“As Mrs. Sack has done from her husband,” Anna-Felicitas explained, smiling too, benevolently, at the black lady who actually having got oyster patties on her plate hadn’t bothered to eat them.  “But of course you couldn’t,” she went on, remembering in time to be tactful and make a Sympathetic reference to the lady’s weeds; which, indeed, considering Mr. Twist had told her and Anna-Rose that his father had died when he was ten, nearly a quarter of a century ago, seemed to have kept their heads up astonishingly and stayed very fresh.  And true to her German training, and undaunted by the fork, she did that which Anna-Rose in her contentment had forgotten, and catching up Mrs. Twist’s right hand, fork and all, to her lips gave it the brief ceremonious kiss of a well brought up Junker.

Like Amanda’s, Mrs. Twist’s life had been up to this empty of Junkers.  She had never even heard of them till the war, and pronounced their name, and so did the rest of Clark following her lead, as if it had been junket, only with an r instead of a t at the end.  She didn’t therefore recognize the action; but even she, outraged as she was, could not but see its grace.  And looking up in sombre hostility at the little head bent over her hand and at the dark line of eyelashes on the the flushed face, she thought swiftly, “She’s the one.”

“You see, mother,” said Mr. Twist, pulling a chair vigorously and sitting on it with determination, “it’s like this. (Sit down, you two, and get eating.  Start on anything you see in this show that hits your fancy.  Edith’ll be fetching you something hot, I expect—­soup, or something—­but meanwhile here’s enough stuff to go on with.) You see, mother—­” he resumed, turning squarely to her, while the twins obeyed him with immense alacrity and sat down and began to eat whatever happened to be nearest them, “these two girls—­well, to start with they’re twins—­”

Mr. Twist was stopped again by his mother’s face.  She couldn’t conceive why he should lie.  Twins the world over matched in size and features; it was notorious that they did.  Also, it was the custom for them to match in age, and the tall one of these was at least a year older than the other one.  But still, thought Mrs. Twist, let that pass.  She would suffer whatever it was she had to suffer in silence.

The twins too were silent, because they were so busy eating.  Perfectly at home under the wing they knew so well, they behaved with an easy naturalness that appeared to Mrs. Twist outrageous.  But still—­let that too pass.  These strangers helped themselves and helped each other, as if everything belonged to them; and the tall one actually asked her—­her, the mistress of the house—­if she could get her anything.  Well, let that pass too.

“You see, mother—­” began Mr. Twist again.

He was finding it extraordinarily difficult.  What a tremendous hold one’s early training had on one, he reflected, casting about for words; what a deeply rooted fear there was in one, subconscious, lurking in one’s foundations, of one’s mother, of her authority, of her quickly wounded affection.  Those Jesuits, with their conviction that they could do what they liked with a man if they had had the bringing up of him till he was seven, were pretty near the truth.  It took a lot of shaking off, the unquestioning awe, the habit of obedience of one’s childhood.