The Wrong Twin Part 55

"But I shall know, Father. Remember, I've learned things. I'm going to take you in hand. I may even have to be severe with you but all for your own good."

She spoke with icy conviction. There was a new, cold gleam in her prying eyes. The judge suffered genuinely.

"I should think you had learned things!" he protested, miserably. "For one thing, miss, that skirt ain't a respectable garment."

Winona slid one foot toward him.

"Pooh! Don't be silly!" Never before had Winona poohed her father.

"Cigarette fiend, too," accused the judge.

"My husband got me to stop."

"Strong drink," added the judge.

"Pooh!" again breathed Winona. "A little nip of something when you're done up."

"You talking that way!" admonished the twice-poohed parent. "You that was always so----"

"I'm not it any longer." She did a dance step toward the front door, but called back to him: "Spike's set his heart on that chair. You'll have to find something else for yourself."

"'Twon't always be so," retorted the judge, stung beyond reason at the careless finality of her last words. "You wait--wait till the revolution sweeps you high and mighty people out of your places! Wait till the workers take over their rights--you wait!"

But Winona had not waited. She had gone to confer on Wilbur Cowan a few precious drops of that which had caused her father to put upon her the stigma of alcoholic intemperance.

"It's real genuine dandelion wine," she told him. "One of the nurses got it for me when we left the boat in Boston. Her own mother made it, and she gave me the recipe, and it isn't a bit of trouble. I'm going after dandelions to-morrow, Spike and I. Of course we'll have to be secret about it."

In the sacred precincts of the Penniman parlour Wilbur Cowan raised the winegla.s.s to his lips and tasted doubtingly. After a second considering sip he announced--"They can't arrest you for that."

Winona looked a little relieved, but more than a little disappointed.

"I thought it had a kick," she mourned.

"Here's to you and him, anyway! Didn't I always tell you he was one good little man?"

"He's all of that," said Winona, and tossed off her own gla.s.s of what she sincerely hoped was not a permitted beverage.

"You've come on," said Wilbur.

"I haven't started," said Winona.

Later that afternoon Winona sat in her own room in close consultation with Juliana Whipple. Miss Whipple, driving her own car as no other Whipple could have driven it, had hastened to felicitate the bride.

Tall, gaunt, a little stooped now, her weathered face aglow, she had ascended the steps to greet the couple. Spike's tenancy of the chair had been made doubly secure by Winona on the step at his feet.

Juliana embraced Winona and took one of Spike's knotted hands to press warmly between both her own. Then Winona had dragged her to privacy, and their talk had now come to a point.

"It's that--that parrot!" exploded Winona, desperately. "I never used to notice, but you know--that senseless gabble, 'pretty girl, pretty girl,'

and then the thing laughs like a fiend. It would be all right if he wouldn't laugh. You might think he meant it. And poor Spike is so sensitive; he gets things you wouldn't think he'd get. That awful bird might set him to thinking. Now he believes I'm pretty. In spite of everything I've said to him, he believes it. Well, I'm not going to have that bird putting any other notion into his mind, not if I have to--"

She broke off, but murder was in her tone.

"I see," said Miss Whipple. "You're right, of course--only you are pretty, Winona. I never used to think--think about it, I mean, but you've changed. You needn't be afraid of any parrot."

Winona patted the hand of Miss Whipple, an able hand suggesting that of Spike in its texture and solidity.

"That's ever so nice of you, but I know all about myself. Spike's eyes are gone, but that bird is going, too."

"Why not let me take the poor old thing?" said Juliana. "It can say 'pretty girl' to me and laugh its head off if it wants." She hung a moment on this, searching Winona's face with clear eyes. "I have no blind husband," she finished.

"You're a dear," said Winona.

"I'm so glad for you," said Juliana.

"I must guard him in so many ways," confided Winona. "He's happy now--he's forgotten for the moment. But sometimes it comes back on him terribly--what he is, you know. I've seen him over there lose control--want to kill himself. He says he can't help such times. It will seem to him that someone has shut him in a dark room and he must break down its walls--break out into the light. He would try to break the walls down--like a caged beast. It wasn't pretty. And I'm his eyes and all his life, and no old bird is ever going to set him thinking I'm not perfectly beautiful. That's the plain truth. I may lie about it myself to him pretty soon. I might as well. He only thinks I'm being flirty when I deny it. Oh, I know I've changed! Sometimes it seems to me now as if I used to be--well, almost prudish."

"My dear, he knows better than you do, much better, how beautiful you are. But you're right about the bird. I'll take him gladly." She reflected a moment. "There's a fine place for the cage in my room--on my hope chest."

"You dear!" said Winona. "Of course I couldn't have killed it."

Downstairs ten minutes later Winona, the light of filial devotion in her eyes, was explaining to her father that she was giving the parrot away because she had noticed that it annoyed him.

The judge beamed grat.i.tude.

"Why, it's right thoughtful of you, Winona. It does annoy me, kind of.

That miserable Dave Cowan's taught it some new rigmarole--no meaning to it, but bothersome when you want to be quiet."

Even in the days of her white innocence Winona Penniman had not been above doing a thing for one reason while advancing another less personal. She had always been a strange girl.

Juliana took leave of Spike.

"You have a lovely wife," she told him. "It isn't going to be too hard for you, this life."

"Watch us!" said Winona. "I'll make his life more beautiful than I am."

Her hand fluttered to his shoulder.

"Oh, me? I'll be all right," said Spike.

"And thank you for this wonderful bird," said Juliana.

She lifted the cage from its table and went slowly toward the gate. The parrot divined that dirty work was afoot, but it had led a peaceful life and its repertoire comprised no call of alarm.

"Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl!" it shrieked. Then followed its harshest laugh of scorn.

Juliana did not quicken her pace to the car; she finished the little journey in all dignity, and placed her burden in the tonneau.

"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" screamed the dismayed bird. The laugh was long and eloquent of derision.