. It was awful. Before that strange man. A person they
hardly knew. Other strangers passing. Exposing their feelings. Showing
their innermost miserable places.

They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they
weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,--odd ones
left over from last time, which was years and years ago,--"But _really_
years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,--"the
years one falls down on garden paths in, and cuts one's knees, and
one's mother--one's mother--c-c-c-comforts one--"

"See here," said Mr. Twist, interrupting these incoherences, and pulling
out a beautiful clean pocket-handkerchief which hadn't even been
unfolded yet, "you've got to tell me all about it right away."

And he shook out the handkerchief, and with the first-aid promptness his
Red Cross experience had taught him, started competently wiping up their
faces.

CHAPTER VII

There was that about Mr. Twist which, once one had begun them,
encouraged confidences; something kind about his eyes, something not too
determined about his chin. He bore no resemblance to those pictures of
efficient Americans in advertisements with which Europe is
familiar,--eagle-faced gentlemen with intimidatingly firm mouths and
chins, wiry creatures, physically and mentally perfect, offering in
capital letters to make you Just Like Them. Mr. Twist was the reverse of
eagle-faced. He was also the reverse of good-looking; that is, he would
have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later
to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled
thing,--which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping
their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they
discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being
friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged
to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning,
after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping,
said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship)--he would
have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.

"But you have to _have_ a face," said Anna-Felicitas, who didn't think
it much mattered what sort it was so long as you could eat with it and
see out of it.

"And as long as one is as kind as Mr. Twist," said Anna-Rose; but
secretly she thought that having been begun so successfully at his