“Quarrelled,” said Anna-Felicitas, nodding

“We didn’t think so at the time,” said Anna-Rose.

“We just felt there was an atmosphere of strain about Clark,” said Anna-Felicitas.

“But talking it over privately, we concluded that was what had happened.”

Mr. Twist was so much surprised that for a moment he could only say “Oh.”  Then he said, “And you’re terribly shocked, I suppose.”

“Oh no,” they said airily and together.

“No?”

“You see—­” began Anna-Felicitas.

“You see—­” began Anna-Rose.

“You see, as a general principle,” said Anna-Felicitas, “it’s reprehensible to quarrel with one’s mother.”

“But we’ve not been able to escape observing—­” said Anna-Rose.

“In the course of our brief and inglorious career,” put in Anna-Felicitas.

“—­that there are mothers and mothers,” said Anna-Rose.

“Yes,” said Mr. Twist; and as they didn’t go on he presently added, “Yes?”

“Oh, that’s all,” said the twins, once more airily and together.

CHAPTER XIX

After this brief eclaircissement the rest of the journey was happy.  Indeed, it is doubtful if any one can journey to California and not be happy.

Mr. Twist had never been further west than Chicago and break up or no break up of his home he couldn’t but have a pleasant feeling of adventure.  Every now and then the realization of this feeling gave his conscience a twinge, and wrung out of it a rebuke.  He was having the best of it in this business; he was the party in the quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who had never heard of him.  Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing.  At Clark there would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother’s side, naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence.  He was gone, and she could say and do nothing more to him.  In a quarrel, thought Mr. Twist, the morning he pushed up his blinds and saw the desert at sunrise, an exquisite soft thing just being touched into faint colours,—­in a quarrel the one who goes has quite unfairly the best of it.  Beautiful new places come and laugh at him, people who don’t know him and haven’t yet judged and condemned him are ready to be friendly.  He must, of course, go far enough; not stay near at hand in some familiar place and be so lonely that he ends by being remorseful.  Well, he was going far enough.  Thanks to the Annas he was going about as far as he could go.  Certainly he was having the best of it in being the one in the quarrel who went; and he was shocked to find himself cynically thinking, on top of that, that one should always, then, take care to be the one who did go.