own.  It seemed as natural for American architects to drop bathrooms about, thought Anna-Rose, as for the little clouds in the psalms to drop fatness.  They shed them just as easily, and the results were just as refreshing.  To persons hailing from Pomerania, a place arid of bathrooms, it was the last word of luxury and comfort to have one’s own.  Their pride in theirs amused Mr. Twist, used from childhood to these civilized arrangements; but then, as they pointed out to him, he hadn’t lived in Pomerania, where nothing stood between you and being dirty except the pump.

But it wasn’t only the bathrooms that made the inn as planned by Mr. Twist and the architect seem to the twins the most perfect, the most wonderful magic little house in the world:  the intelligent American spirit was in every corner, and it was full of clever, simple devices for saving labour—­so full that it almost seemed to the Annas as if it would get up quite unaided at six every morning and do itself; and they were sure that if the smallest encouragement were given to the kitchen-stove it would cook and dish up a dinner all alone.  Everything in the house was on these lines.  The arrangements for serving innumerable teas with ease were admirable.  They were marvels of economy and clever thinking-out.  The architect was surprised at the attention and thought Mr. Twist concentrated on this particular part of the future housekeeping.  “You seem sheer crazy on teas,” he remarked; to which Mr. Twist merely replied that he was.

The last few days before the opening were as full of present joy and promise of yet greater joys to come as the last few days of a happy betrothal.  They reminded Anna-Felicitas of those days in April, those enchanting days she had always loved the best, when the bees get busy for the first time, and suddenly there are wallflowers and a flowering currant bush and the sound of the lawn being mown and the smell of cut grass.  How one’s heart leaps up to greet them, she thought.  What a thrill of delight rushes through one’s body, of new hope, of delicious expectation.

Even Li Koo, the wooden-faced, the brief and rare of speech seemed to feel the prevailing satisfaction and harmony and could be heard in the evenings singing strange songs among his pots.  And what he was singing, only nobody knew it, were soft Chinese hymns of praise of the two white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose eyes were deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the shores of his father’s dwelling-place.  For Li Koo, the impassive and inarticulate, in secret seethed with passion.  Which was why his cakes were so wonderful.  He had to express himself somehow.