Her own eyes grew thoughtful. "I don't believe," she said, "that parents when they marry have any idea of all the difficulties they're going to place their children in."
"I don't believe they think about it at all," said Anna-Rose. "I mean," she added quickly, lest she should be supposed to be questioning the perfect love and forethought of their mother, "fathers don't."
They were silent a little after this, each thinking things tinged to sobriety by the effect of the inner conflict going on between the clam broth and the toffee. Also Boston was rushing towards them, and the Clouston Sacks. Quite soon they would have to leave the peaceful security of the train and begin to be active again, and quick and clever. Anna-Felicitas, who was slow, found it difficult ever to be clever till about the week after, and Anna-Rose, who was impetuous, was so impetuous that she entirely outstripped her scanty store of cleverness and landed panting and surprised in situations she hadn't an idea what to do with. The Clouston Sacks, now—Aunt Alice had said, "You must take care to be very tactful with Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack;" and when Anna-Rose, her forehead as much puckered as Mr. Twist's in her desire to get exactly at what tactful was in order to be able diligently to be it, asked for definitions, Aunt Alice only said it was what gentlewomen were instinctively.
"Then," observed Anna-Felicitas, when on nearing Boston Anna-Rose repeated Aunt Alice's admonishment and at the same time provided Anna-Felicitas for her guidance with the definition, "seeing that we're supposed to be gentlewomen, all we've got to do is to behave according to our instincts."
But Anna-Rose wasn't sure. She doubted their instincts, especially Anna-Felicitas's. She thought her own were better, being older, but even hers were extraordinarily apt to develop in unexpected directions according to the other person's behaviour. Her instinct, for instance, when engaged by Uncle Arthur in conversation had usually been to hit him. Was that tact? Yet she knew she was a gentlewoman. She had heard that, since first she had heard words at all, from every servant, teacher, visitor and relation—except her mother—in her Prussian home. Indeed, over there she had been told she was more than a gentlewoman, for she was a noblewoman and therefore her instincts ought positively to drip tact.
"Mr. Dodson," Aunt Alice had said one afternoon towards the end, when the twins came in from a walk and found the rector having tea, "says that you can't be too tactful in America. He's been there."
"Sensitive—sensitive," said Mr. Dodson, shaking his head at his cup. "Splendidly sensitive, just as they are splendidly whatever else they are. A great country. Everything on a vast scale, including sensitiveness. It has to be met vastly. But quite easy really—-" He raised a pedagogic finger at the twins. "You merely add half as much again to the quantity of your tact as the quantity you encounter of their sensitiveness, and it's all right."
"Be sure you remember that now," said Aunt Alice, pleased.
As Boston got nearer, Anna-Rose, trying to learn Mr. Dodson's recipe for social success by heart, became more silent. On the ship, when the meeting with the Sacks was imminent, she had fled in sudden panic to her cabin to hide from them. That couldn't have been tact. But it was instinct. And she was a gentlewoman. Now once again dread took possession of her and she wanted to hide, not to get there, to stay in the train and go on and on. She said nothing, of course, of her dread to Anna-Felicitas in order not to undermine that young person's morale, but she did very much wish that principles weren't such important things and one needn't have cut oneself off from the protecting figure of Mr. Twist.
"Now remember what Aunt Alice said," she whispered severely to Anna-Felicitas, gripping her arm as they stood jammed in the narrow passage to the door waiting to be let out at Boston.