"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