+"I know. She's mad with you. What can you expect, Anna II.?" he
+interrupted in a very matter-of-fact voice, leaning against a bookcase.
+Even a bookcase was better than nothing to lean against.
+
+"Christopher is being unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas, her voice
+softer and gentler than he had yet heard it.
+
+Then she stopped, and considered him a moment with much of the look of
+one who on a rather cold day considers the sea before diving in--with,
+that is, a slight but temporary reluctance to proceed.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better," she said, disposing herself in the big chair.
+"It's very strange, but my legs feel funny. You wouldn't think being in
+love would make one want to sit down."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Twist.
+
+"I have fallen in love," said Anna-Felicitas, looking up at him with a
+kind of pensive radiance. "I did it this morning."
+
+Mr. Twist stared at her. "I beg your--what did you say?" he asked.
+
+She said, still with that air as she regarded him of pensive radiance,
+of not seeing him but something beyond him that was very beautiful to
+her and satisfactory, "I've fallen in love, and I can't tell you how
+pleased I am because I've always been afraid I was going to find it a
+difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."
+
+Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this
+afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and
+Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."
+
+And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from
+her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.
+
+"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.
+
+"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation
+for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."
+
+Well. This beat everything.
+
+Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.
+
+Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what
+they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How
+dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come
+making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So
+suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins
+constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them.
+They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug
+them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman
+should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and
+respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they
+wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering
+Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared
+to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to
+think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old
+footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be
+able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his
+addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?
+
+Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all
+tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against
+the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was
+gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy,
+and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one
+great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside
+and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he
+beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.
+
+He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her
+and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very
+calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been
+since the arrival in his life of the twins.
+
+"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."
+
+"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II.,
+that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's
+Elliott."
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she
+added, "I now have to allude to him as John."
+
+Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said,
+"think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man
+John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."
+
+"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
+
+"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It
+doesn't strike you as foolish."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've
+been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm
+not _naturally_ quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded
+as a pardonable pride.
+
+"It doesn't strike you as even a little--well, a little improper."
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one
+man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's
+husband."
+
+"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife,
+but then that was different.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he said, full of a flaming
+unreasonableness and jealousy and the sore feeling that he who had been
+toiling so long and so devotedly in the heat of the Twinkler sun had had
+a most unfair march stolen on him by this eleventh-hour stranger.
+
+He flamed with unreasonableness. Yet he knew this was the solution of
+half his problem,--and of much the worst half, for it was after all
+Anna-Felicitas who had produced the uncomfortable feeling of
+slipperiness, of eels; Anna-Rose had been quite good, sitting in a chair
+crying and just so sweetly needing comfort. But now that the solution
+was presented to him he was full of fears. For on what now could he base
+his proposal to Anna-Rose? Elliott would be the legitimate protector of
+both the Twinklers. Mr. Twist, who had been so much perturbed by the
+idea of having to propose to one or other twin, was miserably upset by
+the realization that now he needn't propose to either. Elliott had cut
+the ground from under his feet. He had indeed--what was the expression
+he used the evening before?--yes, nipped in. There was now no necessity
+for Anna-Rose to marry him, and Mr. Twist had an icy and forlorn
+feeling that on no other basis except necessity would she. He was
+thirty-five. It was all very well for Elliott to get proposing to people
+of seventeen; he couldn't be more than twenty-five. And it wasn't only
+age. Mr. Twist hadn't shaved before looking-glasses for nothing, and he
+was very distinctly aware that Elliott was extremely attractive.
+
+"It's not time yet to talk of husbands," he therefore hotly and
+jealously said.
+
+"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas gently, "it's not only time but
+war-time. The war, I have observed, is making people be quick and sudden
+about all sorts of things."
+
+"You haven't observed it. That's Elliott said that."
+
+"He may have," said Anna-Felicitas. "He said so many things--"
+
+And again she lapsed into contemplation; into, thought Mr. Twist as he
+gazed jealously at her profile, an ineffable, ruminating, reminiscent
+smugness.
+
+"See here, Anna II.," he said, finding it impossibly painful to wait
+while she contemplated, "suppose you don't at this particular crisis
+fall into quite so many ecstatic meditations. There isn't as much time
+as you seem to think."
+
+"No--and there's Christopher," said Anna-Felicitas, giving herself a
+shake, and with that slightly troubled look coming into her face again
+as of having, in spite of being an angel in glory, somehow got her feet
+wet.
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Twist, getting up and walking about the room.
+"There's Christopher. Now Christopher, I should say, would be pretty
+well heart-broken over this."
+
+"But that's so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas with gentle
+deprecation.
+
+"You're all she has got, and she'll be under the impression--the
+remarkably vivid impression--that she's losing you."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable. She isn't losing me. It's sheer gain.
+Without the least effort or bother on her part she's acquiring a
+brother-in-law."
+
+"Oh, I know what Christopher feels," said Mr. Twist, going up and down
+the room quickly. "I know right enough, because I feel it all myself."
+
+"But _that's_ so unreasonable," said Anna-Felicitas earnestly. "Why
+should two of you be feeling things that aren't?"
+
+"She has always regarded herself as responsible for you, and I shouldn't
+be surprised if she were terribly shocked at your conduct."
+
+"But there has to _be_ conduct," said Anna-Felicitas, still very gentle,
+but looking as though her feet were getting wetter. "I don't see how
+anybody is ever to fall in love unless there's been some conduct first."
+
+"Oh, don't argue--don't argue. You can't expect Anna-Rose not to mind
+your wanting to marry a perfect stranger, a man she hasn't even seen."
+
+"But everybody you marry started by being a perfect stranger and
+somebody you hadn't ever seen," said Anna-Felicitas.
+
+"Oh Lord, if only you wouldn't _argue_!" exclaimed Mr. Twist. "And as
+for your aunt in England, what's she going to say to this
+twenty-four-hours, quick-lunch sort of engagement? She'll be terribly
+upset. And Anna-Rose knows that, and is I expect nigh worried crazy."
+
+"But what," asked Anna-Felicitas, "have aunts to do with love?"
+
+Then she said very earnestly, her face a little flushed, her eyes
+troubled, "Christopher said all that you're saying now, and a lot more,
+down in the garden before I came to you, and I said what I've been
+saying to you, and a lot more, but she wouldn't listen. And when I found
+she wouldn't listen I tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't be
+comforted. And then I came to you; for besides wanting to tell you what
+I've done I wanted to ask you to comfort Christopher."
+
+Mr. Twist paused a moment in his walk. "Yes," he said, staring at the
+carpet. "Yes. I can very well imagine she needs it. But I don't suppose
+anything I would say--"
+
+"Christopher is very fond of you," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+"Oh yes. You're both very fond of me," said Mr. Twist, pulling his mouth
+into a crooked and unhappy smile.
+
+"We love you," said Anna-Felicitas simply.
+
+Mr. Twist looked at her, and a mist came over his spectacles. "You dear
+children," he said, "you dear, dear children--"
+
+"I don't know about children--" began Anna-Felicitas; but was
+interrupted by a knock at the door.
+
+"It's only the brandy," said Mr. Twist, seeing her face assume the
+expression he had learned to associate with the approach of Mrs. Bilton.
+"Take it away, please Mrs. Bilton," he called out, "and put it on the--"
+
+Mrs. Bilton however, didn't take anything away, but opened the door an
+inch instead. "There's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Twist," she
+said in a loud whisper, thrusting in a card. "He says he just must. I
+found him on the verandah when I took your brandy out, and as I'm not
+the woman to leave a stranger alone with good brandy I brought him in
+with me, and he's right here back of me in the tea-room."
+
+"It's John," remarked Anna-Felicitas placidly. "Come early."
+
+"I say--" said a voice behind Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Yes," nodded Anna-Felicitas, getting up out of the deep chair. "That's
+John."
+
+"I say--may I come in? I've got something important--"
+
+Mr. Twist looked at Anna-Felicitas. "Wouldn't you rather--?" he began.
+
+"I don't mind John," she said softly, her face flooded with a most
+beautiful light.
+
+Mr. Twist opened the door and went out. "Come in," he said. "Mrs.
+Bilton, may I present Mr. Elliott to you--Commander Elliott of the
+British Navy."
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Commander Elliott," said Mrs. Bilton. "Mr. Twist,
+your brandy is on the verandah. Shall I bring it to you in here?"
+
+"No thank you, Mrs. Bilton. I'll go out there presently. Perhaps you
+wouldn't mind waiting for me there--I don't suppose Mr. Elliott will
+want to keep me long. Come in, Mr. Elliott."
+
+And having disposed of Mrs. Bilton, who was in a particularly willing
+and obedient and female mood, he motioned Elliott into the office.
+
+There stood Anna-Felicitas.
+
+Elliott stopped dead.
+
+"This isn't fair," he said, his eyes twinkling and dancing.
+
+"What isn't?" inquired Anna-Felicitas gently, beaming at him.
+
+"Your being here. I've got to talk business. Look here, sir," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "could _you_ talk business with her there?"
+
+"Not if she argued," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Argued! I wouldn't mind her arguing. It's just her being there. I've
+got to talk business," he said, turning to Anna-Felicitas,--"business
+about marrying you. And how can I with you standing there looking
+like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas placidly, not moving.
+
+"But you'll interrupt--just your being there will interrupt. I shall see
+you out of the corner of my eye, and it'll be impossible not to--I mean
+I know I'll want to--I mean, Anna-Felicitas my dear, it isn't done. I've
+got to explain all sorts of things to your guardian--"
+
+"He isn't my guardian," corrected the accurate Anna-Felicitas gently.
+"He only very nearly once was."
+
+"Well, anyhow I've got to explain a lot of things that'll take some
+time, and it isn't so much explain as persuade--for I expect," he said,
+turning to Mr. Twist, "this strikes you as a bit sudden, sir?"
+
+"It would strike anybody," said Mr. Twist trying to be stern but finding
+it difficult, for Elliott was so disarmingly engaging and so disarmingly
+in love. The radiance on Anna-Felicitas's face might have been almost a
+reflection caught from his. Mr. Twist had never seen two people look so
+happy. He had never, of course, before been present at the first
+wonderful dawning of love. The whole room seemed to glow with the
+surprise of it.
+
+"There. You see?" said Elliott, again appealing to Anna-Felicitas, who
+stood smiling beatifically at him without moving. "I've got to explain
+that it isn't after all as mad as it seems, and that I'm a fearfully
+decent chap and can give you lots to eat, and that I've got a jolly
+little sister here who's respectable and well-known besides, and I'm
+going to produce references to back up these assertions, and proofs that
+I'm perfectly sound in health except for my silly foot, which isn't
+health but just foot and which you don't seem to mind anyhow, and how--I
+ask you _how_, Anna-Felicitas my dear, am I to do any of this with you
+standing there looking like--well, like that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.
+
+"Anna-Felicitas, my dear," he said, "won't you go?"
+
+"No, John," said Anna-Felicitas gently.
+
+His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever. He took a step towards her,
+then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.
+
+"_Somebody's_ got to go," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Twist. "And I guess it's me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.
+
+He was going to propose to her. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear
+the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going
+out of his life at the same time, and he couldn't bear, after what he
+had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.
+
+All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love.
+He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it
+and there wasn't any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got
+so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else. He had never tried to
+marry,--again because of his home and his mother and the whole
+only-son-of-a-widow business. He would try now. He would risk it. It was
+awful to risk it, but it was more awful not to. He adored Anna-Rose. How
+nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he
+taken her in his arms! Why, he would have taken her into them then and
+there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of
+comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn't been that
+he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child.
+Fool that he was. Elliott had dispelled that idea for him. It wasn't
+children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.
+Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was
+because she was little and easily cried. He loved her for being little.
+He loved her because she easily cried. He yearned and hungered to
+comfort, to pet to take care of. He was, as has been pointed out, a born
+mother.
+
+Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with
+recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose's door. No
+answer. He listened. Dead silence. He opened it a slit and peeped in.
+Emptiness. Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo,
+who always knew everything, might know where she was. Li Koo did. He
+jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and
+looked out. There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where
+he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her
+stomach was Anna-Rose.
+
+She had her back to the house and her face was hidden. The sun streamed
+down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked
+round her neck. She didn't hear him till he was close to her, so much
+absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn't look
+up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.
+
+"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come and talk to me."
+
+"I'm thinking."
+
+"Don't think. Come and talk to me, little--little dear one."
+
+She bent her head lower still. "I'm thinking," she said again.
+
+"Come and tell me what you're thinking."
+
+"I'm thinking about cats."
+
+"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.
+
+"Yes," said Anna-Rose, stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully
+keeping her face hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they
+are."
+
+"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and come and
+talk to me now."
+
+"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably twins,
+and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes sixes, but
+still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and don't mind a bit
+what their--what their twins do--"
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."
+
+"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their whiskers
+and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them. Perhaps if I--if I
+had whiskers and a--and a purr--"
+
+The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently.
+Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.
+
+Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a laugh as
+she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a sound so
+wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him, that Mr.
+Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said, catching at the cat
+and hugging her tight, "I can't let _you_ go--" And she buried her face
+in her fur, so that Mr. Twist still couldn't see it.
+
+"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very firmly.
+"You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up, cat and all,
+and set her on her feet.
+
+Then he saw her face.
+
+"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking shelter
+behind her pride and looking at him as defiantly as she could out of
+eyes almost closed up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen
+to--to seem as if I'd been crying that I--that I'm minding anything."
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had straightway
+forgotten about himself and his longings and his proposals, and only
+knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no," he said, looking at her
+aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding anything, either of us."
+
+He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to
+do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony--yes, it was
+downright agony--on her face.
+
+He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he thought--he
+was pretty sure--she was thinking and feeling that her beloved Columbus
+had gone from her, and gone to a stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to
+a stranger she had never even seen, never even heard of; that her
+Columbus had had secrets from her, had been doing things behind her
+back; that she had had perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was
+tasting the dreadful desolation of betrayal; and he also guessed that
+she must be sick with fears,--for he knew how responsible she felt, how
+seriously she took the charge of her beautiful twin--sick with fear
+about this unknown man, sick with the feeling of helplessness, of
+looking on while Columbus rushed into what might well be, for all any
+one knew, a deadly mess-up of her happiness.
+
+Well, he could reason her out of most of this, he felt. Certainly he
+could reassure her about Elliott, who did inspire one with confidence,
+who did seem, anyhow outwardly, a very fitting mate for Anna-Felicitas.
+But he was aghast at the agony on her face. All that he guessed she was
+thinking and feeling didn't justify it. It was unreasonable to suffer so
+violently on account of what was, after all, a natural happening. But
+however unreasonable it was, she was suffering.
+
+He took her by the arm. "You come right along with me," he said; and led
+her out of the yard, away from Li Koo and the kitchen window, towards
+the eucalyptus grove behind the house. "You come right along with me,"
+he repeated, holding her firmly for she was very wobbly on her feet,
+"and we'll tell each other all about the things we're not minding. Do
+you remember when the _St. Luke_ left Liverpool? You thought I thought
+you were minding things then, and were very angry with me. We've made
+friends since, haven't we, and we aren't going to mind anything ever
+again except each other."
+
+But he hardly knew what he was saying, so great was his concern and
+distress.
+
+Anna-Rose went blindly. She stumbled along, helped by him, clutching the
+cat. She couldn't see out of her swollen eyes. Her foot caught in a
+root, and the cat, who had for some minutes past been thoroughly uneasy,
+became panic-stricken and struggled out of her arms, and fled into the
+wood. She tried to stop it, but it would go. For some reason this broke
+down her self-control. The warm cat clutched to her breast had at least
+been something living to hold on to. Now the very cat had gone. Her
+pride collapsed, and she tumbled against Mr. Twist's arm and just
+sobbed.
+
+If ever a man felt like a mother it was Mr. Twist at that moment. He
+promptly sat her down on the grass. "There now--there, there now," he
+said, whipping out his handkerchief and anxiously mopping up her face.
+"This is what I did on the _St. Luke_--do you remember?--there now--that
+time you told me about your mother--it looks like being my permanent
+job--there, there now--don't now--you'll have no little eyes left soon
+if you go on like this--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--Co-Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes I know all about Columbus. Don't you worry about her. She's
+all right. She's all right in the office at this moment, and we're all
+right out here if only you knew it, if only you wouldn't cry such
+quantities. It beats me where it all comes from, and you so
+little--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but Columbus--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know--you're worrying yourself sick because you think
+you're responsible for her to your aunt and uncle, but you won't be, you
+know, once she's married--there, there now--"
+
+"Oh but--oh but--"
+
+"Now don't--now please--yes, yes, I know--he's a stranger, and you
+haven't seen him yet, but everybody was a stranger once," said Mr.
+Twist, quoting Anna-Felicitas's own argument, the one that had
+especially irritated him half-an-hour before, "and he's real good--I'm
+sure of it. And you'll be sure too the minute you see him. That's to
+say, if you're able to see anything or anybody for the next week out of
+your unfortunate stuck-together little eyes."
+
+"Oh but--oh but--you don't--you haven't--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I have. Now turn your face so that I can wipe the other side
+properly. There now, I caught an enormous tear. I got him just in time
+before he trickled into your ear. Lord, how sore your poor little eyes
+are. Don't it even cheer you to think you're going to be a
+sister-in-law, Anna-Rose?"
+
+"Oh but you don't--you haven't--" she sobbed, her face not a whit less
+agonized for all his reassurances.
+
+"Well, I know I wish I were going to be a brother-in-law," said Mr.
+Twist, worried by his inability to reassure, as he tenderly and
+carefully dabbed about the corners of her eyes and her soaked eyelashes.
+"My, shouldn't I think well of myself."
+
+Then his hand shook.
+
+"I wish I were going to be Anna-Felicitas's brother-in-law," he said,
+suddenly impelled, perhaps by this failure to get rid of the misery in
+her face, to hurl himself on his fate. "Not _yours_--get your mind quite
+clear about that,--but Anna-Felicitas's." And his hand shook so much
+that he had to leave off drying. For this was a proposal. If only
+Anna-Rose would see it, this was a proposal.
+
+Anna-Rose, however, saw nothing. Even in normal times she
+wasn't good at relationships, and had never yet understood the
+that-man's-father-was-my-father's-son one; now she simply didn't
+hear. She was sitting with her hands limply in her lap, and sobbing
+in a curious sort of anguish.
+
+He couldn't help being struck by it. There was more in this than he had
+grasped. Again he forgot himself and his proposal. Again he was
+overwhelmed by the sole desire to help and comfort.
+
+He put his hand on the two hands lying with such an air of being
+forgotten on her lap. "What is it?" he asked gently. "Little dear one,
+tell me. It's clear I'm not dead on to it yet."
+
+"Oh--Columbus--"
+
+She seemed to writhe in her misery.
+
+"Well yes, yes Columbus. We know all about that."
+
+Anna-Rose turned her quivering face to him. "Oh, you haven't seen--you
+don't see--it's only me that's seen--"
+
+"Seen what? What haven't I seen? Ah, don't cry--don't cry like that--"
+
+"Oh, I've lost her--lost her--"
+
+"Lost her? Because she's marrying?"
+
+"Lost her--lost her--" sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come now," remonstrated Mr. Twist. "Come now. That's just flat contrary
+to the facts. You've lost nothing, and you've gained a brother."
+
+"Oh,--lost her--lost her," sobbed Anna-Rose.
+
+"Come, come now," said Mr. Twist helplessly.
+
+"Oh," she sobbed, looking at him out of her piteous eyes, "has nobody
+thought of it but me? Columbus hasn't. I--I know she hasn't from
+what--from what--she said. She's too--too happy to think. But--haven't
+you thought--haven't you seen--that she'll be English now--really
+English--and go away from me to England with him--and I--I can't go to
+England--because I'm still--I'm still--an alien enemy--and so I've lost
+her--lost her--lost my own twin--"
+
+And Anna-Rose dropped her head on to her knees and sobbed in an
+abandonment of agony.
+
+Mr. Twist sat without saying or doing anything at all. He hadn't thought
+of this; nor, he was sure, had Anna-Felicitas. And it was true. Now he
+understood Anna-Rose's face and the despair of it. He sat looking at
+her, overwhelmed by the realization of her misfortune. For a moment he
+was blinded by it, and didn't see what it would mean for him. Then he
+did see. He almost leaped, so sudden was the vision, and so luminous.
+
+"Anna-Rose," he said, his voice trembling, "I want to put my arm round
+you. That's because I love you. And if you'll let me do that I could
+tell you of a way there is out of this for you. But I can't tell you so
+well unless--unless you let me put my arm round you first...."
+
+He waited trembling. She only sobbed. He couldn't even be sure she was
+listening. So he put his arm round her to try. At least she didn't
+resist. So he drew her closer. She didn't resist that either. He
+couldn't even be sure she knew about it. So he put his other arm round
+her too, and though he couldn't be sure, he thought--he hardly dared
+think, but it did seem as if--she nestled.
+
+Happiness, such as in his lonely, loveless life he had never imagined,
+flooded Mr. Twist. He looked down at her face, which was now so close to
+his, and saw that her eyes were shut. Great sobs went on shaking her
+little body, and her tears, now that he wasn't wiping them, were rolling
+down her cheeks unchecked.
+
+He held her closer to him, close to his heart where she belonged, and
+again he had that sensation, that wonderful sensation, of nestling.
+
+"Little Blessed, the way out is so simple," he whispered. "Little
+Blessed, don't you see?"
+
+But whether Anna-Rose saw seemed very doubtful. There was only that
+feeling, as to which he was no doubt mistaken, of nestling to go on. Her
+eyes, anyhow, remained shut, and her body continued to heave with sobs.
+
+He bent his head lower. His voice shook. "It's so, so simple," he
+whispered. "All you've got to do is to marry me."
+
+And as she made an odd little movement in his arms he held her tighter
+and began to talk very fast.
+
+"No, no," he said, "don't answer anything yet. Just listen. Just let me
+tell you first. I want to tell you to start with how terribly I love
+you. But that doesn't mean you've got to love me--you needn't if you
+don't want to--if you can't--if you'd rather not I'm eighteen years
+older than you, and I know what I'm like to look at--no, don't say
+anything yet--just listen quiet first--but if you married me you'd be an
+American right away, don't you see? Just as Anna-Felicitas is going to
+be English. And I always intended going back to England as soon as may
+be, and if you married me what is to prevent your coming too? Coming to
+England? With Anna-Felicitas and her husband. Anna-Rose--little
+Blessed--think of it--all of us together. There won't be any aliens in
+that quartette, I guess, and the day you marry me you'll be done with
+being German for good and all. And don't you get supposing it matters
+about your not loving me, because, you see, I love you so much, I adore
+you so terribly, that anyhow there'll be more than enough love to go
+round, and you needn't ever worry about contributing any if you don't
+feel like it--"
+
+Mr. Twist broke off abruptly. "What say?" he said, for Anna-Rose was
+making definite efforts to speak. She was also making definite and
+unmistakable movements, and this time there could be no doubt about it;
+she was coming closer.
+
+"What say?" said Mr. Twist breathlessly, bending his head.
+
+"But I do," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"Do what?" said Mr. Twist, again breathlessly.
+
+She turned her face up to his. On it was the same look he had lately
+seen on Anna-Felicitas's, shining through in spite of the disfiguration
+of her tears.
+
+"But--_of course_ I do," whispered Anna-Rose, an extraordinary smile,
+an awe-struck sort of smile, coming into her face at the greatness of
+her happiness, at the wonder of it.
+
+"What? Do what?" said Mr. Twist, still more breathlessly.
+
+"I--always did," whispered Anna-Rose.
+
+"_What_ did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able to believe
+it, and yet--and yet--there on her little face, on her little
+transfigured face, shone the same look.
+
+"Oh--_love_ you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close as she could get.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes past four
+that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper obliquely across the
+sign of The Open Arms with the word.
+
+     SHUT
+
+on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr. Twist had
+only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the German inrush a
+few minutes before the hour, because of his being so happy; and when he
+did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the strip on only just in
+time. A car drove up as he came down the ladder.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car, pointing,
+thwarted and astonished, to the sign.
+
+"Shut," said Mr. Twist.
+
+"Shut?"
+
+"Shut."
+
+
+
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