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
imp