, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist
knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet
their young charges, stay that night in New York, and continue on to
Boston next day. The twins were so certain they would be met that Mr.
Twist was certain too. He had concluded, with a growingly empty feeling
in his heart as the time of separation drew near, that all that now
remained for him to do on behalf of the Twinklers was to hand them over
to the Sacks. And then leave them. And then go home to that mother he
loved but had for some time known he didn't like,--go home a bereft and
lonely man.

But out of the crowd on the pier, any of whom might have been Sacks for
all the Twinklers, eagerly scanning faces, knew, nobody in fact seemed
to be Sacks. At least, nobody came forward and said, "Are you the
Twinklers?" Other people fell into each other's arms; the air was full
of the noise of kissing, the loud legitimate kissing of relations; but
nobody took any notice of the twins. For a long while they stood
waiting. Their luggage was examined, and Mr. Twist's luggage--only his
was baggage--was examined, and the kissing and exclaiming crowd swayed
hither and thither, and broke up into groups, and was shot through by
interviewers, and got packed off into taxis, and grew thinner and
thinner, and at last was so thin that the concealment of the Sacks in it
was no longer possible.

There were no Sacks.

To the last few groups of people left in the great glass-roofed hall
piled with bags of wool and sulphur, Mr. Twist went up boldly and asked
if they were intending to meet some young ladies called Twinkler. His
tone, owing to perturbation, was rather more than one of inquiry, it
almost sounded menacing; and the answers he got were cold. He wandered
about uncertainly from group to group, his soft felt hat on the back of
his head and his brow getting more and more puckered; and Anna-Rose,
anxiously looking on from afar, became impatient at last of these
refusals of everybody to be Sacks, and thought that perhaps Mr. Twist
wasn't making himself clear.

Impetuous by nature and little given to calm waiting, she approached a
group on her own account and asked them, enunciating her words very
clearly, whether they were by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack.

The group, which was entirely female, stared round and down at her in
astonished silence, and shook its heads; and as she saw Mr. Twist