ir."

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 diffic