ity of
those days, the safe warmth of them, the careless roominess....

"You know if you _could_ manage to feel a little better, Anna-F.," said
Anna-Rose's voice entreatingly in her ear, "it's time we began to get
off this ship."

Anna-Felicitas opened her eyes, and got up all confused and
self-reproachful. Everybody had melted away from that part of the deck
except herself and Anna-Rose. The ship was lying quiet at last alongside
the wharf. She had over-done being ill this time. She was ashamed of
herself for having wandered off so easily and comfortably into the past,
and left poor Christopher alone in the difficult present.

"I'm so sorry," she said smiling apologetically, and giving her hat a
tug of determination symbolic of her being ready for anything,
especially America. "I think I must have gone to sleep. Have you--" she
hesitated and dropped her voice. "Are they--are the Clouston Sacks
visible yet?"

"I thought I saw them," said Anna-Rose, dropping her voice too, and
looking round uneasily over her shoulder. "I'd have come here sooner to
see how you were getting on, but I thought I saw them, and they looked
so like what I think they will look like that I went into our cabin
again for a few minutes. But it wasn't them. They've found the people
they were after, and have gone."

"There's a great crowd waiting," said Mr. Twist, coming up, "and I think
we ought to go and look for your friends. As you don't know what they're
like and they don't know what you're like it may be difficult. Heaven
forbid," he continued, "that I should hurry you, but I have to catch a
train if I'm to get home to-night, and I don't intend to catch it until
I've handed you over safely to the Sacks."

"Those Sacks--" began Anna-Rose; and then she finished irrelevantly by
remarking that it was the details of life that were discouraging,--from
which Anna Felicitas knew that Christopher's heart was once more in her
boots.

"Come along," said Mr. Twist, urging them to wards the gangway.
"Anything you've got to say about life I shall be glad to hear, but at
some time when we're more at leisure."

It had never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks
would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning
that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their
plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack
lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they
knew