Chapter 24
Yet another harassing experience awaited Mr. Twist before the end of that week. It had been from the first his anxious concern that nothing should occur at the Cosmopolitan to get his party under a cloud; yet it did get under a cloud, and on the very last afternoon, too, before Mrs. Bilton's arrival. Only twenty-four hours more and her snowy-haired respectability would have spread over the twins like a white whig. They would have been safe. His party would have been unassailable. But no; those Twinklers, in spite of his exhortation whenever he had a minute left to exhort in, couldn't, it seemed, refrain from twinkling,--the word in Mr. Twist's mind covered the whole of their easy friendliness, their flow of language, their affable desire to explain. He had kept them with him as much as h
- Writer
