liberately because of his jaw going on rolling. "To come all that way,
and without being relations--I call that a real compliment, and a
friendship that's worth something. Anybody can come along from Los
Angeles, but it takes a real friend to come from New York," and he eyed
them now with admiration.

The twins for their part eyed him. Not only did his rolling jaws
fascinate them, but the things he was saying seemed to them quaint.

"But we wanted to come," said Anna-Rose, after a pause.

"Of course. Does you credit," said the driver.

The twins thought this over.

The bright station lights shone on their faces, which stood out very
white in the black setting of their best mourning. Before getting to Los
Angeles they had dressed themselves carefully in what Anna-Felicitas
called their favourable-impression-on-arrival garments,--those garments
Aunt Alice had bought for them on their mother's death, expressing the
wave of sympathy in which she found herself momentarily engulfed by
going to a very good and expensive dressmaker; and in the black
perfection of these clothes the twins looked like two well-got-up and
very attractive young crows. These were the clothes they had put on on
leaving the ship, and had been so obviously admired in, to the
uneasiness of Mr. Twist, by the public; it was in these clothes that
they had arrived within range of Mr. Sack's distracted but still
appreciative vision, and in them that they later roused the suspicions
and dislike of Mrs. Twist. It was in these clothes that they were now
about to start what they hoped would be a lasting friendship with the
Delloggs, and remembering they had them on they decided that perhaps it
wasn't only sun and oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but
also the effect on him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats.

This was confirmed by what he said next. "I guess you're old friends,
then," he remarked, after a period of reflective jaw-rolling. "Must be,
to come all that way."

"Well--not exactly," said Anna-Rose, divided between her respect for
truth and her gratification at being thought old enough to be somebody's
old friend.

"You see," explained Anna-Felicitas, who was never divided in her
respect for truth, "we're not particularly old anything."

The driver in his turn thought this over, and finding he had no
observations he wished to make on it he let it pass, and said, "You'll
miss Mr. Dellogg."

"Oh?" said Anna-Rose, pricking up he