irst
Mr. Twist started on his Masterpieces. She was used to hearing them read
by her mother in the adorable husky voice that sent such thrills through
one, but she listened with the courtesy and final gratitude due to the
efforts to entertain her of so amiable a friend, and only the roundness
of her eyes showed her astonishment at this waltzing round, as it
appeared to her, of Mr. Twist with the Stern Daughter of the Voice of
God. He also read "Lycidas" to her, that same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur
took for a Derby winner, and only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to
refrain from stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point
of having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on deck,
which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it was because
her deck-chair was so very much harder than she was.

Anna-Felicitas, who considered that, if these things were short-cuts to
anywhere, seeing she knew them all by heart she must have long ago got
there, snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few moments she would drop
off really to sleep, and then her mouth would fall open, which worried
Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her to look even for a moment less
beautiful than she knew she was, so that she fidgeted more than ever,
unable, pinned down by politeness and the culture being administered, to
make her shut her mouth and look beautiful again by taking and shaking
her. Also Anna-Felicitas had a trick of waking up suddenly and
forgetting to be polite, as one does when first one wakes up and hasn't
had time to remember one is a lady. "To-morrow to fresh woods and
pastures noo," Mr. Twist would finish, for instance, with a sort of gulp
of satisfaction at having swallowed yet another solid slab of culture;
and Anna-Felicitas, returning suddenly to consciousness, would murmur,
with her eyes still shut and her head lolling limply, things like,
"After all, it _does_ rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still
doesn't like it."

Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild inquiry,
and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately explain what
Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from anything resembling what
she had said that Mr. Twist looked more mildly inquiring than ever.

Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being too sleepy or
too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose got angry, and would
get