CHAPTER II
They came all too soon to a gate giving upon the public road and the world of the living who make remarks about strange sights they witness. Still it was a quiet street, and they were accorded no immediate reception. There stood the pony cart of Miss Juliana, and this, she made known, they were to enter. It was a lovely vehicle, drawn by a lovely fat pony, and the Wilbur twin had often envied those privileged to ride in it. Never had he dreamed so rich a treat could be his. Now it was to be his, but the thing was no longer a lovely pony cart; it was a tumbril—worse than a tumbril, for he was going to a fate worse than death.
The shameful skirt flopped about his bare legs as he awkwardly clambered into the rear seat beside the sex-muddled creature in a boy's suit and a girl's hat. Miss Juliana and the godly Merle in the front seat had very definitely drawn aloof from the outcasts. They chatted on matters at large in the most polite and social manner. They quite appeared to have forgotten that their equipage might attract the notice of the vulgar. When from time to time it actually did this the girl held her head brazenly erect and shot back stare for stare, but the Wilbur twin bowed low and suffered.
Sometimes it would merely be astounded adults who paused to regard them, to point canes or fingers at them. But again it would be the young who had never been disciplined to restrain their emotions in public. Some of these ran for a time beside the cart, with glad cries, their clear, ringing voices raised in comments of a professedly humorous character. Under Juliana's direction the cart did not progress too rapidly. At one crossing she actually stopped the thing until Ellis Bristow, who was blind, had with his knowing cane tapped a safe way across the street. The Wilbur twin at this moment frankly rejoiced in the infirmity of poor Ellis Bristow. It was sweet relief not to have him stop and stare and point. If given the power at this juncture he would have summarily blinded all the eyes of Newbern Center.
Up shaded streets they progressed, leaving a wake of purest joy astern. But at last they began the ascent of West Hill, that led to the Whipple New Place, leaving behind those streets that came alive at their approach. For the remainder of their dread progress they would elicit only the startled regard of an occasional adult farmer.
"What'll she do to us?" The Wilbur twin mumbled this under cover of sprightly talk from the front seat. His brother at the moment was boasting of his scholastic attainments. He had, it appeared, come on amazingly in long division.
"She won't do a thing!" replied his companion in shame. "Don't you be afraid!"
"I am afraid. But I wouldn't be afraid if I had my pants on again," explained the Wilbur twin, going accurately to the soul of his panic.
"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 rectitude. True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values, but this could not dim the lustre 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