They felt uncomfortably sure that if they were in prison they would write a diary very much on these lines.  For three evenings they had to listen to it, their eyes on Mr. Twist’s door.  Why didn’t he come out and save them?  What happy, what glorious evenings they used to have at the Cosmopolitan, spent in intelligent conversation, in a decent give and take—­not this button-holing business, this being got into a corner and held down; and alas, how little they had appreciated them!  They used to get sleepy and break them off and go to bed.  If only he would come out now and talk to them they would sit up all night.  They wriggled with impatience in their seats beneath the epanchements of the young girl, the strangely and distressingly familiar epanchements.  The diary was published in a magazine, and after the second evening, when Mrs. Bilton on laying it down announced she would go on with it while they were dressing next morning, they got up very early before Mrs. Bilton was awake and crept out and hid it.

But Li Koo found it and restored it.

Li Koo found everything.  He found Mrs. Bilton’s outdoor shoes the third morning, although the twins had hidden them most carefully.  Their idea was that while she, rendered immobile, waited indoors, they would zealously look for them in all the places where they well knew that they weren’t, and perhaps get some conversation with Mr. Twist.

But Li Koo found everything.  He found the twins themselves the fourth morning, when, unable any longer to bear Mrs. Bilton’s voice, they ran into the woods instead of coming in to breakfast.  He seemed to find them at once, to walk unswervingly to their remote and bramble-filled ditch.

In order to save their dignity they said as they scrambled out that they were picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton’s breakfast, though the ditch had nothing in it but stones and thorns.  Li Koo made no comment.  He never did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the opposite reason.  They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather like the liebe Gott,—­he saw everything, knew everything, and said nothing.  In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to pierce his impassivity with genialities.  Li Koo—­again, they silently reflected, like the liebe Gott—­had a different sense of geniality from theirs; he couldn’t apparently smile; they doubted if he even ever wanted to.  Their genialities faltered and froze on their lips.

Besides, they were deeply humiliated by having been found hiding, and were ashamed to find themselves trying anxiously in this manner to conciliate Li Koo.  Their dignity on the walk back to the shanty seemed painfully shrunk.  They ought never to have condescended to do the childish things they had been doing during the last three days.  If they hadn’t been found out it would, of course, have remained a private