"What did you always did?" gasped Mr. Twist, hardly able to believe it, and yet—and yet—there on her little face, on her little transfigured face, shone the same look.
"Oh—love you," sighed Anna-Rose, nestling as close as she could get.
It was Mr. Twist himself who got on a ladder at five minutes past four that afternoon and pasted a strip of white paper obliquely across the sign of The Open Arms with the word.
SHUT
on it in big letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr. Twist had only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the German inrush a few minutes before the hour, because of his being so happy; and when he did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the strip on only just in time. A car drove up as he came down the ladder.
"What?" exclaimed the principal male occupant of the car, pointing, thwarted and astonished, to the sign.
"Shut," said Mr. Twist.
"Shut?"
"Shut."