“We don’t mind that as long as you’re in the other one,” said Anna-Rose.

“Of course,” suggested Anna-Felicitas, “if you were to happen to marry Mrs. Bilton it would make a fairer division.”

Mr. Twist’s spectacles stared enormously at her.

“No, no,” said Anna-Rose quickly.  “Marriage is a sacred thing, and you can’t just marry so as to be more comfortable.”

“I guess if I married Mrs. Bilton I’d be more uncomfortable,” remarked Mr. Twist with considerable dryness.

He seemed however to be quieted by the bare suggestion, for he fixed his hat properly on his head and said, sobriety in his voice and manner, “Come along, then.  We’ll get a taxi and anyway go out and have a look at the rooms.  But I shouldn’t be surprised,” he added, “if before I’ve done with you you’ll have driven me sheer out of my wits.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” said the twins together, with all and more of their usual urbanity.

CHAPTER XXVI

By superhuman exertions and a lavish expenditure of money, the rooms Li Koo was later on to inhabit were ready to be slept in by the time Mrs. Bilton arrived.  They were in an outbuilding at the back of the house, and consisted of a living-room with a cooking-stove in it, a bedroom behind it, and up a narrow and curly staircase a larger room running the whole length and width of the shanty.  This sounds spacious, but it wasn’t.  The amount of length and width was small, and it was only just possible to get three camp-beds into it and a washstand.  The beds nearly touched each other.  Anna-Felicitas thought she and Anna-Rose were going to be regrettably close to Mrs. Bilton in them, and again urged on Mr. Twist’s consideration the question of removing Mrs. Bilton from the room by marriage; but Anna-Rose said it was all perfect, and that there was lots of room, and she was sure Mrs. Bilton, used to the camp life so extensively practised in America, would thoroughly enjoy herself.

They worked without stopping all the rest of the day at making the little place habitable, nailing up some of the curtains intended for the other house, unpacking cushions, and fetching in great bunches of the pale pink and mauve geraniums that scrambled about everywhere in the garden and hiding the worst places in the rooms with them.  Mr. Twist was in Acapulco most of the time, getting together the necessary temporary furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn’t miss him, for they were helped with zeal by the architect, the electrical expert, the garden expert and the chief plumber.