"Well, I'd rather not; I guess I'm not one to have responsibilities; I wouldn't have an easy minute spending your money. I wouldn't ever be able to feel free with it, not the way I feel with my own. I guess I just better kind of go my own way; I like to work when I want to and stop when I want to, and no one having any right to ask me what I quit for and why don't I keep on and make something of myself. I guess it's no good your trying to help me in any way. Of course I appreciate it and all that. It was kindly thought of by you. But—I hope my boy will be a credit to you just the same."
The conference closed upon this. Dave left it feeling that he had eased his refusal into soft, ambiguous phrases; but old Gideon, reporting to Harvey D., said: "That chap hates a small town. What he really wanted to tell me was that he wouldn't settle down here for all the money in the world. He really laughed at me inside for offering him the chance. He pities us for having to stay here, I do believe. And he wouldn't talk of taking money for any enterprise elsewhere, either. He's either independent or shiftless—both, maybe. He said," Gideon laughed noiselessly, "he said he wouldn't ever be able to feel free with our money the way he does with his own."
The Whipples, it proved, would be in no indecent haste to remove their new member from his humbler environment. On Wednesday it was conveyed to Winona that they would come for Merle in a few days, which left the Penniman household and the twins variously concerned as to the precise meaning of this phrase. It sounded elastic. But on Thursday Winona was able to announce that the day would be Saturday. They would come for Merle Saturday afternoon. She had been told this distinctly by Mrs. Harvey D. Though her informant had set no hour, Winona thought it would be three o'clock. She believed the importance of the affair demanded the setting of an exact hour, and there was something about three o'clock that commended itself to her. From this moment the atmosphere of the Penniman house was increasingly strained. There were preparations. The slender wardrobe of the crown prince of the Whipple dynasty was put in perfect order, and two items newly added to it by the direction of Dave Cowan. The boy must have a new hat and new shoes. The judge pointed out to the prodigal father that these purchases should rightly be made with Whipple money. Dave needn't buy shoes and hats for Merle Whipple any more than he need buy them for any other Whipple, but Dave had stubbornly squandered his own money. His boy wasn't going up to the big house like a ragamuffin.
It came to the Wilbur twin that these days until Saturday were like the days intervening in a house of death until the funeral. He became increasingly shy and uncomfortable. It seemed to him that his brother had passed on, as they said, his mortal remains to be disposed of on Saturday at three o'clock. Having led a good life he would go to heaven, where he would have a pony and a thousand knives if he wanted them. The strain in the house, the excitement of Winona, the periodic, furtive weeping of Mrs. Penniman, the detached, uplifted manner of the chief figure, all confirmed him in this impression. Even Judge Penniman, who had been wont to speak of "them twins," now spoke of "that boy," meaning but the Wilbur twin.
By two o'clock of the momentous Saturday afternoon the tension was at its highest. Merle, dressed in his Sunday clothes, trod squeakily in the new shoes, which were button shoes surpassing in elegance any he had hitherto worn. As Dave Cowan had remarked, they were as good shoes as Whipple money would ever buy him. And the new hat, firm of line and rich in texture, a hat such as no boy could possibly wear except on Sunday, unless he were a very rich boy, reposed on the centre table in the parlour. Winona, flushed and tightly dressed, nervously altered the arrangement of chairs in the parlour, or remembered some belonging of the deceased that should go into the suitcase containing his freshly starched blouses. Mrs. Penniman, also flushed and tightly dressed, affected to busy herself likewise with minor preparations for the departure, but this chiefly afforded her opportunities for quiet weeping in secluded corners. After these moments of relief she would become elaborately cheerful, as if the occasion were festal. Even the judge grew nervous with anticipation. In his frock coat and striped gray trousers he walked heavily from room to room, comparing the clock with his watch, forgetting that he was not supposed to walk freely except with acute suffering. Merle chattered blithely about how he would come back to see them, with unfortunate effects upon Mrs. Penniman.
The Wilbur twin knew this atmosphere. When little Georgie Finkboner had died a few months before, had he not been taken to the house of mourning and compelled to stay through a distressing funeral? It was like that now, and he was uncomfortable beyond endurance. Twice Winona had reminded him that he must go and put on his own Sunday clothes—nothing less than this would be thought suitable. He had said he would, but had dawdled skillfully and was still unfitly in bare feet and the shabby garments of a weekday. He knew definitely now that he was not going to be present 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.