The Wrong Twin | Page 8

adjusted, rather far back on the shorn head, even the cynical Wilbur had to concede that the effect was not bad. The severed braid, a bow of yellow ribbon at the end, now engaged the notice of its late owner.
"The officers of the law might trace me by it," she said, "so we must foil them."
"Tie a stone to it and sink it in the river," urged Wilbur.
"Hide it in those bushes," suggested Merle.
But the girl was inspired by her surroundings.
"Bury it!" she ordered.
The simple interment was performed. With the knife a shallow grave was opened close to the stone whereon old Jonas Whipple taunted the living that they were but mortal, and in it they laid the pigtail to its last rest, patting the earth above it and replacing the turf against possible ghouls.
Again the girl swaggered broadly before them, swinging her shoulders, flaunting her emancipated legs in a stride she considered masculine. Then she halted, hands in pockets, rocked easily upon heel and toe, and spat expertly between her teeth. For the first time she impressed the Wilbur twin, extorting his reluctant admiration. He had never been able to spit between his teeth. Still, there must be things she couldn't do.
"You got to smoke and chew and curse," he warned her.
"I won't, either! It says Ben Blunt was a sturdy lad of good habits. Besides, I could smoke if I wanted to. I already have. I smoked Harvey D.'s pipe."
"Who's Harvey D.?"
"My father. I smoked his pipe repeatedly."
"Repeatedly?"
"Well, I smoked it twice. That's repeatedly, ain't it? I'd have done it more repeatedly, but Miss Murtree sneaked in and made a scene."
"Did you swallow the smoke through your nose?"
"I--I guess so. It tasted way down on my insides."
Plainly there was something to the girl after all. The Wilbur twin here extracted from the dress pocket, to which he had transferred his few belongings, the half of something known to Newbern as a pennygrab. It was a slender roll of quite inferior dark tobacco, and the original purchaser had probably discarded it gladly. The present owner displayed it to the girl.
"I'll give you a part of this, and we'll light up."
"Well, I don't know. It says Ben Blunt was a sturdy lad of good----"
"I bet you never did smoke repeatedly!"
Her manhood was challenged.
"I'll show you!" she retorted, grim about the lips.
With his knife he cut the evil thing in fair halves. The girl received her portion with calmness, if not with gratitude, and lighted it from the match he gallantly held for her. And so they smoked. The Merle twin never smoked for two famous Puritan reasons--it was wrong for boys to smoke and it made him sick. He eyed the present saturnalia with strong disapproval. The admiration of the Wilbur twin--now forgetting his ignominy--was frankly worded. Plainly she was no common girl.
"I bet you'll be all right in the big city," he said.
"Of course I will," said the girl.
She spat between her teeth with a fine artistry. In truth she was spitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, but she held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers and contrived an air of relish for it.
"Anyway," she went on, "it'll be better than here where I suffered so terribly with everybody making the vilest scenes about any little thing that happened. After they find it's too late they'll begin to wish they'd acted kinder. But I won't ever come back, not if they beg me to with tears streaming down their faces, after the vile way they acted; saying maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D. got that stepmother, but nothing was ever done about it, and just because I tried to hide Mrs. Wadley's baby that comes to wash, and then because I tried to get that gypsy woman's baby, because everyone knows they're always stealing other people's babies, and she made a vile scene, too, and everyone tortured me beyond endurance."
This was interesting. It left the twins wishing to ask questions.
"Did that stepmother beat you good?" again demanded Merle.
"Well, not the way Ben Blunt's stepmother did, but she wanted to know what I meant by it and all like that. Of course she's cruel. Don't you know that all stepmothers are cruel? Did you ever read a story about one that wasn't vile and cruel and often tried to leave the helpless children in the woods to be devoured by wolves? I should say not!"
"Where did you hide that Wadley baby?"
"Up in the storeroom in a nice big trunk, where I fixed a bed and everything for it, while its mother was working down in the laundry, and I thought they'd look a while and give it up, but this Mrs. Wadley is kind of simple-minded or something.