"I"ll do it next time," said the girl. "I"ll hurry. I won"t stop at any old graveyard."
"Graveyard!" uttered the other, feelingly. "I should say not!" Never again was he to think of such places with any real pleasure.
"All she wants," explained the girl--"she wants to talk up in her nose like she was giving a lecture. She loves to. She"ll make a vile scene."
Now they were through an imposing gate of masonry, and the pony languidly drew them along a wide driveway toward the Whipple mansion, an experience which neither of the twins had ever hoped to brave; but only one of them was deriving any pleasure from the social elevation. The Merle twin looked blandly over the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds and tenderly nursed shrubs, and then at the pile of red brick with its many windows under gay-striped awnings, and its surmounting white cupola, which he had often admired from afar. He glowed with rect.i.tude.
True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values, but this could not dim the l.u.s.tre of his own virtue or his pleasant suspicion that it was somehow going to be suitably rewarded. Was he not being driven by a grand-mannered lady up a beautiful roadway past millions of flowers and toward a wonderful house? It paid to be good.
The Wilbur twin had ceased to regard his surroundings. He gazed stolidly before him, nor made the least note of what his eyes rested upon. He was there, helpless. They had him!
The cart drew up beside steps leading to a wide porch shaded by a striped awning.
"Home at last," cooed Miss Juliana with false welcome.
A loutish person promptly abandoned a lawn mower in the near distance and came to stand by the head of the languid pony. He grinned horribly, and winked as the two figures descended from the rear of the cart. For a moment, halting on the first of the steps, the Wilbur twin became aware that just beyond him, almost to be grasped, was a veritable rainbow curved above a whirling lawn sprinkler. And he had learned that a rainbow is a thing of gracious promise. But probably they have to be natural rainbows; probably you don"t get anything out of one you make yourself. Even as he looked, the shining omen vanished, somewhere shut off by an unseen power.
"This way, please," called Miss Juliana, cordially, and he followed her guiltily up the steps to the shaded porch.
The girl had preceded her. The Merle twin lingered back of them, shocked, austere, deprecating, and yet somehow bland withal, as if these little affairs were not without their compensating features.
The bowed Wilbur twin was startled by a gusty torrent of laughter. With torturing effort, he raised his eyes to a couple of elderly male Whipples. One sat erect on a cushioned bench, and one had lain at ease in a long, low thing of wicker. It was this one who made the ill-timed and tasteless demonstration that was still continuing. Ultimately the creature lost all tone from his laughter. It went on, soundless but uncannily poignant. Such was the effect that the Wilbur twin wondered if his own ears had been suddenly deafened. This Whipple continued to shake silently. The other, who had not laughed, whose face seemed ill-modelled for laughing, nevertheless turned sparkling eyes from under shelving brows upon Juliana and said in words stressed with emotion: "My dear, you have brightened my whole day."
The first Whipple, now recovered from his unseemly paroxysm, sat erect to study the newcomers in detail. He was a short, round-chested man with a round moon face marked by heavy brows like those of the other. He had fat wrists and stout, blunt fingers. With a stubby thumb he now pushed up the outer ends of the heavy brows as if to heighten the power of his vision for this cherished spectacle.
"I seem to recognize the lad," he murmured as if in privacy to his own hairy ears. "Surely I"ve seen the rascal about the place, perhaps helping Nathan at the stable; but that lovely little girl--I"ve not had the pleasure of meeting her before. Come, sissy"--he held out blandishing arms--"come here, Totte, and give the old man a kiss."
Could hate destroy, these had been the dying words of Sharon Whipple.
But the Wilbur twin could manage only a sidelong glare insufficient to slay. His brother giggled until he saw that he made merry alone.
"What? Bless my soul, the minx is sulky!" roared the wit.
The other Whipple intervened.
"What was our pride and our joy bent upon this time?" he suavely demanded. "I take it you"ve thwarted her in some new plot against the public tranquillity."
"The young person you indicate," said Juliana, "was about to leave her home forever--going out to live her own life away from these distasteful surroundings."
"So soon? We should be proud of her! At that tender age, going out to make a name for herself!"
"I gather from this very intelligent young gentleman here that she had made the name for herself before even starting."
"It was Ben Blunt," remarked the young gentleman, helpfully.
"Hey!" Sharon Whipple affected dismay. "Then what about this young girl at his side? Don"t tell me she was luring him from his home here?"
"It will surprise you to know," said Juliana in her best style, "that this young girl before you is not a girl."
Both Whipples ably professed amazement.
"Not a girl?" repeated the suave Whipple incredulously. "You do amaze me, Juliana! Not a girl, with those flower-like features, those starry eyes, that feminine allure? Preposterous! And yet, if he is not a girl he is, I take it, a boy."
"A boy who incited the light of our house to wayward courses by changing clothes with her."
The harsher Whipple spoke here in a new tone.
"Then she browbeat him into it. Scissors and white ap.r.o.ns--yes, I know her!"
"He didn"t seem browbeaten. They were smoking quite companionably when I chanced upon them."
"Smoking! Our angel child smoking!"
This from Sharon Whipple in tones that every child present knew as a mere pretense of horror. Juliana shrugged cynically.
"They always go to the bad after they leave their nice homes," she said.
"Children should never smoke till they are twenty-one, and then they get a gold watch for it," interjected the orator, Merle. He had felt that he was not being made enough of. "It"s bad for their growing systems," he added.
"And this?" asked Gideon Whipple, indicating the moralist.
"The brother of that"--Juliana pointed. "He did his best in the way of advice, I gather, but neither of the pair would listen to him. He seems to be safely conservative, but not to have much influence over his fellows."
"Willing to talk about it, though," said Sharon Whipple, pointedly.
The girl now glowered at each of them in turn.
"I don"t care!" she muttered. "I will, too, run away! You see!"
"It"s what they call a fixed idea," explained Juliana. "She doesn"t care and she will, too, run away. But where is Mrs. Harvey?"
"Poor soul!" murmured Sharon. "Think what a lot she"s missed already! Do call her, my dear!"
Juliana stepped to the doorway and called musically into the dusky hall: "Mrs. Harvey! Mrs. Harvey! Come quickly, please! We have something lovely to show you!"
The offenders were still to be butchered to make a Whipple holiday.
"Coming!" called a high voice from far within.
The Wilbur twin sickeningly guessed this would be the cruel stepmother.
Real cruelty would now begin. Beating, most likely. But when, a moment later, she stood puzzling in the doorway, he felt an instant relief. She did not look cruel. She was not even bearded. She was a plump, meekly prettyish woman with a quick, fl.u.s.tered manner and a soft voice. She brought something the culprits had not found in their other judges.
"Why, you poor, dear, motherless thing!" she cried when she had a.s.sured herself of the girl"s ident.i.ty, and with this she enfolded her. "I"d like to know what they"ve been doing to my pet!" she declared, aggressively.
"The pet did it all to herself," explained Gideon Whipple.
"I will, too, run away!" affirmed the girl, though some deeper conviction had faded from the threat.
"Still talking huge high," said Sharon. "But at your age, my young friend, running away is overchancy." Mrs. Harvey Whipple ignored this.
"Of course you will--run away all you like," she soothed. "It"s good for people to run away." Then she turned amazingly to the Wilbur twin and spoke him fair as a fellow human. "And who is this dear little boy?