Chapter 37 - Page 2

afraid I was going to find it a difficult thing to do. But it wasn't. Quite the contrary."

Then, as he only staged at her, she said, "He's coming round this afternoon on the new footing, and I wanted to prepare your and Christopher's minds in good time so that you shouldn't be surprised."

And having said this she lapsed into what was apparently, judging from her expression, a silent contemplation of her bliss.

"But you're too young," burst out Mr. Twist.

"Too young?" repeated Anna-Felicitas, coming out of her contemplation for a moment to smile at him. "We don't think so."

Well. This beat everything.

Mr. Twist could only stare down at her.

Conflicting emotions raged in him. He couldn't tell for a moment what they were, they were so violent and so varied. How dared Elliott. How dared a person they had none of them heard of that time yesterday come making love to a girl he had never seen before. And in such a hurry. So suddenly. So instantly. Here had he himself been with the twins constantly for weeks, and wouldn't have dreamed of making love to them. They had been sacred to him. And it wasn't as if he hadn't wanted to hug them often and often, but he had restrained himself as a gentleman should from the highest motives of delicacy, and consideration, and respect, and propriety, besides a great doubt as to whether they wouldn't very energetically mind. And then comes along this blundering Britisher, and straight away tumbles right in where Mr. Twist had feared to tread, and within twenty-four hours had persuaded Anna-Felicitas to think she was in love. New footing indeed. There hadn't been an old footing yet. And who was this Elliott? And how was Mr. Twist going to be able to find out if he were a proper person to be allowed to pay his addresses to one so precious as a Twinkler twin?

Anger, jealousy, anxiety, sense of responsibility and mortification, all tumbled about furiously together inside Mr. Twist as he leaned against the bookcase and gazed down at Anna-Felicitas, who for her part was gazing beatifically into space; but through the anger, and the jealousy, and the anxiety, and the sense of responsibility and mortification one great thought was struggling, and it finally pushed every other aside and got out to the top of the welter: here, in the chair before him, he beheld his sister-in-law. So much at least was cleared up.

He crossed to the bureau and dragged his office-stool over next to her and sat down. "So that's it, is it?" he said, trying to speak very calmly, but his face pulled all sorts of ways, as it had so often been since the arrival in his life of the twins.

"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."

"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II., that don't seem to hit it off as a