ything that
could distract them for an hour from the dripping of the rain on the
windows. Bridge was their one solace, and they played it from after
breakfast till bedtime; but on the fourth or fifth day of doing this,
just the mere steady sitting became grievous to them. They ached with
weariness. They wilted with boredom. All their natural kindness got
damped out of them, and they were cross. Even when they won they were
cross, and when they lost it was really distressing. They wouldn't, of
course, have been in California at all at such a time if it were
possible to know beforehand when the rains would begin, but one never
did know, and often it was glorious weather right up to and beyond
Christmas. And then how glorious! What a golden place of light and
warmth to be in, while in the East one's friends were being battered by
blizzards.

Mr. Twist intended to provide a break in the day each afternoon for
these victims of the rain. He would come to their rescue. He made up
his mind, clear and firm on such matters, that it should become the
habit of these unhappy people during the bad weather to motor out to The
Open Arms for tea; and, full of forethought, he had had a covered way
made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without
being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace
made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a
welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes, at all
times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful. Li Koo had a
secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite
peculiar and original charm, and these were to be reserved for the rainy
season only, and be made its specialty. They were to become known and
endeared to the public under the brief designation of Wet Day Cakes. Mr.
Twist felt there was something thoroughly American about this
name--plain and business-like, and attractively in contrast to the
subtle, the almost immoral exquisiteness of the article itself. This
cake had been one of those produced by Li Koo from the folds of his
garments the day in Los Angeles, and Mr. Twist had happened to be the
one of his party who ate it. He therefore knew what he was doing when he
decided to call it and its like simply Wet Day Cakes.

The twins found him experimenting with a fire in the fireplace so as to
be sure it didn't smoke, and the architect and he were in their shirt
sleeves, deftly