Christopher and Columbus Part 28

He was therefore greatly astonished when Anna-Rose said, "Have you? Is it about schools?"

He stared at her in silence. "Yes," he then said slowly, for he was very much surprised. "It is."

"So is ours," said Anna-Rose.

"Indeed," said Mr. Twist.

"Yes," said Anna-Felicitas. "We don't think much of it, but it will tide us over."

"Exactly," said Mr. Twist, still more astonished at this perfect harmony of ideas.

"Tide us over till Mrs. Dellogg is---" began Anna-Rose in her clear little voice that carried like a flute to all the tables round them.

Mr. Twist got up quickly. "If you've finished let us go out of doors,"

he said; for he perceived that silence had fallen on the other tables, and attentiveness to what Anna-Rose was going to say next.

"Yes. On the sands," said the twins, getting up too.

On the sands, however, Mr. Twist soon discovered that the harmony of ideas was not as complete as he had supposed; indeed, something very like heated argument began almost as soon as they were seated on some rocks round the corner of the sh.o.r.e to the west of the hotel and they became aware, through conversation, of the vital difference in the two plans.

The Twinkler plan, which they expounded at much length and with a profusion of optimistic detail, was to search for and find a school in the neighbourhood for the daughters of gentlemen, and go to it for three months, or six months, or whatever time Mrs. Dellogg wanted to recover in.

Up to this point the harmony was complete, and Mr. Twist could only nod approval. Beyond it all was confusion, for it appeared that the twins didn't dream of entering a school in any capacity except as teachers.

Professors, they said; professors of languages and literatures. They could speak German, as they pointed out, very much better than most people, and had, as Mr. Twist had sometimes himself remarked, an extensive vocabulary in English. They would give lessons in English and German literature. They would be able to teach quite a lot about Heine, for instance, the whole of whose poetry they knew by heart and whose sad life in Paris--

"It's no good running on like that," interrupted Mr. Twist. "You're not old enough."

Not old enough? The Twinklers, from their separate rocks, looked at each other in surprised indignation.

"Not old enough?" repeated Anna-Rose. "We're grown up. And I don't see how one can be more than grown up. One either is or isn't grown up. And there can be no doubt as to which we are."

And this the very man who so respectfully had been holding their chairs for them only a few minutes before! As if people did things like that for children.

"You're not old enough I say," said Mr. Twist again, bringing his hand down with a slap on the rock to emphasize his words. "n.o.body would take you. Why, you've got perambulator faces, the pair of you--"

"Perambulator--?"

"And what school is going to want two teachers both teaching the same thing, anyway?"

And he then quickly got out his plan, and the conversation became so heated that for a time it was molten.

The Twinklers were shocked by his plan. More; they were outraged. Go to school? To a place they had never been to even in their suitable years?

They, two independent grown-ups with 200 in the bank and n.o.body with any right to stop their doing anything they wanted to? Go to school now, like a couple of little suck-a-thumbs?

It was Anna-Rose, very flushed and bright of eye, who flung this expression at Mr. Twist from her rock. He might think they had perambulator faces if he liked--they didn't care, but they did desire him to bear in mind that if it hadn't been for the war they would be now taking their proper place in society, that they had already done a course of nursing in a hospital, an activity not open to any but adults, and that Uncle Arthur had certainly not given them all that money to fritter away on paying for belated schooling.

"We would be anachronisms," said Anna-Felicitas, winding up the discussion with a firmness so unusual in her that it showed how completely she had been stirred.

"Are you aware that we are marriageable?" inquired Anna-Rose icily.

"And don't you think it's bad enough for us to be aliens and undesirables," asked Anna-Felicitas, "without getting chronologically confused as well?"

Mr. Twist was quiet for a bit. He couldn't compete with the Twinklers when it came to sheer language. He sat hunched on his rock, his face supported by his two fists, staring out to sea while the twins watched him indignantly. School indeed! Then presently he pushed his hat back and began slowly to rub his ear.

"Well, I'm blest if I know what to do with you, then," he said, continuing to rub his ear and stare out to sea.

The twins opened their mouths simultaneously at this to protest against any necessity for such knowledge on his part, but he interrupted them.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to resume this discussion when you're both a little more composed."

"We're perfectly composed," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Less ruffled, then."

"We're quite unruffled," said Anna-Rose.

"Well, you don't look it, and you don't sound like it. But as this is important I'd be glad to resume the discussion, say, to-morrow. I suggest we spend to-day exploring the neighbourhood and steadying our minds--"

"Our minds are perfectly steady, thank you."

"--and to-morrow we'll have another go at this question. I haven't told you all my plan yet"--Mr. Twist hadn't had time to inform them of his wish to become their guardian, owing to the swiftness with which he had been engulfed in their indignation,--"but whether you approve of it or not, what is quite certain is that we can't stay on at the hotel much longer."

"Because it's so dear?"

"Oh, it isn't so much _that_,--the proprietor is a friend of mine, or anyhow he very well might be--"

"It looks very dear," said Anna-Rose, visions of their splendid bedroom and bathroom rising before her. They too had slept in silken beds, and the taps in their bathroom they had judged to be pure gold.

"And it's because we can't afford to be in a dear place spending money,"

said Anna-Felicitas, "that it's so important we should find a salaried position in a school without loss of time."

"And it's because we can't afford reckless squandering that we ought to start looking for such a situation at once" said Anna-Rose.

"Not to-day," said Mr. Twist firmly, for he wouldn't give up the hope of getting them, once they were used to it, to come round to his plan.

"To-day, this one day, we'll give ourselves up to enjoyment. It'll do us all good. Besides, we don't often get to a place like this, do we. And it has taken some getting to, hasn't it."

He rose from his rock and offered his hand to help them off theirs.

"To-day enjoyment," he said, "to-morrow business. I'm crazy," he added artfully, "to see what the country is like away up in those hills."

And so it was that about five o'clock that afternoon, having spent the whole day exploring the charming environs of Acapulco,--having been seen at different periods going over the Old Mission in tow of a monk who wouldn't look at them but kept his eyes carefully fixed on the ground, sitting on high stools eating strange and enchanting ices at the shop in the town that has the best ices, bathing deliciously in the warm sea at the foot of a cliff along the top of which a great hedge of rose-coloured geraniums flared against the sky, lunching under a grove of ilexes on the contents of a basket produced by Mr. Twist from somewhere in the car he had hired, wandering afterwards up through eucalyptus woods across the fields towards the foot of the mountains,--they came about five o'clock, thirsty and thinking of tea, to a delightful group of flowery cottages cl.u.s.tering round a restaurant and forming collectively, as Mr. Twist explained, one of the many American forms of hotel. "To which," he said, "people not living in the cottages can come and have meals at the restaurant, so we'll go right in and have tea."

And it was just because they couldn't get tea--any other meal, the proprietress said, but no teas were served, owing to the Domestic Help Eight Hours Bill which obliged her to do without domestics during the afternoon hours--that Anna-Felicitas came by her great idea.

CHAPTER XXI