resent at this terrible ceremony.

He had no doubt there would be a ceremony--all the Whipples arriving in
their own Sunday clothes, maybe the preacher coming with them; and they
would sit silently in the parlour the way they did at the Finkboner
house, and maybe the preacher would talk, and maybe they would sing or
pray or something, and then they would take Merle away. He was not to be
blamed for this happily inaccurate picture; he was justified by the
behaviour of Winona and her mother. And he was not going to be there! He
wouldn't exactly run away; he felt a morbid wish to watch the thing if
he could be apart from it; but he was going to be apart. He remembered
too well the scene at the Finkboner house--and the smell of tuberoses.
Winona had unaccustomed flowers in the parlour now--not tuberoses, but
almost as bad. Until a quarter to three he expertly shuffled and dawdled
and evaded. Then Winona took a stand with him.

"Wilbur Cowan, go at once and dress yourself properly! Do you expect to
appear before the Whipples that way?"

He vanished in a flurry of seeming obedience. He went openly through the
front door of the little house into the side yard, but paused not until
he reached its back door, where he stood waiting. When he guessed he had
been there fifteen minutes he prepared to change his lurking place.
Winona would be coming for him. He stepped out and looked round the
corner of the little house, feeling inconsequently the thrill of a
scout among hostile red Indians as described in a favoured romance.

The lawn between the little house and the big house was free of
searchers. He drew a long breath and made a swift dash to further
obscurity in the lee of the Penniman woodshed. He skirted the end of
this structure and peered about its corner, estimating the distance to
the side door. But this was risky; it would bring him in view of a
kitchen window whence some busybody might observe him. But there was an
open window above him giving entrance to the woodshed. He leaped to
catch its sill and clambered up to look in. The woodshed was vacant of
Pennimans, and its shadowy silence promised security. He dropped from
the window ledge. There was no floor beneath, so that the drop was
greater than he had counted on. He fell among loose kindling wood with
more noise than he would have desired, quickly rose, stumbled in the
dusk against a bucket half filled with whitewash, and sprawled again
into a pile of soft coal.