The servant stared uncertainly at them.  His mistress had only been gone a few hours, and the flat was still warm with her presence and authority.  She wouldn’t, he well knew, have permitted co-respondents to be about the place if she had been there, but on the other hand she wasn’t there.  Mr. Sack was in sole possession now.  Nobody knew where Mrs. Sack was.  Letters and telegrams lay on the table for her unopened, among them Mr. Twist’s announcing the arrival of the Twinklers.  In his heart the servant sided with Mr. Sack, but only in his heart, for the servant’s wife was the cook, and she, as she frequently explained, was all for strict monogamy.  He stared therefore uncertainly at the twins, his brain revolving round their colossal impudence in coming there before Mrs. Sack’s rooms had so much as had time to get, as it were, cold.

“We want to see Mr. Clouston Sack,” began Anna-Rose in her clear little voice; and no sooner did she begin to speak than a door was pulled open and the gentleman himself appeared.

“I heard a noise of arrival—­” he said, stopping suddenly when he saw them.  “I heard a noise of arrival, and a woman’s voice—­”

“It’s us,” said Anna-Rose, her face covering itself with the bright conciliatory smiles of the arriving guest.  “Are you Mr. Clouston Sack?”

She went up to him and held out her hand.  They both went up to him and held out their hands.

“We’re the Twinklers,” said Anna-Rose.

“We’ve come,” said Anna-Felicitas, in case he shouldn’t have noticed it.

Mr. Sack let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand.  He looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly.  He had the manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped.  There was a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges.  His hair lay on his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the rim of his collar.

“The Twinklers,” he repeated.  “The Twinklers.  Do I remember, I wonder?”

“There hasn’t been much time to forget,” said Anna-Felicitas.  “It’s less than two months since there were all those letters.”

“Letters?” echoed Mr. Sack.  “Letters?”

“So now we’ve got here,” said Anna-Rose, the more brightly that she was unnerved.

“Yes.  We’ve come,” said Anna-Felicitas, also with feverish brightness.

Bewildered, Mr. Sack, who felt that he had had enough to bear the last few hours, stood staring at them.  Then he caught sight of the lift-boy, lingering and he further saw the expression on his servant’s face Even to his bewilderment it was clear what he was thinking.

Mr. Sack turned round quickly and led the way into the dining-room. 
“Come in, come in,” he said distractedly.

They went in.  He shut the door.  The lift-boy and the servant lingered a moment making faces at each other; then the lift-boy dropped away in his lift, and the servant retired to the kitchen.  “I’m darned,” was all he could articulate.  “I’m darned.”