being such as one might safely repeat; many more, Winona
uncomfortably recalled, the sort no good woman would let go any further.
She hoped the imminent disclosure would not be of the latter class, yet
suddenly she wished to hear it even if it were. She affected to turn
with reluctance from her budding acquaintanceship with Matthew Arnold.

"It's the twins," began her mother with a look of pleased horror. "You
couldn't guess in all day what they've been up to."

"You may be sure Wilbur was the one to blame," put in Winona, quick to
defend the one most responsive to her lessons in faith, morals,
etiquette.

"Ought to be soundly trounced," declared the judge. "That's what I
always say."

"This is the worst yet," continued Mrs. Penniman.

She liked the suspense she had created. With an unerring gift for oral
narrative, she toyed with this. She must first tell how she got it.

"You know that georgette waist Mrs. Ed Seaver is having?"

"Have they done something awful?" Winona demanded. "I perfectly well
know it wasn't Merle's fault."

"Well, Mrs. Seaver came in about four o'clock for her final fitting,
and what do you think?"

"For mercy's sake!" pleaded Winona.

"And Ed Seaver had been to the barber shop to have his hair cut--he
always gets it cut the fifteenth of each month--well, he found out all
about it from Don Paley, that they'd had to send for to come to the
Whipple New Place to cut it neatly off after the way it had been sawed
off rough, and she told me word for word. Well, it's unbelievable, and
every one saying something ought to be done about it--you just never
would be able to guess!"

Winona snapped shut the volume so rich in promise and leaned forward to
face her mother desperately. Mrs. Penniman here coughed in a refined and
artificial manner as a final preliminary. The parrot instantly coughed
in the same manner, and--seeming to like it--again became Mrs. Penniman
in a series of mild, throaty preliminary coughs, as if it would
presently begin to tell something almost too good. The real tale had to
be suspended again for this.

"Well," resumed Mrs. Penniman, feeling that the last value had been
extracted from mere suspense, "anyway, it seems that this morning poor
little Patricia Whipple was going by the old graveyard, and the twins
jumped out and knocked her down and dragged her in there away from the
road and simply tore every stitch of clothes off her back and made her
dress up in Wilbur's