“Has he fled his country?” inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the Twinkler background.

“I suppose one might call it that,” said Anna-Rose after a pause of consideration, tying her shoe-laces.

“Do you mean to say,” said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves now on the very edge of a scandal, “he was forced to fly from Westphalia?”

“I suppose one might put it that way,” said Anna-Rose, again considering.

She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining calm.  “Except that it wasn’t from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia,” she said.

“Prussia?” cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on their elbows.

“That’s where our father lived,” said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her surprise at their surprise.  “So of course, as he lived there, when he died he did that there too.”

“Prussia?” cried the ladies again.  “He died?  You said your father fled his country.”

“No. You said that,” said Anna-Rose.

She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door.  She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might not be able to be a lady.

“After all, it is what you do when you go to heaven,” she said as she opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the last word.

“But Prussia?” they still cried, still button-holing her, as it were, from afar.  “Then—­you were born in Prussia?”

“Yes, but we couldn’t help it,” said Anna-Rose; and shut the door quickly behind her.

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Twist, who was never able to be anything but kind—­he had the most amiable mouth and chin in the world, and his name was Edward—­took a lively interest in the plans and probable future of the two Annas.  He also took a lively and solicitous interest in their present, and a profoundly sympathetic one in their past.  In fact, their three tenses interested him to the exclusion of almost everything else, and his chief desire was to see them safely through any shoals there might be waiting them in the shape of Uncle Arthur’s friends—­he distrusted Uncle Arthur, and therefore his friends—­into the safe and pleasant waters of real American hospitality and kindliness.

He knew that such waters abounded for those who could find the tap.  He reminded himself of that which he had been taught since childhood, of the mighty heart of America which, once touched, would take persons like the twins right in and never let them out again.  But it had to be touched.  It had, as it were, to be put in connection with them by means of advertisement.  America, he reflected, was a little deaf.  She had to be shouted to.  But once she heard, once she thoroughly grasped ...