The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that astonished Edith, who didn’t know how naturally Junkers make speeches, she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr. Twist’s voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.

Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.

They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and pleasure.  There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur’s, and at home in Pomerania there hadn’t been any at all.  The baths there had been vessels brought into one’s bedroom every night, into which servants next morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water into the bucket from the pump in the backyard.  They put Edith in possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,—­both at the conditions of discomfort and slavery they revealed as prevalent in other countries, and at the fact that they, the Twinklers, should hail from Pomerania.

Pomerania, reflected Edith as she tied up their pigtails with the ribbons handed to her for that purpose, used to be in Germany when she went to school, and no doubt still was.  She became more thoughtful than ever, though she still smiled at them, for how could she help it?  Everyone, Edith was certain, must needs smile at the Twinklers even if they didn’t happen to be one’s own dear brother’s protegees.  And when they came out, very clean and with scrubbed pink ears, from their bath, she not only smiled at them as she tucked them up in bed, but she kissed them good-night.

Edith, like her brother, was born to be a mother,—­one of the satisfactory sort that keeps you warm and doesn’t argue with you.  Germans or no Germans the Twinklers were the cutest little things, thought Edith; and she kissed them, with the same hunger with which, being now thirty-eight, she was beginning to kiss puppies.

“You remind me so of Mr. Twist,” murmured Anna-Felicitas sleepily, as Edith tucked her up and kissed her.

“You do all the sorts of things he does,” murmured Anna-Rose, also sleepily, when it was her turn to be tucked up and kissed; and in spite of a habit now fixed in her of unquestioning acceptance and uncritical faith.  Edith went downstairs to her restless vigil outside the drawing-room door a little surprised.