"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 aprons—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, flustered 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 assured herself of the girl's identity, 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? I just know he was kind enough to change clothes with you so you could run away better! And here you're keeping him in that dress when you ought to know it makes him uncomfortable—doesn't it, little boy?"
The little boy movingly ogled her with a sidelong glance of gratitude for what at the moment seemed to be the first kind words he had ever heard.
"You have her give me back my pants!" said he. Then for the first time he faced his inquisitors eye to eye. "I want my own pants!" he declared, stoutly. Man spoke to man there, and both the male Whipples stirred guiltily; feeling base, perhaps, that mere sex loyalty had not earlier restrained them.
"Indeed, you blessed thing, you shall have them this moment!" said the cruel stepmother. "You two march along with me."
"And not keep them till Harvey D. comes home?" It was the implacable Juliana.
"Well"—Mrs. Harvey considered—"I'm sure he would adore to see the little imps, but really they can't stand it any longer, can you, dears? It would be bad for their nerves. We'll have to be satisfied with telling him. Come along quickly!"
"I will, too, run away!"
The girl flung it over her shoulder as she swaggered into the hall. The Wilbur twin trod incessantly on her heels.
"Wants his pants!" murmured Sharon Whipple. "Prunes and apricots! Wants his pants!"
"Mistake ever to part with 'em," observed Gideon. "Of course she browbeat him."
"My young friend here tells me she bribed him," explained Juliana.
"She gave him a lot of money and I'm keeping it for him," said her self-possessed young friend, and he indicated bulging pockets.
"Looted her bank," said Juliana.
"Forehanded little tike," said Sharon, admiringly. "And smart! She can outsmart us all any day in the week!"
In a dim upper bedroom in the big house Wilbur Cowan divested himself of woman's raiment for probably the last time in his life. He hurried more than he might have, because the room was full of large, strange, terrifying furniture. It was a place to get out of as soon as he could. Two buttons at the back of the dress he was unable to reach, but this trifling circumstance did not for more than a scant second delay his release. Then his own clothes were thrust in to him by the stepmother, who embarrassingly lingered to help him button his own waist with the faded horseshoes to the happily restored pants.
"There, there!" she soothed when he was again clad as a man child, and amazingly she kissed him.
Still tingling from this novel assault, he was led by the woman along a dim corridor to a rear stairway. Down this they went, along another corridor to a far door. She brought him to rest in a small, meagrely furnished but delightfully scented room. It was scented with a general aroma of cooked food, and there were many shelves behind glass doors on which dishes were piled. A drawer was opened, and almost instantly in his ready hands was the largest segment of yellow cake he had ever beheld. He had not dreamed that pieces of cake for human consumption could be cut so large. And it was lavishly gemmed with fat raisins. He held it doubtfully.
"Let's look again," said the preposterous woman. She looked again, pushing by a loose-swinging door to do it, and returned with a vast area of apple pie, its outer curve a full ninety degrees of the circle. "Now eat!" said the woman.
She was, indeed, a remarkable woman. She had not first asked him if he were hungry.
"I'm much obliged for my pants and this cake and pie," said the boy, so the woman said, "Yes, yes," and hugged him briefly as he ate.
Not until he had consumed the last morsel of these provisions and eke a bumper of milk did the woman lead him back to that shaded porch where he had lately been put to the torture. But now he was another being, clad not only as became a man among men but inwardly fortified by food. If stepmothers were like this he wished his own father would find one. The girl with her talk about cruelty—he still admired her, but she must be an awful liar. He faced the tormenting group on the porch with almost faultless self-possession. He knew they could not hurt him.
"Well, well, well!" roared Sharon Whipple, meaning again to be humorous. But the restored Wilbur eyed him coldly, with just a faint curiosity that withered the humorist in him. "Well, well!" he repeated, but in dry, businesslike tones, as if he had not meant to be funny in the first place.
"I