But while up on their sun-lit, eucalyptus-crowned slopes Mr. Twist and his party—­he always thought of them as his party—­were innocently and happily busy full of hopefulness and mutual goodwill, down in the town and in the houses scattered over the lovely country round the town, people were talking.  Everybody knew about the house Teapot Twist was doing up, for the daily paper had told them that Mr. Edward A. Twist had bought the long uninhabited farmhouse in Pepper Lane known as Batt’s, and was converting it into a little ventre-a-terre for his widowed mother—­launching once more into French, as though there were something about Mr. Twist magnetic to that language.  Everybody knew this, and it was perfectly natural for a well-off Easterner to have a little place out West, even if the choice of the little place was whimsical.  But what about the Miss Twinklers?  Who and what were they?  And also, Why?

There were three weeks between the departure of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan and the opening of the inn, and in that time much had been done in the way of conjecture.  The first waves of it flowed out from the Cosmopolitan, and were met almost at once by waves flowing in from the town.  Good-natured curiosity gave place to excited curiosity when the rumour got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to ask Mr. Twist to take his entourage somewhere else.  Was it possible the cute little girls, so well known by sight on Main Street going from shop to shop, were secretly scandalous?  It seemed almost unbelievable, but luckily nothing was really unbelievable.

The manager of the hotel, dropped in upon casually by one guest after the other, and interviewed as well by determined gentlemen from the local press, was not to be drawn.  His reserve was most interesting.  Miss Heap knitted and knitted and was persistently enigmatic.  Her silence was most exciting.  On the other hand, Mrs. Ridding’s attitude was merely one of contempt, dismissing the Twinklers with a heavy gesture.  Why think or trouble about a pair of chits like that?  They had gone; Albert was quiet again; and wasn’t that the gong for dinner?

But doubts as to the private morals of the Twist entourage presently were superseded by much graver and more perturbing doubts.  Nobody knew when exactly this development took place.  Acapulco had been enjoying the first set of doubts.  There was no denying that doubts about somebody else’s morals were not unpleasant.  They did give one, if one examined one’s sensations carefully, a distinct agreeable tickle; they did add the kick to lives which, if they had been virtuous for a very long time like the lives of the Riddings, or virgin for a very long time like the life of Miss Heap, were apt to be flat.  But from the doubts that presently appeared and overshadowed the earlier ones, one got nothing but genuine discomfort and uneasiness.  Nobody knew how or when they started.  Quite suddenly they were there.