He cogitated much in his cabin—­one with a private bathroom, for Mr. Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample means—­on these two defenceless children.  If they had been Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons plainly in need of relief!  As it was, America would be likely, he feared, to consider that either Germany or England ought to be looking after them, and might conceivably remain chilly and uninterested.

Uncle Arthur, it appeared, hadn’t many friends in America, and those he had didn’t like him.  At least that was what Mr. Twist gathered from the conversation of Anna-Rose.  She didn’t positively assert but she very candidly conjectured, and Mr. Twist could quite believe that Uncle Arthur’s friends wouldn’t be warm ones.  Their hospitality he could imagine fleeting and perfunctory.  They would pass on the Twinklers as soon as possible, as indeed why should they not?  And presently some dreary small job would be found for them, some job as pupil-teacher or girls’ companion in the sterile atmosphere of a young ladies’ school.

As much as a man of habitually generous impulses could dislike, Mr. Twist disliked Uncle Arthur.  Patriotism was nothing at any time to Mr. Twist compared to humanity, and Uncle Arthur’s particular kind of patriotism was very odious to him.  To wreak it on these two poor aliens!  Mr. Twist had no words for it.  They had been cut adrift at a tender age, an age Mr. Twist, as a disciplined American son and brother, was unable to regard unmoved, and packed off over the sea indifferent to what might happen to them so long as Uncle Arthur knew nothing about it.  Having flung these kittens into the water to swim or drown, so long as he didn’t have to listen to their cries while they were doing it, Uncle Arthur apparently cared nothing.

All Mr. Twist’s chivalry, of which there was a great deal, rose up within him at the thought of Uncle Arthur.  He wanted to go and ask him what he meant by such conduct, and earnestly inquire of him whether he called himself a man; but as he knew he couldn’t do this, being on a ship heading for New York, he made up for it by taking as much care of the ejected nieces as if he were an uncle himself,—­but the right sort of uncle, the sort you have in America, the sort that regards you as a sacred and precious charge.

In his mind’s eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying, red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers.  He pictured him under-sized and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields of England to his trembling household.  He was quite disconcerted one day to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and not fat at all, except in one place.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Twist, hastily rearranging his mind’s-eye view of Uncle Arthur.

“He goes fat suddenly,” said Anna-Felicitas, waking from one of her dozes.  “As though he had swallowed a bomb, and it had stuck when it got to his waistcoat.”