end of it, crept silently into bed.

How long does it take a widow to recover her composure? Recover, that
is, the first beginnings of it? At what stage in her mourning is it
legitimate to intrude on her with reminders of obligations incurred
before she was a widow,--with, in fact, the Twinklers? Delicacy itself
would shrink from doing it under a week thought Mr. Twist, or even under
a fortnight, or even if you came to that, under a month; and meanwhile
what was he to do with the Twinklers?

Mr. Twist, being of the artistic temperament for otherwise he wouldn't
have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he so passionately
did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on to the tablecloth--was
sometimes swept by brief but tempestuous revulsions of feeling, and
though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment describe them
mentally and without knowing it in the very words of Uncle Arthur, as
those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he knew. They couldn't help
the death of the man Dellogg. They were the victims, from first to last,
of a cruel and pursuing fate; but it is natural to turn on victims, and
Mr. Twist was for an instant, out of the very depth of his helpless
sympathy, impatient with the Twinklers.

He walked up and down the sands frowning and pulling his mouth together,
while the Pacific sighed sympathetically at his feet. Across the road
the huge hotel standing in its gardens was pierced by a thousand lights.
Very few people were about and no one at all was on the sands. There was
an immense noise of what sounded like grasshoppers or crickets, and also
at intervals distant choruses of frogs, but these sounds seemed
altogether beneficent,--so warm, and southern, and far away from less
happy places where in October cold winds perpetually torment the world.
Even in the dark Mr. Twist knew he had got to somewhere that was
beautiful. He could imagine nothing more agreeable than, having handed
over the twins safely to the Delloggs, staying on a week or two in this
place and seeing them every day,--perhaps even, as he had pictured to
himself on the journey, being invited to stay with the Delloggs. Now all
that was knocked on the head. He supposed the man Dellogg couldn't help
being dead but he, Mr. Twist, equally couldn't help resenting it. It was
so awkward; so exceedingly awkward. And it was so like what one of that
creature Uncle Arthur's friends would do.

Mr. Twist, it will be seen, was frank