Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do you mean to say those children—" he began.
"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that boat."
"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being believed?"
"Of course. It's what I've come for."
"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
"Go ahead."
"What Acapulco says—and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by this time the whole coast—is that you threw over your widowed mother, of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who got hold of you on the boat—now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt—on the boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as undesirable aliens—quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish—that they're in the pay of the German Government—no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist—and that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a complete secret understanding."
For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort of lips. "You're not—" he began.
Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.