turning her head in the darkness toward him said, "Now Mr. Twist, I'll
stand right here till you're able to apply some sort of illumination to
what's at my feet. I can't say what it is I've walked against but I'm
not going any further with this promenade till I can say. And when
you've thrown light on the subject perhaps you'll oblige me with
information as to where that hotel is I was told I was coming to."

"Information?" cried Mr. Twist. "Haven't I been trying to give it you
ever since I met you? Haven't I been trying to stop your getting out of
the taxi till I'd fetched a lantern? Haven't I been trying to offer you
my arm along the path--"

"Then why didn't you say so, Mr. Twist?" asked Mrs. Bilton.

"Say so!" cried Mr. Twist.

At that moment the flash of an electric torch was seen jerking up and
down as the person carrying it ran toward them. It was the electrical
expert who, most fortunately, happened still to be about.

Mrs. Bilton welcomed him warmly, and taking his torch from him first
examined what she called the location of her feet, then gave it back to
him and put her hand through his arm. "Now guide me to whatever it is
has been substituted without my knowledge for that hotel," she said; and
while Mr. Twist went back to the taxi to deal with her grips, she walked
carefully toward the shanty on the expert's arm, expressing, in an
immense number of words, the astonishment she felt at Mr. Twist's not
having told her of the disappearance of the Cosmopolitan from her
itinerary.

The electrical expert tried to speak, but was drowned without further
struggle. Anna-Rose, unable to listen any longer without answering to
the insistent inquiries as to why Mr. Twist had kept her in the dark,
raised her voice at last and called out, "But he wanted to--he wanted to
all the time--you wouldn't listen--you wouldn't stop--"

Mrs. Bilton did stop however when she got inside the shanty. Her tongue
and her feet stopped dead together. The electrical expert had lit all
the lanterns, and coming upon it in the darkness its lighted windows
gave it a cheerful, welcoming look. But inside no amount of light and
bunches of pink geraniums could conceal its discomforts, its dreadful
smallness; besides, pink geraniums, which the twins were accustomed to
regard as precious, as things brought up lovingly in pots, were nothing
but weeds to Mrs. Bilton's experienced Californian eye.

She stared round her in silence. Her sudden quiet