on had occupied the
position of the guns; now it would be these poor orphans. No Germans
could frighten her away, once she knew their story; no harsh judgments
and misconceptions of her patriotic friends. Mr. Twist had told her
everything, from the beginning on the _St. Luke_, harking back to Uncle
Arthur and the attitude of England, describing what he knew of their
mother and her death, not even concealing the part his own mother had
played or that he wasn't their guardian at all. He made the most of Mrs.
Bilton's silence; and as she listened her heart melted within her, and
the immense store of grit which was her peculiar pride came to the top
and once and for all overwhelmed her prejudices. But she couldn't think,
and at last she burst out and told Mr. Twist she couldn't think, why he
hadn't imparted all this to her long ago.

"Ah," murmured Mr. Twist, bowing his head as a reed in the wind before
the outburst of her released volubility.

Hope once more filled The Open Arms, and the Twist party looked forward
to the afternoon with renewed cheerfulness. It had just happened so the
first day, that only Germans came. It was just accident. Mr. Twist, with
the very large part of him that wasn't his head, found himself feeling
like this too and declining to take any notice of his intelligence,
which continued to try to worry him.

Yet the hope they all felt was not realized, and the second afternoon
was almost exactly like the first. Germans came and clustered round the
Annas, and made friendly though cautious advances to Mr. Twist. The ones
who had been there the first day came again and brought others with them
worse than themselves, and they seemed more at home than ever, and the
air was full of rolling r's--among them, Mr. Twist was unable to deny,
being the r's of his blessed Annas. But theirs were such little r's, he
told himself. They rolled, it is true, but with how sweet a rolling.
While as for these other people--confound it all, the place might really
have been, from the sounds that were filling it, a _Conditorei_ Unter
den Linden.

All his doubts and anxieties flocked back on him as time passed and no
Americans appeared. Americans. How precious. How clean, and straight,
and admirable. Actually he had sometimes, he remembered, thought they
weren't. What an aberration. Actually he had been, he remembered,
impatient with them when first he came back from France. What folly.
Americans. The very word was refreshi