Mr. Twist felt worried, and pulled at his ear.  And why was there only one guest?  It was twenty minutes to five; and this time yesterday the road had been choked with cars.  He felt very much worried.  With every minute this absence of guests grew more and more remarkable.  Perhaps he had better, this beings the opening day, go in and welcome the solitary one there was.  Perhaps it would be wise to elaborate the idea of the inn for his edification, so that he could hand on what he had heard to those others who so unaccountably hadn’t come.

He got up and went into the other room; and just as Anna-Felicitas was reappearing with the teapot followed by Anna-Rose with a tray of cakes, Mr. Ridding, who was sitting up expectantly and giving his tie a little pat of adjustment, perceived bearing down upon him that fellow Teapot Twist.

This was a blow.  He hadn’t run risks and walked in the afternoon heat to sit and talk to Twist.  Mr. Ridding was a friendly and amiable old man, and at any other time would have talked to him with pleasure; but he had made up his mind for the Twinklers as one makes up one’s mind for a certain dish and is ravaged by strange fury if it isn’t produced.  Besides, hang it all, he was going to pay five dollars for his tea, and for that sum he ought to least to have it under the conditions he preferred.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Twist,” he nevertheless said as Mr. Twist introduced himself, his eyes, however, roving over the ministering Annas,—­a roving Mr. Twist noticed with fresh misgivings.

It made him sit down firmly at the table and say, “If you don’t mind, Mr.—­”

“Ridding is my name.”

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Ridding, I’d like to explain our objects to you.”

But he couldn’t help wondering what he would do if there were several tables with roving-eyed guests at them, it being clear that there wouldn’t be enough of him in such a case to go round.

Mr. Ridding, for his part, couldn’t help wondering why the devil Teapot Twist sat down unasked at his table.  Five dollars.  Come now.  For that a man had a right to a table to himself.

But anyhow the Annas wouldn’t have stayed talking for at that moment a car stopped in the lane and quite a lot of footsteps were heard coming up the neatly sanded path.  Mr. Ridding pricked up his ears, for from the things he had heard being said all the evening before and all that morning in Acapulco, besides most of the night from the lips of that strange old lady with whom by some dreadful mistake he was obliged to sleep, he hadn’t supposed there would be exactly a rush.

Four young men came in.  Mr. Ridding didn’t know them.  No class, he thought, looking them over; and was seized with a feeling of sulky vexation suitable to twenty when he saw with what enthusiasm the Twinklers flew to meet them.  They behaved, thought Mr. Ridding crossly, as if they were the oldest and dearest friends.