And Anna-Rose had looked at Aunt Alice, though only in her mind’s eye, for at that moment the twins were three miles away in a wood picnicking, and Aunt Alice was at home recovering from a tete-a-tete luncheon with Uncle Arthur who hadn’t said a word from start to finish; and though she didn’t like most of his words when he did say them, she liked them still less when he didn’t say them, for then she imagined them, and what she imagined was simply awful,—­Anna-Rose had, I say, looked at Aunt Alice in her mind’s eye, and knew that this too was true.

Mr. Twist reappeared, followed by the brisk steward with a tray of tea and cake, and their corner became very like a cheerful picnic.

Mr. Twist was most pleasant and polite.  Anna-Rose had told him quite soon after he began to talk to her, in order, as she said, to clear his mind of misconceptions, that she and Anna-Felicitas, though their clothes at that moment, and the pigtails in which their flair was done, might be misleading, were no longer children, but quite the contrary; that they were, in fact, persons who were almost ripe for going to dances, and certainly in another year would be perfectly ripe for dances supposing there were any.

Mr. Twist listened attentively, and begged her to tell him any other little thing she might think of as useful to him in his capacity of friend and attendant,—­both of which, said Mr. Twist, he intended to be till he had seen them safely landed in New York.

“I hope you don’t think we need anybody,” said Anna-Rose.  “We shall like being friends with you very much, but only on terms of perfect equality.”

“Sure,” said Mr. Twist, who was an American.

“I thought—­”

She hesitated a moment.

“You thought?” encouraged Mr. Twist politely.

“I thought at Liverpool you looked as if you were being sorry for us.”

“Sorry?” said Mr. Twist, in the tone of one who repudiates.

“Yes.  When we were waving good-bye to—­to our friends.”

“Sorry?” repeated Mr. Twist.

“Which was great waste of your time.”

“I should think so,” said Mr. Twist with heartiness.

Anna-Rose, having cleared the ground of misunderstandings, an activity in which at all times she took pleasure, accepted Mr. Twist’s attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, which was, as he said, one of mutual friendliness and esteem.  As he was never sea-sick, he could move about and do things for them that might be difficult to do for themselves; as he knew a great deal about stewardesses, he could tell them what sort of tip theirs expected; as he was American, he could illuminate them about that country.  He had been doing Red Cross work with an American ambulance in France for ten months, and was going home for a short visit to see how his mother, who, Anna-Rose gathered, was ancient and widowed, was getting on.  His mother, he said, lived in seclusion in a New England village with his sister, who had not married.