They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to have time to become familiar with some one place and people.  Already however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their real objective.  Not Clark at all.  Clark had never been part of their plans.  Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn’t even know it existed.  It was a side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped in between the Sacks and the Delloggs.  True they had hoped 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.”