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 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."