lark 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, be