had managed, as she did manage, to steer successfully among them, he being a man of ripe parts and character, was it likely that encountering odd fancies in two very young and unformed girls--oh, it wasn't their fault that they were unformed, it was merely because they hadn't had time enough yet--she would be unable, experienced as she was, to steer among them too? Besides, she had a heart for orphans; orphans and dumb animals always had had a special appeal for her. "No, no, Mr. Twist," Mrs. Bilton wound up, putting a hand affectionately on Anna-Rose's shoulder as a more convenient one than Anna-Felicitas's, "my young charges aren't going to be left in the lurch, you may rely on that. I don't undertake a duty without carrying it out. Why, I feel a lasting affection for them already. We've made real progress these few days in intimacy. And I just love to sit and listen to all their fresh young chatter." CHAPTER XXIX This was the last of Mr. Twist's worries before the opening day. Remorseful that he should have shirked helping the Annas to bear Mrs. Bilton, besides having had a severe fright on perceiving how near his shirking had brought the party to disaster, he now had his meals with the others and spent the evenings with them as well. He was immensely grateful to Mrs. Bilton. Her grit had saved them. He esteemed and respected her. Indeed, he shook hands with her then and there at the end of her speech, and told her he did, and the least he could do after that was to come to dinner. But this very genuine appreciation didn't prevent his finding her at close quarters what Anna-Rose, greatly chastened, now only called temperately "a little much," and the result was a really frantic hurrying on of the work. He had rather taken, those first four days of being relieved of responsibility in regard to the twins, to finnicking with details, to dwelling lovingly on them with a sense of having a margin to his time, and things accordingly had considerably slowed down; but after twenty-four hours of Mrs. Bilton they hurried up again, and after forty-eight of her the speed was headlong. At the end of forty-eight hours it seemed to Mr. Twist more urgent than anything he had ever known that he should get out of the shanty, get into somewhere with space in it, and sound-proof walls--lots of walls--and long passages between people's doors; and before the rooms in the inn were anything like finished he insisted on moving in. "You must turn to on this last lap and help fix them up," he said to the twins. "It'll be a bit uncomfortable at first, but you must just take off your coats to it and not mind."