ger away this time, and the twins having eaten, among other
things, a great many meringues, grew weary of sitting with those they
hadn't eaten lying on the dish in front of them reminding them of those
they had. They wanted, having done with meringues, to get away from them
and forget them. They wanted to go into another room now, where there
weren't any. Anna-Felicitas felt, and told Anna-Rose who was staring
listlessly at the left-over meringues, that it was like having committed
murder, and being obliged to go on looking at the body long after you
were thoroughly tired of it. Anna-Rose agreed, and said that she wished
now she hadn't committed meringues,--anyhow so many of them.

Then at last Edith came back, and told them she was sure they were very
tired after their long day, and suggested their going upstairs to their
rooms. The rooms were ready, said Edith, the baggage had come, and she
was sure they would like to have nice hot baths and go to bed.

The twins obeyed her readily, and she checked a desire on their part to
seek out her mother and brother first and bid them good-night, on the
ground that her mother and brother were busy; and while the twins were
expressing polite regret, and requesting her to convey their regret for
them to the proper quarter in a flow of well-chosen words that
astonished Edith, who didn't know how naturally Junkers make speeches,
she hurried them by the drawing-room door through which, shut though it
was, came sounds of people being, as Anna-Felicitas remarked, very busy
indeed; and Anna-Rose, impressed by the quality and volume of Mr.
Twist's voice as it reached her passing ears, told Edith that intimately
as she knew her brother she had never known him as busy as that before.

Edith said nothing, but continued quickly up the stairs.

They found they each had a bedroom, with a door between, and that each
bedroom had a bathroom of its own, which filled them with admiration and
pleasure. There had only been one bathroom at Uncle Arthur's, and at
home in Pomerania there hadn't been any at all. The baths there had been
vessels brought into one's bedroom every night, into which servants next
morning poured water out of buckets, having previously pumped the water
into the bucket from the pump in the backyard. They put Edith in
possession of these facts while she helped them unpack and brushed and
plaited their hair for them, and she was much astonished,--both at the
conditions of discom