dark tobacco, and the original purchaser had probably discarded it gladly. The present owner displayed it to the girl. "I'll give you a part of this, and we'll light up." "Well, I don't know. It says Ben Blunt was a sturdy lad of good——" "I bet you never did smoke repeatedly!" Her manhood was challenged. "I'll show you!" she retorted, grim about the lips. With his knife he cut the evil thing in fair halves. The girl received her portion with calmness, if not with gratitude, and lighted it from the match he gallantly held for her. And so they smoked. The Merle twin never smoked for two famous Puritan reasons—it was wrong for boys to smoke and it made him sick. He eyed the present saturnalia with strong disapproval. The admiration of the Wilbur twin—now forgetting his ignominy—was frankly worded. Plainly she was no common girl. "I bet you'll be all right in the big city," he said. "Of course I will," said the girl. She spat between her teeth with a fine artistry. In truth she was spitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, but she held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers and contrived an air of relish for it. "Anyway," she went on, "it'll be better than here where I suffered so terribly with everybody making the vilest scenes about any little thing that happened. After they find it's too late they'll begin to wish they'd acted kinder. But I won't ever come back, not if they beg me to with tears streaming down their faces, after the vile way they acted; saying maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D. got that stepmother, but nothing was ever done about it, and just because I tried to hide Mrs. Wadley's baby that comes to wash, and then because I tried to get that gypsy woman's baby, because everyone knows they're always stealing other people's babies, and she made a vile scene, too, and everyone tortured me beyond endurance." This was interesting. It left the twins wishing to ask questions. "Did that stepmother beat you good?" again demanded Merle.
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