“First visit to the States?” he inquired, when with some reluctance, for presently it appeared to the twins that the clam broth and the toffee didn’t seem to be liking each other now they had got together inside them, and also for fear of hurting his feelings if they refused, they took some more.

They nodded and smiled stickily.

“English, I guess.”

They hesitated, covering their hesitation with the earnest working of their toffee-filled jaws.

Then Anna-Felicitas, her cheek distorted, gave him the answer she had given the captain of the St. Luke, and said, “Practically.”

“Ah,” said the young man, turning this over in his mind, the r in “practically” having rolled as no English or American r ever did; but the conductor appearing in the doorway he continued on his way.

“It’s evident,” said Anna-Rose, speaking with difficulty, for her jaws clave together because of the toffee, “that we’re going to be asked that the first thing every time a fresh person speaks to us.  We’d better decide what we’re going to say, and practise saying it without hesitation.”

Anna-Felicitas made a sound of assent.

“That answer of yours about practically,” continued Anna-Rose, swallowing her bit of toffee by accident and for one moment afraid it would stick somewhere and make her die, “causes first surprise, then reflection, and then suspicion.”

“But,” said Anna-Felicitas after a pause during which she had disentangled her jaws, “it’s going to be difficult to say one is German when America seems to be so very neutral and doesn’t like Germans.  Besides, it’s only in the eye of the law that we are.  In God’s eye we’re not, and that’s the principal eye after all.”

Her own eyes grew thoughtful.  “I don’t believe,” she said, “that parents when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they’re going to place their children in.”

“I don’t believe they think about it at all,” said Anna-Rose.  “I mean,” she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the perfect love and forethought of their mother, “fathers don’t.”

They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam broth and the toffee.  Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the Clouston Sacks.  Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and clever.  Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn’t an idea what to do with.  The Clouston Sacks, now—­Aunt Alice had said, “You must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;” and when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist’s in her desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what gentlewomen were instinctively.