This lady, the widow of Bruce D. Bilton of Chicago of whom of course, she said, the Miss Twinklers had heard—­the Miss Twinklers blushed and felt ashamed of themselves because they hadn’t, and indistinctly murmured something about having heard of Cornelius K. Vanderbilt, though, and wouldn’t he do—­had a great deal of very beautiful snow-white hair, while at the same time she was only middle-aged.  She firmly announced, when she perceived Mr. Twist’s spectacles dwelling on her hair, that she wasn’t yet forty, and her one fear was that she mightn’t be middle-aged enough.  The advertisement had particularly mentioned middle-aged; and though she was aware that her brains and fingers and feet couldn’t possibly be described as coming under that heading, she said her hair, on the other hand, might well be regarded as having overshot the mark.  But its turning white had nothing to do with age.  It had done that when Mr. Bilton passed over.  No hair could have stood such grief as hers when Mr. Bilton took that final step.  She had been considering the question of age, she informed Mr. Twist, from every aspect before coming to the interview, for she didn’t want to make a mistake herself nor allow the Miss Twinklers to make a mistake; and she had arrived at the conclusion that what with her hair being too old and the rest of her being too young, taken altogether she struck an absolute average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle—­it was a real sacrifice—­and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers.  She was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.  She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think.  She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.  Thus she attained poise,—­she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her.  Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans.  Especially if they were war ones.

Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long time to engage her.  There never seemed to be a pause in which one could do it.  It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady, that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping.  It seemed years.  The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton’s spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have dexterously slipped a definite offer.  She had to be interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after lunch, and they were dying for some food.