ther she struck an absolute
average and perfectly fulfilled the condition required; and as she
wished to live in the country, town life disturbing her psychically too
much, she was willing to give up her home and her circle--it was a real
sacrifice--and accept the position offered by the Miss Twinklers. She
was, she said, very quiet, and yet at the same time she was very active.
She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her
own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right
balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action.
Thus she attained poise,--she was one of the most poised women her
friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both
philanthropy and orphans. Especially if they were war ones.

Mrs. Bilton talked so quickly and so profusely that it took quite a long
time to engage her. There never seemed to be a pause in which one could
do it. It was in Los Angeles, in an hotel to which Mr. Twist had motored
the twins, starting at daybreak that morning in order to see this lady,
that the personal interview took place, and by lunch-time they had been
personally interviewing her for three hours without stopping. It seemed
years. The twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but
Mrs. Bilton's spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way
it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and
without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have
dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last,
in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist
politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed directly after
lunch, and they were dying for some food.

The moment Mr. Twist saw Mrs. Bilton's beautiful white hair he knew she
was the one. That hair was what The Open Arms wanted and must have; that
hair, with a well-made black dress to go with it, would be a shield
through which no breath of misunderstanding as to the singleness of
purpose with which the inn was run would ever penetrate. He would have
settled it with her in five minutes if she could have been got to
listen, but Mrs. Bilton couldn't be got to listen; and when it became
clear that no amount of patient waiting would bring him any nearer the
end of what she had to say Mr. Twist was forced to take off his coat, as
it were, and plunge abruptly into the very middle of her flow of words