eir hands of
being able to give her notice, and it would considerably dim the
reputation of The Open Arms if there were a too frequent departure from
it of middle-aged ladies.

Mr. Twist felt himself very responsible and full of anxieties as he
paced up and down alone, but he was really enjoying himself. That
youthful side of him, so usual in the artistic temperament, which leaped
about at the least pleasant provocation like a happy lamb when the
sunshine tickles it, was feeling that this was great fun; and the
business side of him was feeling that it was not only great fun but
probably an extraordinarily productive piece of money-making.

The ignorant Annas--bless their little hearts, he thought, he who only
the night before on that very spot had been calling them
accursed--believed that their L200 was easily going to do everything.
This was lucky, for otherwise there would have been some thorny paths of
argument and convincing to be got through before they would have allowed
him to help finance the undertaking; probably they never would have, in
their scrupulous independence. Mr. Twist reflected with satisfaction on
the usefulness of his teapot. At last he was going to be able to do
something, thanks to it, that gave him real gladness. His ambulance to
France--that was duty. His lavishness to his mother--that again was
duty. But here was delight, here at last was what his lonely heart had
always longed for,--a chance to help and make happy, and be with and
watch being made happy, dear women-things, dear soft sweet kind
women-things, dear sister-things, dear children-things....

It has been said somewhere before that Mr. Twist was meant by Nature to
be a mother; but Nature, when she was half-way through him, forgot and
turned him into a man.

CHAPTER XXII

The very next morning they set out house-hunting, and two days later
they had found what they wanted. Not exactly what they wanted of course,
for the reason, as Anna-Felicitas explained that nothing ever is
_exactly_, but full of possibilities to the eye of imagination, and
there were six of this sort of eye gazing at the little house.

It stood at right angles to a road much used by motorists because of its
beauty, and hidden from it by trees on the top of a slope of green
fields scattered over with live oaks that gently descended down towards
the sea. Its back windows, and those parts of it that a house is ashamed
of, were close up to a thick grove o