That Mr. Bilton, who had breakfasted and dined with her steadily for years, should suddenly leave off being punctual freshly astonished her every day, she said.  The clock struck, yet Mr. Bilton continued late.  It was poignant, said Mrs. Bilton, this way of being reminded of her loss.  Each day she would instinctively expect; each day would come the stab of recollection.  The vacancy these non-appearances had made in her life was beyond any words of hers.  In fact she didn’t possess such words, and doubted if the completest dictionary did either.  Everything went just vacant, she said.  No need any more to hurry down in the morning, so as to be behind the coffee pot half a minute before the gong went and Mr. Bilton simultaneously appeared.  No need any more to think of him when ordering meals.  No need any more to eat the dish he had been so fond of and she had found so difficult to digest, Boston baked beans and bacon; yet she found herself ordering it continually after his departure, and choking memorially over the mouthfuls—­“And people in Europe,” cried Mrs Bilton, herself struck as she talked by this extreme devotion, “say that American women are incapable of passion!”

“We’ll write it,” whispered Anna-Rose to Anna-Felicitas.

“Write what?” asked Anna-Felicitas abstractedly, who as usual when Mrs. Bilton narrated her reminiscences was absorbed in listening to them and trying to get some clear image of Mr. Bilton.

But she remembered the next moment, and it was like waking up to the recollection that this is the day you have to have a tooth pulled out.  The idea of not having the tooth any more, of being free from it charmed and thrilled her, but how painful, how alarming was the prospect of pulling it out!

There was one good thing to be said for Mrs. Bilton’s talk, and that was that under its voluminous cover they could themselves whisper occasionally to each other.  Anna-Rose decided that if Mrs. Bilton didn’t notice that they whispered neither probably would she notice if she wrote.  She therefore under Mrs. Bilton’s very nose got a pencil and a piece of paper, and with many pauses and an unsteady hand wrote the following: 

DEAR MRS. BILTON—­For some time past my sister and I have felt that we aren’t suited to you, and if you don’t mind would you mind regarding the engagement as terminated?  We hope you won’t think this abrupt, because it isn’t really, for we seem to have lived ages since you came, and we’ve been thinking this over ripely ever since.  And we hope you won’t take it as anything personal either, because it isn’t really.  It’s only that we feel we’re unsuitable, and we’re sure we’ll go on getting more and more unsuitable.  Nobody can help being unsuitable, and we’re fearfully sorry.  But on the other hand we’re inflexible.—­Yours affectionately,

ANNA-ROSE and ANNA-FELICITAS TWINKLER

With a beating heart she cautiously pushed the letter across the table under cover of the breakfast debris to Anna-Felicitas, who read it with a beating heart and cautiously pushed it back.