e rooms with them. Mr. Twist was
in Acapulco most of the time, getting together the necessary temporary
furniture and cooking utensils, but the twins didn't miss him, for they
were helped with zeal by the architect, the electrical expert, the
garden expert and the chief plumber.

These young men--they were all young, and very go-ahead--abandoned the
main building that day to the undirected labours of the workmen they
were supposed to control, and turned to on the shanty as soon as they
realized what it was to be used for with a joyous energy that delighted
the twins. They swept and they garnished. They cleaned the dust off the
windows and the rust off the stove. They fetched out the parcels with
the curtains and cushions in them from the barn where all parcels and
packages had been put till the house was ready, and extracted various
other comforts from the piled up packing-cases,--a rug or two, an easy
chair for Mrs. Bilton, a looking-glass. They screwed in hooks behind the
doors for clothes to be hung on, and they tied the canary to a
neighbouring eucalyptus tree where it could be seen and hardly heard.
The chief plumber found buckets and filled them with water, and the
electrical expert rigged up a series of lanterns inside the shanty, even
illuminating its tortuous staircase. There was much _badinage_, but as
it was all in American, a language of which the twins were not yet able
to apprehend the full flavour, they responded only with pleasant smiles.
But their smiles were so pleasant and the family dimple so engaging that
the hours flew, and the young men were sorry indeed when Mr. Twist came
back.

He came back laden, among other things, with food for the twins, whom he
had left in his hurry high and dry at the cottage with nothing at all to
eat; and he found them looking particularly comfortable and
well-nourished, having eaten, as they explained when they refused his
sandwiches and fruit, the chief plumber's dinner.

They were sitting on the stump of an oak tree when he arrived, resting
from their labours, and the grass at their feet was dotted with the four
experts. It was the twins now who were talking, and the experts who were
smiling. Mr. Twist wondered uneasily what they were saying. It wouldn't
have added to his comfort if he had heard, for they were giving the
experts an account of their attempt to go and live with the Sacks, and
interweaving with it some general reflections of a philosophical nature
su