elped themselves and helped each other, as if
everything belonged to them; and the tall one actually asked her--her,
the mistress of the house--if she could get _her_ anything. Well, let
that pass too.

"You see, mother--" began Mr. Twist again.

He was finding it extraordinarily difficult. What a tremendous hold
one's early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words;
what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in
one's foundations, of one's mother, of her authority, of her quickly
wounded affection. Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could
do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him
till he was seven, were pretty near the truth. It took a lot of shaking
off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one's childhood.

Mr. Twist sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster
himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to
come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the
sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he
rejected that as priggish.

"You see, mother," he started again, "I came across them--across these
two girls--they're both called Anna, by the way, which seems confusing
but isn't really--I came across them on the boat----"

He again stopped dead.

Mrs. Twist had turned her dark eyes to him. They had been fixed on
Anna-Felicitas, and on what she was doing with the dish of oyster
patties in front of her. What she was doing was not what Mrs. Twist was
accustomed to see done at her table. Anna-Felicitas was behaving badly
with the patties, and not even attempting to conceal, as the decent do,
how terribly they interested her.

"You came across them on the boat," repeated Mrs. Twist, her eyes on her
son, moved in spite of her resolution to speech. And he had told her
that very afternoon that he had spoken to nobody except men. Another
lie. Well, let that pass too ...

Mr. Twist sat staring back at her through his big gleaming spectacles.
He well knew the weakness of his position from his mother's point of
view; but why should she have such a point of view, such a niggling,
narrow one, determined to stay angry and offended because he had been
stupid enough to continue, under the influence of her presence, the old
system of not being candid with her, of being slavishly anxious to avoid
offending? Let her try for once to understand and forgive. L