"You may be sure Wilbur was the one to blame," put in Winona, quick to defend the one most responsive to her lessons in faith, morals, etiquette.
"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.