e in prison they would
write a diary very much on these lines. For three evenings they had to
listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist's door. Why didn't he come out and
save them? What happy, what glorious evenings they used to have at the
Cosmopolitan, spent in intelligent conversation, in a decent give and
take--not this button-holing business, this being got into a corner and
held down; and alas, how little they had appreciated them! They used to
get sleepy and break them off and go to bed. If only he would come out
now and talk to them they would sit up all night. They wriggled with
impatience in their seats beneath the _epanchements_ of the young girl,
the strangely and distressingly familiar _epanchements_. The diary was
published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs. Bilton
on laying it down announced she would go on with it while they were
dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs. Bilton was
awake and crept out and hid it.

But Li Koo found it and restored it.

Li Koo found everything. He found Mrs. Bilton's outdoor shoes the third
morning, although the twins had hidden them most carefully. Their idea
was that while she, rendered immobile, waited indoors, they would
zealously look for them in all the places where they well knew that they
weren't, and perhaps get some conversation with Mr. Twist.

But Li Koo found everything. He found the twins themselves the fourth
morning, when, unable any longer to bear Mrs. Bilton's voice, they ran
into the woods instead of coming in to breakfast. He seemed to find them
at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled ditch.

In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out that they
were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though the ditch had
nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no comment. He never
did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made
the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the
opposite reason. They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather
like the _liebe Gott_,--he saw everything, knew everything, and said
nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to
pierce his impassivity with genialities. Li Koo--again, they silently
reflected, like the _liebe Gott_--had a different sense of geniality
from theirs; he couldn't apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever
wanted to. Their genialities faltered and fro