e by a different route or train,
so you see your theory _is_ rather dished, isn't it?"

"A little," admitted Anna-Felicitas. "Not altogether. Because if you
really like our being here, here we are. So why hurry us off somewhere
else so soon?"

Mr. Twist perceived that he was being led into controversy in spite of
his determination not to be. "You're very wise," he said shortly, "but
you don't know everything. Let us avoid conjecture and stick to facts.
I'm going to take you to California, and hand you over to your friends.
That's all you know, and all you need to know."

"As Keats very nearly said," said Anna-Rose

"And if our friends have run away?" suggested Anna-Felicitas.

"Oh Lord," exclaimed Mr. Twist impatiently, putting the teapot down with
a bang, "do you think we're running away all the time in America?"

"Well, I think you seem a little restless," said Anna-Felicitas.

Thus it was that two hours later the twins found themselves at the
Clark station once more, once more starting into the unknown, just as if
they had never done it before, and gradually, as they adapted themselves
to the sudden change, such is the india-rubber-like quality of youth,
almost with the same hopefulness. Yet they couldn't but meditate, left
alone on the platform while Mr. Twist checked the baggage, on the
mutability of life. They seemed to live in a kaleidoscope since the war
began what a series of upheavals and readjustments had been theirs!
Silent, and a little apart on the Clark platform, they reflected
retrospectively; and as they counted up their various starts since the
days, only fourteen months ago, when they were still in their home in
Germany, apparently as safely rooted, as unshakably settled as the pine
trees in their own forests, they couldn't but wonder at the elusiveness
of the unknown, how it wouldn't let itself be caught up with and at the
trouble it was giving them.

They had had so many changes in the last year that they did want now to
have time to become familiar with some one place and people. Already
however, being seventeen, they were telling themselves, and each other
that after all, since the Sacks had failed them, California was their
real objective. Not Clark at all. Clark had never been part of their
plans. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Alice didn't even know it existed. It was a
side-show; just a little thing of their own, an extra excursion slipped
in between the Sacks and the Delloggs. True they had ho