And he reflected that the Annas had managed to produce pretty serious havoc in America considering they had only been in it five days.  He and his mother permanently estranged; Edith left alone at Clark sitting there in the ruins of her loving preparations for his return, with nothing at all that he could see to look forward to and live for except the hourly fulfilment of what she regarded as duty; every plan upset; the lives, indeed, of his mother and of his sister and of himself completely altered,—­it was a pretty big bag in the time, he thought, flinging the match back towards Chicago.

Mr. Twist felt sore.  He felt like somebody who had had a bad tumble, and is sore and a little dizzy; but he recognized that these great ruptures cannot take place without aches and doubts.  He ached, and he doubted and he also knew through his aches and doubts that he was free at last from what of late years he had so grievously writhed under—­the shame of pretence.  And the immediate cause of his being set free was, precisely, the Annas.

It had been a violent, a painful setting free, but it had happened; and who knew if, without their sudden appearance at Clark and the immediate effect they produced on his mother, he wouldn’t have lapsed after all, in spite of the feelings and determinations he had brought back with him from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort?  He might have trailed on like that for years—­Mr. Twist didn’t like the picture of his own weakness, but he was determined to look at himself as he was—­trailed along languidly when he was at home, living another life when he was away, getting what he absolutely must have, the irreducible minimum of personal freedom necessary to sanity, by means of small and shabby deceits.  My goodness, how he hated deceits, how tired he was of the littleness of them!

He turned his head and looked at the profiles of the Annas sitting alongside him.  His heart suddenly grew warm within him.  They had on the blue caps again which made them look so bald and cherubic, and their eyes were fixed on the straight narrowing lines of rails that went back and back to a point in the distance.  The dear little things; the dear, dear little things,—­so straightforward, so blessedly straight and simple, thought Mr. Twist.  Fancy his mother losing a chance like this.  Fancy anybody, thought the affectionate and kind man, missing an opportunity of helping such unfortunately placed children.

The twins felt he was looking at them, and together they turned and looked at him.  When they saw his expression they knew the cloud had lifted still more, and their faces broke into broad smiles of welcome.

“It’s pleasant to see you back again,” said Anna-Felicitas heartily, who was next to him.

“We’ve missed you very much,” said Anna-Rose.