dian he could then pay all their
expenses, and faced by this legal fact they would, he hoped, be soon
persuaded of the propriety of his paying whatever there was to pay.

Mr. Twist was so much pleased by his idea that he was able to go to
sleep after that. Even three months' school--the period he gave Mrs.
Dellogg for her acutest grief--would do. Tide them over. Give them room
to turn round in. It was a great solution. He took off his spectacles,
snuggled down into his rosy nest, and fell asleep with the
instantaneousness of one whose mind is suddenly relieved.

But when he went down to breakfast he didn't feel quite so sure. The
twins didn't look, somehow, as though they would want to go to school.
They had been busy with their luggage, and had unpacked one of the
trunks for the first time since leaving Aunt Alice, and in honour of the
heat and sunshine and the heavenly smell of heliotrope that was in the
warm air, had put on white summer frocks.

Impossible to imagine anything cooler, sweeter, prettier and more
angelically good than those two Annas looked as they came out on to the
great verandah of the hotel to join Mr. Twist at breakfast. They
instantly sank into the hotel consciousness. Mr. Twist had thought this
wouldn't happen for a day or two, but he now perceived his mistake. Not
a head that wasn't turned to look at them, not a newspaper that wasn't
lowered. They were immediate objects of interest and curiosity, entirely
benevolent interest and curiosity because nobody yet knew anything about
them, and the wives of the rich husbands--those halves of the
virtuous-rich unions which provided the virtuousness--smiled as they
passed, and murmured nice words to each other like cute and cunning.

Mr. Twist, being a good American, stood up and held the twins' chairs
for them when they appeared. They loved this; it seemed so respectful,
and made them feel so old and looked-up to. He had done it that night in
New York at supper, and at all the meals in the train in spite of the
train being so wobbly and each time they had loved it. "It makes one
have such self-respect," they agreed, commenting on this agreeable
practice in private.

They sat down in the chairs with the gracious face of the properly
treated, and inquired, with an amiability and a solicitous politeness on
a par with their treatment how Mr. Twist had slept. They themselves had
obviously slept well, for their faces were cherubic in their bland
placidity