the quantity
of one's love that mattered rather than the quality of its object. Not
that Mr. Twist wasn't of the very first quality, except to look at; but
what after all were faces? The coachman had been, as it were, nothing
else but face, so handsome was he and so without any other
recommendation. He couldn't even drive; and her father had very soon
kicked him out with the vigour and absence of hesitation peculiar to
Junkers when it comes to kicking and Anna-Rose had wept all over her
bread and butter at tea that day, and was understood to say that she
knew at last what it must be like to be a widow.

Mr. Twist, for all that he was looking out of the taxi window with an
angry and worried face, his attention irritably concentrated, so it
seemed, on the objects passing in the road, very well knew he was being
observed. He wouldn't, however, allow his eye to be caught. He wasn't
going to become entangled at this juncture in argument with the Annas.
He was hastily making up his mind, and there wasn't much time to do it
in. He had had no explanation with the twins since the manager's visit
to his room, and he didn't want to have any. He had issued brief orders
to them, told them to pack, declined to answer questions, and had got
them safely into the taxi with a minimum waste of time and words. They
were now on their way to the station to meet Mrs. Bilton. Her train from
Los Angeles was not due till that evening at six. Never mind. The
station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage in till
she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the parcel-room as
easily as he could their grips--neatly labelled, put away safely on a
shelf till called for.

Rapidly, as he stared out of the window, he arrived at decisions. He
would leave the twins in the waiting room at the station till Mrs.
Bilton was due, and meanwhile go out and find lodgings for them and her.
He himself would get a room in another and less critical hotel, and stay
in it till the cottage was habitable. So would unassailable
respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and
cover it up.

But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the _contretemps_ that had
occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there;
nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the twins to be happy,
to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was
their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything t