trio were
seen approaching,--Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair
setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean
white frocks and shining youth,--once an idea has got into people's
heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out. Yet on
the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton--

"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up with the
water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"

And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using
the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.

The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the
East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with
some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon after the
departure--she didn't see why she shouldn't call it by its proper name
and say right out expulsion--of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan,
but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long
time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered
if the other person doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous
interests that are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest,
and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that his
mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt unable to
believe it. "Do tell your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how
_delighted_ we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us
in our sunny refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her.
Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."

She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got
it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the
exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German
secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of
America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found
she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.

It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till Miss
Heap's letter came.