Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at decisions.  He would leave the twins in the waiting room at the station till Mrs. Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find lodgings for them and her.  He himself would get a room in another and less critical hotel, and stay in it till the cottage was habitable.  So would unassailable respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and cover it up.

But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the contretemps that had occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there; nettled and exasperated.  So immensely did he want the twins to be happy, to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything to make it difficult.  And, jerkily, his angry thoughts pounced, as they so often did, on Uncle Arthur.  Fancy kicking two little things like that out into the world, two little breakable things like that, made to be cherished and watched over.  Mr. Twist was pure American in his instinct to regard the female as an object to be taken care of, to be placed securely in a charming setting and kept brightly free from dust.  If Uncle Arthur had had a shred of humanity in him, he angrily reflected, the Annas would have stayed under his roof throughout the war, whatever the feeling was against aliens.  Never would a decent man have chucked them out.

He turned involuntarily from the window and looked at the twins.  Their eyes were fixed, affectionate and anxious, on his face.  With the quick change of mood of those whose chins are weak and whose hearts are warm, a flood of love for them gushed up within him and put out his anger.  After all, if Uncle Arthur had been decent he, Edward A. Twist, never would have met these blessed children.  He would now have been at Clark; leading lightless days; hopelessly involved with his mother.

His loose, unsteady mouth broke into a big smile.  Instantly the two faces opposite cleared into something shining.

“Oh dear,” said Anna-Felicitas with a sigh of relief, “it is refreshing when you leave off being cross.”

“We’re fearfully sorry if we’ve said anything we oughtn’t to have,” said Anna-Rose, “and if you tell us what it is we won’t say it again.”

“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know what it was,” said Mr. Twist, in his usual kind voice.  “I only see the results.  And the results are that the Cosmopolitan is tired of us, and we’ve got to find lodgings.”

“Lodgings?”

“Till we can move into the cottage.  I’m going to put you and Mrs. Bilton in an apartment in Acapulco, and go myself to some hotel.”

The twins stared at him a moment in silence.  Then Anna-Rose said with sudden passion, “You’re not.”

“How’s that?” asked Mr. Twist; but she was prevented answering by the arrival of the taxi at the station.

There followed ten minutes’ tangle and confusion, at the end of which the twins found themselves free of their grips and being piloted into the waiting-room by Mr. Twist.