ult 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 lou