During this conversation Mr. Twist stood mopping his forehead. As often as he mopped it it broke out afresh and had to be mopped again. They were the only passengers left now, and had become very conspicuous. He couldn't but perceive that a group of officials with grim, locked-up-looking mouths were eyeing him and the Twinklers attentively. Always zealous in the cause of virtue, America provided her wharves and landing-places with officials specially appointed to guard the purity of family life. Family life obviously cannot be pure without a marriage being either in it or having at some time or other passed through it. The officials engaged in eyeing Mr. Twist and the twins were all married themselves, and were well acquainted with that awful purity. But eye the Twist and Twinkler party as they might, they could see no trace of marriage anywhere about it. On the contrary, the man of the party looked so uneasy that it amounted to conscious illegality. "Sisters?" said the chief official, stepping forward abruptly. "Eh?" said Mr. Twist, pausing in the wiping of his forehead. "These here--" said the official, jerking his thumb at the twins. "They your sisters?" "No," said Mr. Twist stiffly. "No," said the twins, with one voice. "Do you think we look like him?" "Daughters?" "No," said Mr. Twist stiffly. "No," said the twins, with an ever greater vigour of repudiation. "You _can't_ really think we look as much like him as all that?" "Wife and sister-in-law?" Then the Twinklers laughed. They laughed aloud, even Anna-Rose forgetting her cares for a moment. But they were flattered, because it was at least a proof that they looked thoroughly grown-up. "Then if they ain't your sisters, and they ain't your daughters, and they ain't your wife and sister-in-law, p'raps you'll tell me--" "These young ladies are not anything at all of mine, sir," said Mr. Twist vehemently. "Don't you get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out his jaw. "This is a free country, and I'll have no darned cheek." "These young ladies in no way belong to me," said Mr. Twist more patiently. "They're my friends." "Oh. Friends, are they? Then p'raps you'll tell me what you're going to do with them next." "Do with them?" repeated Mr. Twist, as he stared with puckered brow at the twins. "That's exactly what I wish I knew." The official scanned him from head to foot with triumphant contempt. He had got one of them, anyhow. He felt quite refreshed already. There had been a slump in sinners the past week, and he was as full of suppressed energy and as much tormented by it as an unexercised and overfed horse. "Step this way," he ordered curtly, waving Mr. Twist towards a wooden erection that was apparently an office. "Oh, don't you worry about the girls," he added, as his prey seemed disinclined to leave them.