is
percentages; sit still, in fact, and grow richer. But so much had he
changed since his adolescence that he preferred to stick to his
engineering and his office in New York rather than go home and be happy
with his mother.

She could not understand this behaviour in Edward. She understood his
behaviour still less when he went off to France in 1915, himself
equipping and giving the ambulance he drove.

For a year his absence, and the dangers he was running, divided Mrs.
Twist's sorrows into halves. Her position as a widow with an only son in
danger touched the imagination of Clark, and she was never so much
called upon as during this year. Now Edward was coming home for a rest,
and there was a subdued flutter about her, rather like the stirring of
the funeral plumes on the heads of hearse-horses.

While he was crossing the Atlantic and Red-Crossing the Twinklers--this
was one of Anna-Felicitas's epigrams and she tried Anna-Rose's patience
severely by asking her not once but several times whether she didn't
think it funny, whereas Anna-Rose disliked it from the first because of
the suggestion it contained that Mr. Twist regarded what he did for them
as works of mercy--while Mr. Twist was engaged in these activities, at
his home in Clark all the things Edith could think of that he used most
to like to eat were being got ready. There was an immense slaughtering
of chickens, and baking and churning. Edith, who being now the head
servant of many instead of three was more than double as hard-worked as
she used to be, was on her feet those last few days without stopping.
And she had to go and meet Edward in New York as well. Whether Mrs.
Twist feared that he might not come straight home or whether it was what
she said it was, that dear Edward must not be the only person on the
boat who had no one to meet him, is not certain; what is certain is that
when it came to the point, and Edith had to start, Mrs. Twist had
difficulty in maintaining her usual brightness.

Edith would be a whole day away, and perhaps a night if the _St. Luke_
got in late, for Clark is five hours' train journey from New York, and
during all that time Mrs. Twist would be uncared for. She thought Edith
surprisingly thoughtless to be so much pleased to go. She examined her
flat and sinewy form with disapproval when she came in hatted and booted
to say good-bye. No wonder nobody married Edith. And the money wouldn't
help her either now--she was too old. S