e Wilbur twin took them
and the shoes of Merle to their owners, then hastened with his own to
the little house where he must dress in his own Sunday clothes, wash his
hands with due care--they would be doubtingly inspected by Winona--and
put soap on his hair to make it lie down. Merle's hair would lie
politely as combed, but his own hair owned no master but soap. Lacking
this, it stood out and up in wicked disorder--like the hair of a rowdy,
Winona said.

The rebellious stuff was at last plastered deceitfully to his skull as
if a mere brush had smoothed it, and with a final survey, to assure
himself that he had forgotten none of those niceties of the toilet that
Winona would insist upon, he took his new straw hat and went again to
the Penniman house. For the moment he was in flawless order, as neat, as
compactly and accurately accoutred as the Merle twin, to whom this
effect came without effort. But it would be so only for a few fleeting
moments. He mournfully knew this, and so did Winona. Within five blocks
from home and still five blocks from the edifice of worship, while Merle
appeared as one born to Sunday clothes and shined shoes and a new hat,
the Wilbur twin would be one to whom Sabbath finery was exotic and
unwelcome. The flawless lustre of his shoes would be dulled, even though
he walked sedately the safe sidewalk; his broad collar and blue
polka-dotted cravat would be awry, one stocking would be down, his
jacket yawning, all his magnificence seeming unconquerably alien. Winona
did him the justice to recognize that this disarray was due to no
wilfulness of its victim. He was helpless against a malign current of
his being.

He held himself stiff in the parlour until the Pennimans came rustling
down the stairway. He could exult in a long look at the benignant lion
back of real bars, but, of course, he could not now reach up to touch
the bars. It would do something to his clothes, even if the watchful and
upright Merle had not been there to report a transgression of the rules.
Merle also stood waiting, his hat nicely in one hand.

The judge descended the stairs, monumental in black frock coat, gray
trousers, and the lately polished shoes that were like shining relief
maps of a hill country. He carried a lustrous silk hat, which he now
paused to make more lustrous, his fingers clutching a sleeve of his coat
and pulling it down to make a brush. The hat was the only item of the
judge's regal attire of which the Wi