Germans -- Foreign countries -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Twins -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"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 shore 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. "Nobody 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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