The Wrong Twin

by Harry Leon Wilson

The ever-tractable Merle had been attentive to the sermon, had sung beautifully, and was still immaculate of garb, while the Wilbur twin emerged from the ordeal in rank disorder, seeming to have survived a scuffle in which efforts had been made to wrench away his Sunday clothes and to choke him with his collar and cravat. And the coating of soap had played his hair false. It stood out behind and stood up in front, not with any system, but merely here and there.

"You are a perfect sight," muttered Winona to him. "I don't see how you do it." But neither did the offender.

With a graciously relaxed tension the freed congregation made a leisurely progress to the doors of the church; many lingered here in groups for greetings and light exchanges. It was here that the Penniman group coalesced with the Whipple group, a circumstance that the trailing Wilbur noted with alarm. The families did not commonly affiliate, and the circumstance boded ominously. It could surely not be without purpose. The Wilbur twin's alarm was that the Whipple family had regretted its prodigality of the day before and was about to demand its money back. He lurked in the shadowy doorway.

The Whipples were surrounding Merle with every sign of interest. They shook hands with him. They seemed to appraise him as if he were something choice on exhibition at a fair. Harvey D. was showing the most interest, bending above the exhibit in apparently light converse. But the Wilbur twin knew all about Harvey D. He was the banker and wore a beard. He was to be seen on week days as one passed the First National Bank, looking out through slender bars—exactly as the Penniman lion did—upon a world that wanted money, but couldn't have it without some good reason. He had not been present when the Whipple money was so thoughtlessly loosened, and he would be just the man to make a fuss about it now. He would want to take it back and put it behind those bars in the bank where no one could get it. But he couldn't ever have it back, because it was spent. Still, he might do something with the spender.

The Wilbur twin slunk farther into friendly shadows, and not until the groups separated and the four Whipples were in their waiting carriage did he venture into the revealing sunlight. But no one paid him any attention. The judge and Mrs. Penniman walked up the shaded street, for the Sunday dinner must be prepared. Winona and the Merle twin, both flushed from the recent social episode, turned back to the church to meet and ignore him.

"Fortune knocks once at every one's door," Winona was mysteriously saying.

The Wilbur twin knew this well enough. The day before it had knocked at his door and found him in.

There was still Sunday-school to be endured, but he did not regard this as altogether odious. It was not so smothering. The atmosphere was less strained. One's personality could come a bit to the front without incurring penalties, and one met one's own kind on a social plane—subject to discipline, it was true, but still mildly enjoyable. It was his custom to linger here until the classes gathered, but to-day the Whipple pony cart was driven up by the Whipple stepmother and the girl with her hair cut off. Apparently no one made these two go to church, but they had come to Sunday-school. And the Wilbur twin fled within at sight of them. The pony cart, vehicle in which he had been made a public mock, was now a sickening sight to him.

Sunday-school was even less of a trial to him than usual. The twins were in the class of Winona, and Winona taught her class to-day with unwonted unction; but the Wilbur twin was pestered with few questions about the lesson. She rather singled Merle out and made him an instructive example to the rest of the class, asking Wilbur but twice, and then in sheerly perfunctory routine: "And what great lesson should we learn from this?"

Neither time did he know what great lesson we should learn from this, and stammered his ignorance pitiably, but Winona, in the throes of some mysterious prepossession, forgot to reprove him, and merely allowed the more gifted Merle to purvey the desired information. So the Wilbur twin was practically free to wriggle on his hard chair, to exchange noiseless greetings with acquaintances in other classes, and to watch Lyman Teaford, the superintendent, draw a pleasing cartoon of the lesson with coloured chalk on a black-board, consisting chiefly of a rising yellow sun with red rays, which was the sun of divine forgiveness Once the Wilbur twin caught the eye of the Whipple girl—whose bonnet hid her cropped hair—and she surprisingly winked at him. He did not wink back. Even to his liberal mind, it did not seem right to wink in a Sunday-school.