ped to stay there
some time, perhaps even for months,--anyhow, time to mend their
stockings in, which were giving way at the toes unexpectedly, seeing how
new they were; but ultimately California was the place they had to go
to. It was only that it was a little upsetting to be whisked out of
Clark at a moment's notice.

"I expect you'll explain everything to us when we're in the train and
have lots of time," Anna-Rose had said to Mr. Twist as the car moved
away from the house and Edith, red-eyed, waved her handkerchief from the
doorstep.

Mrs. Twist had not come down to say good-bye, and they had sent her many
messages.

"I expect I will," Mr. Twist had answered.

But it was not till they were the other side of Chicago that he really
began to be himself again. Up to then--all that first day, and the next
morning in New York where he took them to the bank their L200 was in and
saw that they got a cheque-book, and all the day after that waiting in
the Chicago hotel for the train they were to go on in to California--Mr.
Twist was taciturn.

They left Chicago in the evening; a raw, wintery October evening with
cold rain in the air, and the twins, going early to bed in their
compartment, a place that seemed to them so enchanting that their
spirits couldn't fail to rise, saw no more of him till breakfast next
morning. They then noticed that the cloud had lifted a little; and as
the day went on it lifted still more. They were going to be three days
together in that train, and it would be impossible for Mr. Twist, they
were sure, to go on being taciturn as long as that. It wasn't his
nature. His nature was conversational. And besides, shut up like that in
a train, the sheer getting tired of reading all day would make him want
to talk.

So after lunch, when they were all three on the platform of the
observation car, though there was nothing to observe except limitless
flat stretches of bleak and empty country, the twins suggested that he
should now begin to talk again. They pointed out that his body was
bound to get stiff on that long journey from want of exercise, but that
his mind needn't, and he had better stretch it by conversing agreeably
with them as he used to before the day, which seemed so curiously long
ago, when they landed in America.

"It does indeed seem long ago," agreed Mr. Twist, lighting another
cigarette. "I have difficulty in realizing it isn't a week yet."

And he reflected that the Annas had mana