Sometimes it would merely be astounded adults who paused to regard them, to point canes or fingers at them.  But again it would be the young who had never been disciplined to restrain their emotions in public.  Some of these ran for a time beside the cart, with glad cries, their clear, ringing voices raised in comments of a professedly humorous character.  Under Juliana’s direction the cart did not progress too rapidly.  At one crossing she actually stopped the thing until Ellis Bristow, who was blind, had with his knowing cane tapped a safe way across the street.  The Wilbur twin at this moment frankly rejoiced in the infirmity of poor Ellis Bristow.  It was sweet relief not to have him stop and stare and point.  If given the power at this juncture he would have summarily blinded all the eyes of Newbern Center.

Up shaded streets they progressed, leaving a wake of purest joy astern.  But at last they began the ascent of West Hill, that led to the Whipple New Place, leaving behind those streets that came alive at their approach.  For the remainder of their dread progress they would elicit only the startled regard of an occasional adult farmer.

“What’ll she do to us?” The Wilbur twin mumbled this under cover of sprightly talk from the front seat.  His brother at the moment was boasting of his scholastic attainments.  He had, it appeared, come on amazingly in long division.

“She won’t do a thing!” replied his companion in shame.  “Don’t you be afraid!”

“I am afraid.  But I wouldn’t be afraid if I had my pants on again,” explained the Wilbur twin, going accurately to the soul of his panic.

“I’ll do it next time,” said the girl.  “I’ll hurry.  I won’t stop at any old graveyard.”

“Graveyard!” uttered the other, feelingly.  “I should say not!” Never again was he to think of such places with any real pleasure.

“All she wants,” explained the girl—­“she wants to talk up in her nose like she was giving a lecture.  She loves to.  She’ll make a vile scene.”

Now they were through an imposing gate of masonry, and the pony languidly drew them along a wide driveway toward the Whipple mansion, an experience which neither of the twins had ever hoped to brave; but only one of them was deriving any pleasure from the social elevation.  The Merle twin looked blandly over the wide expanse of lawn and flower beds and tenderly nursed shrubs, and then at the pile of red brick with its many windows under gay-striped awnings, and its surmounting white cupola, which he had often admired from afar.  He glowed with rectitude.  True, he suffered a brother lost to all sense of decent human values, but this could not dim the lustre of his own virtue or his pleasant suspicion that it was somehow going to be suitably rewarded.  Was he not being driven by a grand-mannered lady up a beautiful roadway past millions of flowers and toward a wonderful house?  It paid to be good.

The Wilbur twin had ceased to regard his surroundings.  He gazed stolidly before him, nor made the least note of what his eyes rested upon.  He was there, helpless.  They had him!