The Wrong Twin

by Harry Leon Wilson

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.

"Gee, gosh!" he muttered, heartily, as he rose a second time.

Both the well-spread pallor of the whitewash and the sable sprinkling of coal dust put him beyond any chance of a felicitous public appearance. But he was safe in a dusky corner. He remained there, breathing heavily. At last he heard Winona call him from the Penniman porch. Twice she called; then he knew she would be crossing to the little house to know what detained him. He heard her call again—knew that she would be searching the four rooms over there. She wouldn't think of the woodshed. He sat there a long while, steadily regarding the closed screen door that led to the kitchen, ready to mingle deceptively with the coal should any one appear.

At last he heard a bustle within the house. There were hurried steppings to and fro by Winona and her mother, the heavy tread of the judge, a murmur of high voices. The Whipples must have come, and every one would be at the front of the house. He crept from his corner, climbed to the floor from where it had been opened for wood and coal, and went softly to the kitchen door. He listened a moment through the screen, then entered and went noiselessly up the back stairs. Coming to the head of the front stairway, he listened again. There were other voices in front, and he shrank to the wall. He gathered that only the Whipple stepmother and Patricia had come—no other Whipples, no preacher. It might not have been so bad. Still he didn't want to be there.

They were at the front door now, headed for the parlour. Someone paused at the foot of the stairs, and in quick alarm he darted along the hall and into an open door. He was in the neat bedroom of Winona, shortbreathed, made doubly nervous by boards that had creaked under his tread. He stood listening. They were in the parlour, a babble of voices coming up to him; excited voices, but not funeral voices. His eyes roved the chamber of Winona, where everything was precisely in its place. He mapped out a dive under her bed if steps came up the stairs. He heard now the piping voice of Patricia Whipple.

"It's like in the book about Ben Blunt that was adopted by a kind old gentleman and went up from rags to riches."

This for some reason seemed to cause laughter below.

He heard, from Winona: "Do try a piece of Mother's cake. Merle, dear, give Mrs. Whipple a plate and napkin."

Cake! Certainly nothing like cake for this occasion had been intimated to him! They hadn't had cake at the Finkboners. Things might have been different, but they had kept still about cake. He listened intently, hearing laughing references to Merle in his new home. Then once more Winona came to the front door and called him.

"Wilbur—Wil-bur-r-r! Where can that child be!" he heard her demand. She went to the back of the house and more faintly he heard her again call his name—"Wilbur, Wil-bur-r-r!" Then, with discernible impatience, more shortly, "Wilbur Cowan!" He was intently regarding a printed placard that hung on the wall beside Winona's bureau. It read: