ggested by the Sack _menage_. The experts were keenly interested, and
everybody looked very happy, and Mr. Twist was annoyed; for clearly if
the experts were sitting there on the grass they weren't directing the
workmen placed under their orders. Mr. Twist perceived a drawback to the
twins living on the spot while the place was being finished; another
drawback. He had perceived several already, but not this one. Well, Mrs.
Bilton would soon be there. He now counted the hours to Mrs. Bilton. He
positively longed for her.

When they saw him coming, the experts moved away. "Here's the boss,"
they said, nodding and winking at the twins as they got up quickly and
departed. Winking was not within the traditions of the Twinkler family,
but no doubt, they thought, it was the custom of the country to wink,
and they wondered whether they ought to have winked back. The young men
were certainly deserving of every friendliness in return for all they
had done. They decided they would ask Mrs. Bilton, and then they could
wink at them if necessary the first thing to-morrow morning.

Mr. Twist took them with him when he went down to the station to meet
the Los Angeles train. It was dark at six, and the workmen had gone home
by then, but the experts still seemed to be busy. He had been astonished
at the amount the twins had accomplished in his absence in the town till
they explained to him how very active the experts had been, whereupon he
said, "Now isn't that nice," and briefly informed them they would go
with him to the station.

"That's waste of time," said Anna-Felicitas. "We could be giving
finishing touches if we stayed here."

"You will come with me to the station," said Mr. Twist.

Mrs. Bilton arrived in a thick cloud of conversation. She supposed she
was going to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, as indeed she originally was, and
all the way back in the taxi Mr. Twist was trying to tell her she
wasn't; but Mrs. Bilton had so much to say about her journey, and her
last days among her friends, and all the pleasant new acquaintances she
had made on the train, and her speech was so very close-knit, that he
felt he was like a rabbit on the wrong side of a thick-set hedge running
desperately up and down searching for a gap to get through. It was
nothing short of amazing how Mrs. Bilton talked; positively, there
wasn't at any moment the smallest pause in the flow.

"It's a disease," thought Anna-Rose, who had several things she wanted
to