“We wrote it.”

“Has she read it?”

“We put it into her hand, and then came away so that she should have an opportunity of quietly considering it.”

“You shouldn’t have left us alone with her like this,” burst out Anna-Rose again, “you shouldn’t really.  It was cruel, it was wrong, leaving us high and dry—­never seeing you—­leaving us to be talked to day and night—­to be read to—­would you like to be read to while you’re undressing by somebody still in all their clothes?  We’ve never been able to open our mouths.  We’ve been taken into the field for our airing and brought in again as if we were newborns, or people in prams, or flocks and herds, or prisoners suspected of wanting to escape.  We haven’t had a minute to ourselves day or night.  There hasn’t been a single exchange of ideas, not a shred of recognition that we’re grown up.  We’ve been followed, watched, talked to—­oh, oh, how awful it has been!  Oh, oh, how awful!  Forced to be dumb for days—­losing our power of speech—­”

“Anna-Rose Twinkler,” interrupted Mr. Twist sternly, “you haven’t lost it.  And you not only haven’t, but that power of yours has increased tenfold during its days of rest.”

He spoke with the exasperation in his voice that they had already heard several times since they landed in America.  Each time it took them aback, for Mr. Twist was firmly fixed in their minds as the kindest and gentlest of creatures, and these sudden kickings of his each time astonished them.

On this occasion, however, only Anna-Rose was astonished.  Anna-Felicitas all along had had an uncomfortable conviction in the depth of her heart that Mr. Twist wouldn’t like what they had done.  He would be upset, she felt, as her reluctant feet followed Anna-Rose in search of him.  He would be, she was afraid very much upset.  And so he was.  He was appalled by what had happened.  Lose Mrs. Bilton?  Lose the very foundation of the party’s respectability?  And how could he find somebody else at the eleventh hour and where and how could the twins and he live, unchaperoned as they would be, till he had?  What a peculiar talent these Annas had for getting themselves and him into impossible situations!  Of course at their age they ought to be safe under the wing of a wise and unusually determined mother.  Well, poor little wretches, they couldn’t help not being under it; but that aunt of theirs ought to have stuck to them—­faced up to her husband, and stuck to them.

“I suppose,” he said angrily, “being you and not being able to see farther than the ends of your noses, you haven’t got any sort of an idea of what you’ve done.”

“We—­”

“She—­”

“And I don’t suppose it’s much use my trying to explain, either.  Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, though I’d be real grateful if you’d give me information on this point—­that maybe you don’t know everything?”

“She—­”

“We—­”