The Wrong Twin | Page 4

the
solemnities of eternity:
Old Jonas Whipple Was an old cripple! Was an old--
The mockery died in his throat, and he froze to a statue of fear. Beyond
the headstone of Jonas Whipple, and toward the centre of the plot, a
clump of syringa was plainly observed to sway with the movements of
a being unseen.
"I told you!" came the hoarse whisper of Merle, but he, too, was
chained by fright to the fence top.

They waited, breathless, in the presence of the king of terrors. Again
the bush swayed with a sinister motion. A deeper hush fell about them;
the breeze died and song birds stilled their notes. A calamity was
imminent. Neither watcher now doubted that a mocked Jonas Whipple
would terribly issue from the tangle of shrubbery.
The bushes were again agitated; then at the breaking, point of fear for
the Cowan twins the emergent figure proved to be not Jonas but a
trifling and immature female descendant of his, who now sped rapidly
toward them across the intervening glade, nor were the low mounds
sacred to her in her progress. Her short shirt of a plaid gingham flopped
above her thin, bony legs as she ran, and she grasped a wide-brimmed
straw hat in one hand.
* * * * *
It should be said that this girl appalled the twins hardly less than would
an avenging apparition of the outraged Jonas Whipple. Beings of a
baser extraction, they had looked upon Whipples only from afar and
with awe. Upon this particular Whipple they had looked with especial
awe. Other known members of the tribe were inhumanly old and gray
and withered, not creatures with whom the most daring fancy could
picture the Cowan twins sustaining any sane human relationship. But
this one was young and moderately understandable. Observed from
across the room of the Methodist Sunday-school, she was undoubtedly
human like them; but always so befurbished with rare and shining
garments, with glistening silks and costly velvets and laces, with
bonnets of pink rosebuds and gloves of kid, that the thought of any
secular relationship had been preposterous. Yet she was young, an
animal of their own age, whose ways could be comprehended.
She halted her mad flight when she discovered them, then turned to
survey the way she had come. She was panting. The twins regarded her
stonily, shaping defenses if she brought up anything regarding any one
who might have mocked Jonas Whipple.
When again she could breathe evenly, she said: "It was Cousin Juliana
driving by was why I dashed in here. I think I have foiled her."

She was not now the creature of troubled elegance that Sabbaths had
revealed her. The gingham dress was such as a daughter of the people
might have worn, and the straw hat, though beribboned, was not
impressive. She was a bony little girl, with quick, greenish eyes and a
meagre pigtail of hair of the hue that will often cause a girl to be called
Carrots. Her thin, eager face was lavishly freckled; her nose was trivial
to the last extreme. Besides her hat, she carried and now nonchalantly
drew refreshment from a stick of spirally striped candy inserted for half
its length through the end of a lemon. The candy was evidently of a
porous texture, so that the juice of the fruit would reach the consumer's
pursed lips charmingly modified by its passage along the length of the
sweet. One needed but to approximate a vacuum at the upper end of the
candy, and the mighty and mysterious laws of atmospheric pressure
completed the benign process.
It should be said for the twins that they were not social climbers. In
their instant infatuation for this novel device they quite lost the thrill
that should have been theirs from the higher aspects of the encounter.
They were not impressed at meeting a Whipple on terms of seeming
equality. They had eyes and desire solely for this delectable refection.
Again and again the owner enveloped the top of the candy with
prehensile lips; deep cavities appeared in her profusely spangled cheeks.
Her eyes would close in an ecstasy of concentration. The twins stared,
and at intervals were constrained to swallow.
"Gee, gosh!" muttered the Wilbur twin, helpless in the sight of so fierce
a joy. His brother descended briskly from the fence.
"I bet that's good," he said, genially, and taking the half-filled pail from
his brother's unresisting grasp he approached the newcomer. "Try some
of these nice ripe blackberries," he royally urged.
"Thanks a lot!" said the girl, and did so. But the hospitality remained
one-sided.
"I have to keep up my strength," she explained. "I have a long, hard
journey before me. I'm running away."

Blackberry juice now stained her chin, enriching a