. Aforetime she had devoted her efforts chiefly to Merle as
being the better worth saving. Now that she had indeed saved him, made
and uplifted him beyond human expectation, she redoubled her attentions
to his less responsive, less plastic brother. Almost fiercely she was
bent upon making him the moral perfectionist she had made Merle.

As one of the means to this end she regaled him often with tales of his
brother's social and moral refulgence under his new name. The severance
of Merle from his former environment had been complete. Not yet had he
come back to see them. But Winona from church and Sunday-school brought
weekly reports of his progress in the esteem of the family which he now
adorned. Harvey D. Whipple was proud of his new son; had already come to
feel a real fatherhood for him, and could deny him nothing. He was such
a son as Harvey D. had hoped to have. Old Gideon Whipple, too, was proud
of his new grandson. The stepmother, for whom Fate had been circumvented
by this device of adoption, looked up to the boy and rejoiced in her
roundabout motherhood, and Miss Murtree declared that he was a perfect
little gentleman. Also, by her account, he was studious, with a natural
fondness for the best in literature, and betrayed signs of an intellect
such as, in her confidentially imparted opinion, the Whipple family,
neither in root nor branch, had yet revealed. Patricia, the sister, had
abandoned all intention of running away from home to obtain the right
sort of companionship.

Winona meant to pique and inspire Wilbur to new endeavour with these
tales, which, for a good purpose, she took the liberty of embellishing
where they seemed to invite it--as how the Whipples were often heard to
wish that the other twin had been as good and well-mannered a boy as
Merle--who did not use tobacco in any form--so they might have adopted
him, too. Winona was perhaps never to understand that Wilbur could not
picture himself as despised and rejected. His assertion that he had not
wished to be adopted by any Whipples she put down to envious bravado.
Had he not from afar on more than one occasion beheld his brother riding
the prophesied pony? But he would have felt embarrassed at meeting his
brother now face to face. He liked to see him at a distance, on the
wonderful pony, or being driven in the cart with other Whipples, and he
felt a great pride that he should have been thus exalted. But he was
shyly determined to have no contact w