“I haven’t seen her for ages,” sobbed Anna-Rose, who had been much upset by Anna-Felicitas’s prolonged disappearance and had suspected her, though she couldn’t understand it after last night’s finishings up, of secret unworthy conduct in a corner with ice-cream.

Mr. Twist went to the door quickly and looked through.  “I can’t see her either,” he said.  “Confound them—­what have they done to her?  Worn her out too, I daresay.  I shouldn’t wonder if she’d crawled off somewhere and were crying too.”

“Anna-F.—­doesn’t crawl,” sobbed Anna-Rose, “and she—­doesn’t cry but—­I wish you’d find—­her.”

“Well, will you stay where you are while I’m away, then?” he said, looking at her from the door uncertainly.

And she seemed so extra small over there in the enormous chair, and somehow so extra motherless as she obediently gurgled and choked a promise not to move, that he found himself unable to resist going back to her for a minute in order to pat her head.  “There, there,” said Mr. Twist, very gently patting her head, his heart yearning over her; and it yearned the more that, the minute he patted, her sobs got worse; and also the more because of the feel of her dear little head.

“You little bit of blessedness,” murmured Mr. Twist before he knew what he was saying; at which her sobs grew louder than ever,—­grew, indeed, almost into small howls, so long was it since anybody had said things like that to her.  It was her mother who used to say things like that; things almost exactly like that.

“Hush,” said Mr. Twist in much distress, and with one anxious eye on the half-open door, for Anna-Rose’s sobs were threatening to outdo the noise of teacups and ice-cream plates, “hush, hush—­here’s a clean handkerchief—­you just wipe up your eyes while I fetch Anna II.  She’ll worry, you know, if she sees you like this,—­hush now, hush—­there, there—­and I expect she’s being miserable enough already, hiding away in some corner.  You wouldn’t like to make her more miserable, would you—­”

And he pressed the handkerchief into Anna-Rose’s hands, and feeling much flurried went away to search for the other one who was somewhere, he was sure, in a state of equal distress.

He hadn’t however to search.  He found her immediately.  As he came out of the door of his office into the tea-room he saw her come into the tea-room from the door of the verandah, and proceed across it towards the pantry.  Why the verandah? wondered Mr. Twist.  He hurried to intercept her.  Anyhow she wasn’t either about to cry or getting over having done it.  He saw that at once with relief.  Nor was she, it would seem, in any sort of distress.  On the contrary, Anna-Felicitas looked particularly smug.  He saw that once too, with surprise,—­why smug? wondered Mr. Twist.  She had a pleased look of complete satisfaction on her face.  She was oblivious, he noticed, as she passed between the tables, of the guests who tried