“Of course we won’t.”

“I meant, nobody is to know what it’s really going to be.  They’re to think it’s just a pied-a-terre. It would most ruin my advertisement scheme if they—­”

“But of course we won’t.  Have we ever?” the twins would answer, looking very smug and sure of themselves.

“No.  Not yet.  But—­”

And the hustled man would plunge again into technicalities with whichever expert was at that moment with him, leaving the twins, as he needs must, to God and their own discretion.

Discretion, he already amply knew, was not a Twinkler characteristic.  But the week passed, Mrs. Bilton’s arrival grew near, and nothing had happened.  It was plain to the watchful Mr. Twist, from the pleasant looks of the other guests when the twins went in and out of the restaurant to meals, that nothing had happened.  His heart grew lighter.  On the last afternoon, when Mrs. Bilton was actually due next day, his heart was quite light, and he saw them leave him to go back and rest at the hotel, because they were tired by the accumulated standing about of the week, altogether unconcernedly.

The attitude of the Cosmopolitan guests towards the twins was, indeed, one of complete benevolence.  They didn’t even mind the canary.  Who would not be indulgent towards two such sweet little girls and their pet bird, even if it did sing all day and most of the night without stopping?  The Twinkler girls were like two little bits of snapped-off sunlight, or bits of white blossom blowing in and out of the hotel in their shining youth and it was impossible not to regard them indulgently.  But if the guests were indulgent, they were also inquisitive.  Everybody knew who Mr. Twist was; who, however, were the Twinklers?  Were they relations of his? Protegees?  Charges?

The social column of the Acapulco daily paper, from which information as to new arrivals was usually got, had, as we know, in its embarrassment at being ignorant to take refuge in French, because French may so easily be supposed to mean something.  The paper had little knowledge of, but much confidence in, French. Entourage had seemed to it as good a word as any other, as indeed did clientele.  It had hesitated between the two, but finally chose entourage because there happened to be no accent in its stock of type.  The Cosmopolitan guests were amused at the word, and though inquisitive were altogether amiable; and, until the last afternoon, only the manager didn’t like the Twinklers.  He didn’t like them because of the canary.  His sympathies had been alienated from the Miss Twinklers the moment he heard through the chambermaid that they had tied the heavy canary cage on to the hanging electric light in their bedroom.  He said nothing, of course.  One doesn’t say anything if one is an hotel manager, until the unique and final moment when one says everything.