n
their ignorance of his circumstances, an unknown quantity. They might
be going to be mothers' helps in the Sack _menage_ for all they
knew,--they might, they said, be going to be anything, from honoured
guests to typists.

"Can you type?" asked Mr. Twist.

"No," said the twins.

He took them in a taxi to Riverside Drive, and then they walked down to
the charming footpath that runs along by the Hudson for three enchanting
miles. The sun had set some time before they got there, and had left a
clear pale yellow sky, and a wonderful light on the river. Lamps were
being lit, and hung like silver globes in the thin air. Steep grass
slopes, and groups of big trees a little deeper yellow than the sky, hid
that there were houses and a street above them on their right. Up and
down the river steamers passed, pierced with light, their delicate smoke
hanging in the air long after they had gone their way. It was so great a
joy to walk in all this after ten days shut up on the _St. Luke_ and to
see such blessed things as grass and leaves again, that the twins felt
suddenly extraordinarily brisked up and cheerful. It was impossible not
to be cheerful, translated from the _St. Luke_ into such a place,
trotting along in the peculiar dry air that made one all tingly.

The world seemed suddenly quite good,--the simplest, easiest of objects
to tackle. All one had to do was not to let it weigh on one, to laugh
rather than cry. They trotted along humming bits of their infancy's
songs, feeling very warm and happy inside, felicitously full of tea and
macaroons and with their feet comfortably on something that kept still
and didn't heave or lurch beneath them. Mr. Twist, too, was gayer than
he had been for some hours. He seemed relieved; and he was. He had sent
a telegram to his mother, expressing proper sorrow at being detained in
New York, but giving no reason for it, and promising he would be with
her rather late the next evening; and he had sent a telegram to the
Clouston Sacks saying the Twinklers, who had so unfortunately missed
them in New York, would arrive in Boston early next afternoon. His mind
was clear again owing to the determination of the twins to go to the
Sacks. He was going to take them there, hand them over, and then go back
to Clark, which fortunately was only three hours' journey from Boston.

If the twins had shown a disinclination to go after the Sacks who, in
Mr. Twist's opinion, had behaved shamefully already, he