“Ought to be soundly trounced,” declared the judge.  “That’s what I always say.”

“This is the worst yet,” continued Mrs. Penniman.

She liked the suspense she had created.  With an unerring gift for oral narrative, she toyed with this.  She must first tell how she got it.

“You know that georgette waist Mrs. Ed Seaver is having?”

“Have they done something awful?” Winona demanded.  “I perfectly well know it wasn’t Merle’s fault.”

“Well, Mrs. Seaver came in about four o’clock for her final fitting, and what do you think?”

“For mercy’s sake!” pleaded Winona.

“And Ed Seaver had been to the barber shop to have his hair cut—­he always gets it cut the fifteenth of each month—­well, he found out all about it from Don Paley, that they’d had to send for to come to the Whipple New Place to cut it neatly off after the way it had been sawed off rough, and she told me word for word.  Well, it’s unbelievable, and every one saying something ought to be done about it—­you just never would be able to guess!”

Winona snapped shut the volume so rich in promise and leaned forward to face her mother desperately.  Mrs. Penniman here coughed in a refined and artificial manner as a final preliminary.  The parrot instantly coughed in the same manner, and—­seeming to like it—­again became Mrs. Penniman in a series of mild, throaty preliminary coughs, as if it would presently begin to tell something almost too good.  The real tale had to be suspended again for this.

“Well,” resumed Mrs. Penniman, feeling that the last value had been extracted from mere suspense, “anyway, it seems that this morning poor little Patricia Whipple was going by the old graveyard, and the twins jumped out and knocked her down and dragged her in there away from the road and simply tore every stitch of clothes off her back and made her dress up in Wilbur’s clothes——­”

“There!” gasped the horrified Winona.  “Didn’t I say it would be Wilbur?”

“And then what did they do but cut off her braid with a knife!”

“Wilbur’s knife—­Merle hasn’t any.”

“And the Lord knows what the little fiends would have done next, but Juliana Whipple happened to be passing, and heard the poor child’s screams and took her away from them.”

“That dreadful, dreadful Wilbur!” cried Winona.

“Reform school,” spoke the judge, as if he uttered it from the bench.

“But something queer,” went on Mrs. Penniman.  “Juliana took the twins home in the pony cart, with Wilbur wearing Patricia’s dress—­it’s a plaid gingham I made myself—­and someone gave him a lot of money and let him go, and they didn’t give Merle any because Ed Seaver saw them on River Street, and Wilbur had it all.  And what did Patricia Whipple say to Don Paley but that she was going to have one of the twins for her brother, because no one else would get her a brother, and so she must.  But what would she want one of those little cutthroats for?  That’s what puzzles me.”