“What?” cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her.  “Gag her?” And pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried again, “Gag Columbus?”

“Oh that’s it, is it,” said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with disappointment, “Well, if it’s that way I can tell you—­”

He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely as if such things as tours of absence didn’t exist, or a distracted household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.

Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality.  Still smug, she was now of a glorified smugness.  If one could imagine a lily turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn’t be far out, thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler.  The god would be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn’t be worrying much about anything in the past or in the future, and he’d just be coming along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a sober and abstracted radiance.

“Not much kidnapping there, I guess,” said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his thumb.  “And you take it from me, Anna I.,” he added quickly, leaning over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found himself faced by both twins together, “that when next your imagination gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your constitution going pale.”

And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into the yard.

Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment.  The only living thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home.  The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave the twins much unacknowledged relief.  It was, they thought secretly, quite a good plan to have one’s pets inside each other,—­it kept them so quiet.  She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.

Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.

He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it kept him longer away from the luncheon-table.  The cat took no notice of him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn’t been long at The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.