, he looked like some lean and
alien bird nesting temporarily where he had no business to. He hadn't
thought of buying silk pyjamas when the success of his teapot put him in
the right position for doing so, because his soul was too simple for him
to desire or think of anything less candid to wear in bed than flannel,
and he still wore the blue flannel pyjamas of a careful bringing up. In
that beautiful bed his pyjamas didn't seem appropriate. Also his head,
so frugal of hair, didn't do justice to the lace and linen of a pillow
prepared for the hairier head of, again at least, a prima donna. And
finding he couldn't sleep, and wishing to see the stars he put on his
spectacles, and then looked more out of place than ever. But as nobody
was there to see him,--which, Mr. Twist sometimes thought when he caught
sight of himself in his pyjamas at bed-time, is one of the comforts of
being virtuously unmarried,--nobody minded.

His reflections were many and various, and they conflicted with and
contradicted each other as the reflections of persons in a difficult
position who have Mr. Twist's sort of temperament often do. Faced by a
dribbling teapot, an object which touched none of the softer emotions,
Mr. Twist soared undisturbed in the calm heights of a detached and
concentrated intelligence, and quickly knew what to do with it; faced by
the derelict Annas his heart and his tenderness got in the ways of any
clear vision.

About three o'clock in the morning, when his mind was choked and strewn
with much pulled-about and finally discarded plans, he suddenly had an
idea. A real one. As far as he could see, a real good one. He would
place the Annas in a school.

Why shouldn't they go to school? he asked himself, starting off
answering any possible objections. A year at a first-rate school would
give them and everybody else time to consider. They ought never to have
left school. It was the very place for luxuriant and overflowing natures
like theirs. No doubt Acapulco had such a thing as a finishing school
for young ladies in it, and into it the Annas should go, and once in it
there they should stay put, thought Mr. Twist in vigorous American,
gathering up his mouth defiantly.

Down these lines of thought his relieved mind cantered easily. He would
seek out a lawyer the next morning, regularize his position to the twins
by turning himself into their guardian, and then get them at once into
the best school there was. As their guar