Part 11 (1/2)

When the _St. Luke_ was so near its journey's end that people were packing up, and the word Nantucket was frequent in the sc.r.a.ps of talk the twins heard, they woke up from the unworried condition of mind Mr.

Twist's kindness and the dreamy monotony of the days had produced in them, and began to consider their prospects with more attention. This attention soon resulted in anxiety. Anna-Rose showed hers by being irritable. Anna-Felicitas didn't show hers at all.

It was all very well, so long as they were far away from America and never quite sure that a submarine mightn't settle their future for them once and for all, to feel big, vague, heroic things about a new life and a new world and they two Twinklers going to conquer it; but when the new world was really upon them, and the new life, with all the mult.i.tudinous details that would have to be tackled, going to begin in a few hours, their hearts became uneasy and sank within them. England hadn't liked them. Suppose America didn't like them either? Uncle Arthur hadn't liked them. Suppose Uncle Arthur's friends didn't like them either? Their hearts sank to, and remained in, their boots.

Round Anna-Rose's waist, safely concealed beneath her skirt from what Anna-Felicitas called the predatory instincts of their fellow-pa.s.sengers, was a chamois-leather bag containing their pa.s.sports, a letter to the bank where their 200 was, a letter to those friends of Uncle Arthur's who were to be tried first, a letter to those other friends of his who were to be the second line of defence supposing the first one failed, and ten pounds in two 5 notes.

Uncle Arthur, grievously grumbling, and having previously used in bed most of those vulgar words that made Aunt Alice so miserable, had given Anna-Rose one of the 5 notes for the extra expenses of the journey till, in New York, she should be able to draw on the 200, though what expenses there could be for a couple of girls whose pa.s.sage was paid Uncle Arthur was d.a.m.ned, he alleged, if he knew; and Aunt Alice had secretly added the other. This was all Anna-Rose's ready money, and it would have to be changed into dollars before reaching New York so as to be ready for emergencies on arrival. She judged from the growing restlessness of the pa.s.sengers that it would soon be time to go and change it. How many dollars ought she to get?

Mr. Twist was absent, packing his things. She ought to have asked him long ago, but they seemed so suddenly to have reached the end of their journey. Only yesterday there was the same old limitless sea everywhere, the same old feeling that they were never going to arrive. Now the waves had all gone, and one could actually see land. The New World. The place all their happiness or unhappiness would depend on.

She laid hold of Anna-Felicitas, who was walking about just as if she had never been prostrate on a deck-chair in her life, and was going to say something appropriate and encouraging on the Christopher and Columbus lines; but Anna-Felicitas, who had been pondering the 5 notes problem, wouldn't listen.

”A dollar,” said Anna-Felicitas, worrying it out, ”isn't like a s.h.i.+lling or a mark, but on the other hand neither is it like a pound.”

”No,” said Anna-Rose, brought back to her immediate business.

”It's four times more than one, and five times less than the other,”

said Anna-Felicitas. ”That's how you've got to count. That's what Aunt Alice said.”

”Yes. And then there's the exchange,” said Anna-Rose, frowning. ”As if it wasn't complicated enough already, there's the exchange. Uncle Arthur said we weren't to forget that.”

Anna-Felicitas wanted to know what was meant by the exchange, and Anna-Rose, unwilling to admit ignorance to Anna-Felicitas, who had to be kept in her proper place, especially when one was just getting to America and she might easily become above herself, said that it was something that varied. (”The exchange, you know, varies,” Uncle Arthur had said when he gave her the 5 note. ”You must keep your eye on the variations.” Anna-Rose was all eagerness to keep her eye on them, if only she had known what and where they were. But one never asked questions of Uncle Arthur. His answers, if one did, were confined to expressions of anger and amazement that one didn't, at one's age, already know.)

”Oh,” said Anna-Felicitas, for a moment glancing at Anna-Rose out of the corner of her eye, considerately not pressing her further.

”I wish Mr. Twist would come,” said Anna-Rose uneasily, looking in the direction he usually appeared from.

”We won't always have _him_” remarked Anna-Felicitas.

”I never said we would,” said Anna-Rose shortly.

The young lady of the nails appeared at that moment in a hat so gorgeous that the twins stopped dead to stare. She had a veil on and white gloves, and looked as if she were going for a walk in Fifth Avenue the very next minute.

”Perhaps we ought to be getting ready too,” said Anna-Felicitas.

”Yes. I wish Mr. Twist would come--”

”Perhaps we'd better begin and practise not having Mr. Twist,” said Anna-Felicitas, as one who addresses n.o.body specially and means nothing in particular.

”If anybody's got to practise that, it'll be you,” said Anna-Rose.

”There'll be no one to roll you up in rugs now, remember. I won't.”

”But I don't want to be rolled up in rugs,” said Anna-Felicitas mildly.

”I shall be walking about New York.”

”Oh, _you'll_ see,” said Anna-Rose irritably.

She was worried about the dollars. She was worried about the tipping, and the luggage, and the arrival, and Uncle Arthur's friends, whose names were Mr. and Mrs. Clouston K. Sack; so naturally she was irritable. One is. And n.o.body knew and understood this better than Anna-Felicitas.