It was in the act of passing through the hall on its way upstairs, followed by a boy carrying a canary in a cage.  Even without the boy and the canary it was a conspicuous object.  The lawyer asked his friend who the cute little girls were, and was interested to hear he was beholding Mr. Edward A. Twist’s entourage.  His friend told him that opinion in the hotel was divided about the precise nature of this entourage and its relationship to Mr. Twist, but it finally came to be generally supposed that the Miss Twinklers had been placed in his charge by parents living far away in order that he might safely see them put to one of the young ladies’ finishing schools in that agreeable district.  The house Mr. Twist was taking was not connected in the Cosmopolitan mind with the Twinklers.  Houses were always being taken in that paradise by wealthy persons from unkinder climates.  He would live in it three months in the year, thought the Cosmopolitan, bring his mother, and keep in this way an occasional eye on his charges.  The hotel guests regarded the Twinklers at this stage with nothing but benevolence and goodwill, for they had up to then only been seen and not heard; and as one of their leading characteristics was a desire to explain, especially if anybody looked a little surprised, which everybody usually did quite early in conversation with them, this was at that moment, the delicate moment before Mrs. Bilton’s arrival, fortunate.

The lawyer, then, who appreciated the young and pretty as much as other honest men, began the interview with Mr. Twist by warmly congratulating him, when he heard what he had come for, on his taste in wards.

Mr. Twist received this a little coldly, and said it was not a matter of taste but of necessity.  The Miss Twinklers were orphans, and he had been asked—­he cleared his throat—­asked by their relatives, by, in fact, their uncle in England, to take over their guardianship and see that they came to no harm.

The lawyer nodded intelligently, and said that if a man had wards at all they might as well be cute wards.

Mr. Twist didn’t like this either, and said briefly that he had had no choice.

The lawyer said, “Quite so.  Quite so,” and continued to look at him intelligently.

Mr. Twist then explained that he had come to him rather than, as might have been more natural, to the solicitor who had arranged the purchase of the cottage because this was a private and personal matter—­

“Quite so.  Quite so,” interrupted the lawyer, with really almost too much intelligence.

Mr. Twist felt the excess of it, and tried to look dignified, but the lawyer was bent on being friendly and frank.  Friendliness was natural to him when visited for the first time by a new client, and that there should be frankness between lawyers and clients he considered essential.  If, he held, the client wouldn’t be frank, then the lawyer must be; and he must go on being so till the client came out of his reserve.