"Yes," she said, coming out of her contemplation. "It's love at last."
"I don't know about at last. Whichever way you look at it, Anna II., that don't seem to hit it off as a word. What I meant was, it's Elliott."
"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "Which is the same thing. I believe," she added, "I now have to allude to him as John."
Mr. Twist made another effort to speak calmly. "You don't," he said, "think it at all unusual or undesirable that you should be calling a man John to-day of whom you'd never heard yesterday."
"I think it's wonderful," said Anna-Felicitas beaming.
"It doesn't strike you in any way as imprudent to be so hasty. It doesn't strike you as foolish."
"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "I can't help thinking I've been very clever. I shouldn't have thought it of myself. You see, I'm not naturally quick." And she beamed with what she evidently regarded as a pardonable pride.
"It doesn't strike you as even a little—well, a little improper."
"On the contrary," said Anna-Felicitas. "Aunt Alice told us that the one man one could never be improper about, even if one tried, was one's husband."
"Husband?" Mr. Twist winced. He loved, as we have seen, the word wife, but then that was different.