The Merle twin at this looked across at him with marked disfavour.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Juliana.
"Nonsense!" said Sharon Whipple.
"Take it, of course!" said Gideon Whipple.
"He's earned it fairly," said Juliana. She turned to Merle. "Give it to him," she directed.
This was not as Merle would have wished. If the money had been earned he was still willing to take care of it, wasn't he?
"A beggarly pittance for what he did," said Gideon Whipple, warmly.
"Wouldn't do it myself for twice the amount, whatever it is," said Sharon.
Very slowly, under the Whipple regard, the Merle twin poured the price of his brother's shame into his brother's cupped hands. The brother felt religious at this moment. He remembered seriously those things they told you in Sunday-school—about a power above that watches over us and makes all come right. There must be something in that talk.
The fiscal transaction was completed. The twins looked up to become aware that their late confederate surveyed them from the doorway. Her eyes hinted of a recent stormy past, but once more she was decorously apparelled.
"Your little guests are leaving," said the stepmother. "You must bid them good-bye."
Her little guests became statues as the girl approached them.
"So glad you could come," she said, and ceremoniously shook the hand of each. The twins wielded arms rigid from the shoulder, shaking twice down and twice up. "It has been so pleasant to have you," said the girl.
"We've had a delightful time," said the Merle twin.
The other tried to echo this, but again his teeth were tightly locked, and he made but a meaningless squeak far back in his throat. He used this for the beginning of a cough, which he finished with a decent aplomb.
"You must come again," said the girl, mechanically.
"We shall be so glad to," replied the Merle twin, glancing a bright farewell to the group.
The other twin was unable to glance intelligently at any one. His eyes were now glazed. He stumbled against his well-mannered brother and heavily descended the steps.
"You earned your money!" called Sharon Whipple.
The Wilbur twin was in advance, and stayed so as they trudged down the roadway to the big gate. With his first free breath he had felt his importance as the lawful possessor of limitless wealth.
"Bright little skeesicks," said Sharon Whipple.
"But the brother is really remarkable," said Gideon—"so well-mannered, so sure of himself. He has quite a personality."
"Other has the gumption," declared Sharon.
"I've decided to have one of them for my brother," announced the girl.
"Indeed?" said Gideon.
"Well, everybody said I might have a brother, but nobody does anything about it. I will have one of those. I think the nice one that doesn't smoke."
"Poor motherless pet!" murmured the stepmother, helplessly.
"A brother is not what you need most at this time," broke in Juliana. "It's a barber."
Down the dusty road over West Hill went the twins, Wilbur still forcefully leading. His brother was becoming uneasy. There was a strange light in the other's eyes, an unwonted look of power. When they were off the hill and come to the upper end of shaded Fair Street, Merle advanced to keep pace beside his brother. The latter's rate of speed had increased as they neared the town.
"Hadn't I better take care of our money for us?" he at last asked in a voice oily with solicitude.
"No, sir!"
The "sir" was weighted with so heavy an emphasis that the tactful Merle merely said "Oh!" in a hurt tone.
"I can take care of my own money for me," added the speeding capitalist, seeming to wish that any possible misconception as to the ownership of the hoard might be definitely removed.
"Oh," said Merle again, this being all that with any dignity he could think of to say. They were now passing the quiet acre that had been the scene of the morning's unpleasantness. Their pails, half filled with berries, were still there, but the strangely behaving Wilbur refused to go for them. He eyed the place with disrelish. He would not again willingly approach that spot where he had gone down into the valley of shame. Reminded that the pails were not theirs, he brutally asked what did he care, adding that he could buy a million pails if he took a notion to. But presently he listened to reason, and made reasonable proposals. The Merle twin was to go back to the evil place, salvage the pails, leave them at the Penniman house, and hasten to a certain confectioner's at the heart of the town, where a lavish reward would be at once his. After troubled reflection he consented, and they went their ways. The Merle twin sped to the quiet nook where Jonas Whipple had been put away in 1828, and sped away from there as soon as he had the pails. Not even did he bend a moment above the little new-made grave where lay a part of all that was mortal of Patricia Whipple. He disliked graveyards on principle, and he wished his reward.
Wilbur Cowan kept his quick way down Fair Street. He had been lifted to pecuniary eminence, and incessantly the new wealth pressed upon his consciousness. The markets of the world were at his mercy. There were shop windows outside which he had long been compelled to linger in sterile choosing. Now he could enter and buy, and he was in a hurry to be at it. Something warned him to seize his golden moment on the wing. The day was Saturday, and he was pleasantly thrilled by the unwonted crowds on River Street, which he now entered. Farm horses were tethered thickly along hitching racks and shoppers thronged the marts of trade. He threaded a way among them till he stood before the establishment of Solly Gumble, confectioner. It brought him another thrill that the people all about should be unaware of his wealth—he, laden with unsuspected treasure that sagged cool and heavy on either thigh, while they could but suppose him to be a conventionally impoverished small boy.
He tried to be cool—to calculate sanely his first expenditure. But he contrived an air of careless indecision as he sauntered through the portals of the Gumble place and lingered before the counter of choicest sweets, those so desirable that they must be guarded under glass from a loftily sampling public.
"Two of those and two of those and one of them!"
It was his first order, and brought him, for five cents, two cocoanut creams, two candied plums, and a chocolate mouse. He stood eating these while he leisurely surveyed the neighbouring delicacies. Vaguely in his mind was the thought that he might buy the place and thereafter keep store. His cheeks distended by the chocolate mouse and the last of the cocoanut creams, he now bartered for a candy cigar. It was of brown material, at the blunt end a circle of white for the ash and at its centre a brilliant square of scarlet paper for the glow, altogether a charming feat of simulation, perhaps the most delightful humoresque in all confectionery. It was priced at two cents, but what was money now?
Then, his eye roving to the loftier shelves, he spied remotely above him a stuffed blue jay mounted on a varnished branch of oak. This was not properly a part of the Gumble stock; it was a fixture, technically, giving an air to the place from its niche between two mounting rows of laden shelves.
"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?" demanded the nouveau riche.
His words were blurred by the still-resistant chocolate mouse, and he was compelled to point before Solly Gumble divined his wish. The merchant debated, removing his skullcap, smoothing his grizzled fringe of curls, fitting the cap on again deliberately. Then he turned to survey the bird, seemingly with an interest newly wakened. It was indeed a beautiful bird, brilliantly blue, with sparkling eyes; a bit dusty, but rarely desirable. The owner had not meant to part with it; still, trade was trade. He meditated,