“Then,” observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose repeated Aunt Alice’s admonishment and at the same time provided Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, “seeing that we’re supposed to be gentlewomen, all we’ve got to do is to behave according to our instincts.”

But Anna-Rose wasn’t sure.  She doubted their instincts, especially Anna-Felicitas’s.  She thought her own were better, being older, but even hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions according to the other person’s behaviour.  Her instinct, for instance, when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit him.  Was that tact?  Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman.  She had heard that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant, teacher, visitor and relation—­except her mother—­in her Prussian home.  Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman, for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to drip tact.

“Mr. Dodson,” Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, “says that you can’t be too tactful in America.  He’s been there.”

“Sensitive—­sensitive,” said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup.  “Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they are.  A great country.  Everything on a vast scale, including sensitiveness.  It has to be met vastly.  But quite easy really—–­” He raised a pedagogic finger at the twins.  “You merely add half as much again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of their sensitiveness, and it’s all right.”

“Be sure you remember that now,” said Aunt Alice, pleased.

As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson’s recipe for social success by heart, became more silent.  On the ship, when the meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her cabin to hide from them.  That couldn’t have been tact.  But it was instinct.  And she was a gentlewoman.  Now once again dread took possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in the train and go on and on.  She said nothing, of course, of her dread to Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person’s morale, but she did very much wish that principles weren’t such important things and one needn’t have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr. Twist.

“Now remember what Aunt Alice said,” she whispered severely to Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.

On the platform, they both thought, would be the Sacks,—­certainly one Sack, and they had feverishly made themselves tidy and composed their faces into pleasant smiles preparatory to the meeting.  But once again no Sacks were there.  The platform emptied itself just as the great hall of the landing-stage had emptied itself, and nobody came to claim the Twinklers.