The Wrong Twin | Page 9

the vile way they acted; saying
maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D. got that stepmother,
but nothing was ever done about it, and just because I tried to hide Mrs.
Wadley's baby that comes to wash, and then because I tried to get that
gypsy woman's baby, because everyone knows they're always stealing
other people's babies, and she made a vile scene, too, and everyone
tortured me beyond endurance."
This was interesting. It left the twins wishing to ask questions.
"Did that stepmother beat you good?" again demanded Merle.
"Well, not the way Ben Blunt's stepmother did, but she wanted to know
what I meant by it and all like that. Of course she's cruel. Don't you
know that all stepmothers are cruel? Did you ever read a story about
one that wasn't vile and cruel and often tried to leave the helpless
children in the woods to be devoured by wolves? I should say not!"
"Where did you hide that Wadley baby?"
"Up in the storeroom in a nice big trunk, where I fixed a bed and
everything for it, while its mother was working down in the laundry,
and I thought they'd look a while and give it up, but this Mrs. Wadley is
kind of simple-minded or something. She took on so I had to say
maybe somebody had put it in this trunk where it could have a nice
time. And this stepmother taking on almost as bad."
"Did you nearly get a gypsy woman's baby?"
"Nearly. They're camped in the woods up back of our place, and I went
round to see their wagons, and the man had some fighting roosters that
would fight anybody else's roosters, and they had horses to race, and
the gypsy woman would tell the future lives of anybody and what was
going to happen to them, and so I saw this lovely, lovely baby asleep

on a blanket under some bushes, and probably they had stole it from
some good family, so while they was busy I picked it up and run."
"Did they chase you?"
Wilbur Cowan was by now almost abject in his admiration of this
fearless spirit.
"Not at first; but when I got up to our fence I heard some of 'em yelling
like very fiends, and they came after me through the woods, but I got
inside our yard, and the baby woke up and yelled like a very fiend, and
Nathan Marwick came running out of our barn and says: 'What in time
is all this?' And someone told folks in the house and out comes Harvey
D.'s stepmother that he got married to, and Grandpa Gideon and Cousin
Juliana that happened to be there, and all the gypsies rushed up the hill
and everyone made the vilest scene and I had to give back this lovely
baby to the gypsy woman that claimed it. You'd think it was the only
baby in the wide world, the way she made a scene, and not a single one
would listen to reason when I tried to explain. They acted simply crazy,
that's all."
"Gee, gosh!" muttered the Wilbur twin. This was indeed a splendid and
desperate character, and he paid her the tribute of honest envy. He
wished he might have a cruel stepmother of his own, and so perhaps be
raised to this eminence of infamy. "I bet they did something with you!"
he said.
The girl waved it aside with a gesture of repugnance, as if some things
were too loathsome for telling. He perceived that she had, like so many
raconteurs, allowed her cigar to go out.
"Here's a match," he said, and courteously cupped his hands about its
flame. The pennygrab seemed to have become incombustible, and the
match died futilely. "That's my last match," he said.
"Maybe I better keep this till I get to the great city."
But he would not have it so.

"You can light it from mine," and he brought the ends of the two penny
grabs together.
"First thing you know you'll be dizzy," warned the moralist, Merle.
"Ho, I will not!"
She laughed in scorn, and valiantly puffed on the noisome thing. Thus
stood Ben Blunt and the Wilbur twin, their faces together about this
business of lighting up; and thus stood the absorbed Merle, the moral
perfectionist, earnestly hoping his words of warning would presently
become justified. It did not seem right to him that others should smoke
when it made him sick.
At last smoke issued from the contorted face of Ben Blunt, and some of
this being swallowed, strangulation ensued. When the paroxysm of
coughing was past the hero revealed running eyes, but the tears were of
triumph, as was the stoic smile that accompanied them.
And then,