enign 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 colour scheme already
made notable by dye from the candy.

"Running away!" echoed the twins. This, also, was sane.

"Where to?" demanded Wilbur.

"Far, far off to the great city with all its pitfalls."

"New York?" demanded Merle. "What's a pitfall?"

"The way Ben Blunt did when his cruel stepmother beat him because he
wouldn't steal and bring it home."

"Ben Blunt?" questioned both twins.

"That's whom I am going to be. That's whom I am now--or just as soon as
I change clothes with some unfortunate. It's in a book. 'Ben Blunt, the
Newsboy; or, From Rags to Riches.' He run off because his cruel
stepmother beat him black and blue, and he become a mere street urchin,
though his father, Mr. Blunt, was a gentleman in good circumstances; and
while he was a mere street urchin he sold papers and blacked boots, and
he was an honest, manly lad and become adopted by a kind, rich old
gentleman named Mr. Pettigrew, that he saved from a gang of rowdies that
boded him no good, and was taken to his palatial mansion and given a
kind home and a new suit of clothes and a good Christian education, and
that's how he got from rags to riches. And I'm going to be it; I'm going
to be a mere street urchin and do everything he did."

"Ho!" The Wilbur twin