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: 

     A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.—­Emerson.

He remained silent.  He was not going to make any noise.  At length he could hear preparations for departure.

“Merle, dear, your hat is on the piano—­Mother, hand him his hat—­I’ll bring his suitcase.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to come back to see you all some day.”

“Yes, now don’t forget us—­no, we mustn’t let him do that.”

They were out on the porch, going down the walk.  The listener stepped lightly to a window and became also a watcher.  Ahead walked Patricia Whipple and her new brother.  The stepmother and Mrs. Penniman followed.  Then came Winona with the suitcase, which was of wicker.  Judge Penniman lumbered ponderously behind.  At the hitching post in front was the pony cart and the fat pony of sickening memory.  Merle was politely helping the step-mother to the driver’s seat.  It was over.  But the watcher suddenly recalled something.

In swift silence, descending the stairs, he entered the parlour.  On a stand beneath the powerful picture of the lion behind real bars was a frosted cake of rare beauty.  Three pieces were gone and two more were cut.  On top of each piece was the half of a walnut meat.  He tenderly seized one of these and stole through the deserted house, through kitchen and woodshed, out to the free air again.  Back of the woodshed he sat down on the hard bare ground, his back to its wall, looking into the garden where Judge Penniman, in the intervals of his suffering, raised a few vegetables.  It was safe seclusion for the pleasant task in hand.  He gloated rapturously over the cake, eating first the half of the walnut meat, which he carefully removed.  But he thought it didn’t taste right.