ther, and it'll last a
lifetime if he takes care of it good; and I got me a dog to watch the
house." Breathless he paused.

"Spent all his money!" intoned Merle. "And he bought me this knife,
too."

He displayed it, but merely as a count in the indictment for criminal
extravagance. He had gone to the hammock to sit by Winona. He needed
her. He had been too long unconsidered.

The sputtering gift-bringer bestowed the orange upon Mrs. Penniman, the
album upon Winona, and the invigorator upon the now embarrassed judge.

"Thank you, Wilbur, dear!" Mrs. Penniman was first to recover her poise.

"Thanks ever so much," echoed Winona, doubtfully.

She must first know that he had come by this money righteously. The
judge adjusted spectacles to read the label on his gift.

"Thank you, my boy. The stuff may give me temporary relief."

He had felt affronted that any one could suppose one bottle of anything
would make a new man of him; and--inconsistently enough--affronted that
any one should suppose he needed to be made a new man of. He had not
liked the phrase at all.

"And now perhaps you will tell us----" began Winona, her lips again
tightening. But the Wilbur twin could not yet be brought down to mere
history.

"This is an awful fighting dog," he was saying. "He's called Frank, and
he eats them up. Yes, sir, he nearly et up that old Boodles dog just
now. He would of if I hadn't stopped him. He minds awful well."

"Spent all _our_ money!" declaimed Merle in a public-school voice, using
"our" for the first time since his defeat of the morning. Certain of
Winona's support, it had again become their money. "And cursing,
swearing, fighting, smoking!"

"Oh, Wilbur!" exclaimed the shocked Winona; yet there was dismay more
than rebuke in her tone, for she had brought the album to view. "If
you've been a bad boy perhaps I should not accept this lovely gift from
you. Remember--we don't yet know how you obtained all this money."

"Ho! I earned that money good! That old fat Mr. Whipple said I earned it
good. He said he wouldn't of done what I done----"

"Did, dear!"

"--wouldn't of did what I did for twice the money."

"And what was it you did?"

Winona spoke gently, as a friend. But Wilbur rubbed one bare foot
against and over the other. He was not going to tell that shameful
thing, even to these people.

"Oh, I didn't do much of anything," he muttered.

"But what was it?"

The judge interrupted.

"It says half