n them, but she wouldn't talk.
She turned a dry, parchment-like face to their conversational
blandishments, and responded only by adding up their bills. Wonderful
are the workings of patriotism. For the first time in her life, Mrs.
Bilton was grumbled at for not talking.

CHAPTER XXXIII

In the office Anna-Rose found Mr. Twist walking up and down.

"See here," he said, turning on her when she came in, "I'm about tired
of looking on at all this twittering round that lot in there. You're
through with that for to-day, and maybe for to-morrow and the day after
as well."

He waved his arm at the deep chair that had been provided for his
business meditations. "You'll sit down in that chair now," he said
severely, "and stay put."

Anna-Rose looked at him with a quivering lip. She went rather unsteadily
to the chair and tumbled into it. "I don't know if you're angry or being
kind," she said tremulously, "but whichever it is I--I wish you
wouldn't. I--I wish you'd manage to be something that isn't either."
And, as she had feared, she began to cry.

"Anna-Rose," said Mr. Twist, staring down at her in concern mixed with
irritation--out there all those Germans, in here the weeping child; what
a day he was having--"for heaven's sake don't do that."

"I know," sobbed Anna-Rose. "I don't want to. It's awful being so
natu--natu--naturally liquid."

"But what's the matter?" asked Mr. Twist helplessly.

"Nothing," sobbed Anna-Rose.

He stood over her in silence for a minute, his hands in his pockets. If
he took them out he was afraid he might start stroking her, and she
seemed to him to be exactly between the ages when such a form of comfort
would be legitimate. If she were younger ... but she was a great girl
now; if she were older ... ah, if she were older, Mr. Twist could
imagine....

"You're overtired," he said aloofly. "That's what you are."

"No," sobbed Anna-Rose.

"And the Germans have been too much for you."

"They haven't," sobbed Anna-Rose, her pride up at the suggestion that
anybody could ever be that.

"But they're not going to get the chance again," said Mr. Twist, setting
his teeth as much as they would set, which wasn't, owing to his natural
kindliness, anything particular. "Mrs. Bilton and me--" Then he
remembered Anna-Felicitas. "Why doesn't she come?" he asked.

"Who?" choked Anna-Rose.

"The other one. Anna II. Columbus."

"I haven't seen her for ages," sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been mu