can't guess what's wrapped up in this box for her—it's the most beautiful album, and this first-class animal for my father, and it'll last a lifetime if he takes care of it good; and I got me a dog to watch the house." Breathless he paused.

"Spent all his money!" intoned Merle. "And he bought me this knife, too."

He displayed it, but merely as a count in the indictment for criminal extravagance. He had gone to the hammock to sit by Winona. He needed her. He had been too long unconsidered.

The sputtering gift-bringer bestowed the orange upon Mrs. Penniman, the album upon Winona, and the invigorator upon the now embarrassed judge.

"Thank you, Wilbur, dear!" Mrs. Penniman was first to recover her poise.

"Thanks ever so much," echoed Winona, doubtfully.

She must first know that he had come by this money righteously. The judge adjusted spectacles to read the label on his gift.

"Thank you, my boy. The stuff may give me temporary relief."

He had felt affronted that any one could suppose one bottle of anything would make a new man of him; and—inconsistently enough—affronted that any one should suppose he needed to be made a new man of. He had not liked the phrase at all.

"And now perhaps you will tell us——" began Winona, her lips again tightening. But the Wilbur twin could not yet be brought down to mere history.

"This is an awful fighting dog," he was saying. "He's called Frank, and he eats them up. Yes, sir, he nearly et up that old Boodles dog just now. He would of if I hadn't stopped him. He minds awful well."

"Spent all our money!" declaimed Merle in a public-school voice, using "our" for the first time since his defeat of the morning. Certain of Winona's support, it had again become their money. "And cursing, swearing, fighting, smoking!"

"Oh, Wilbur!" exclaimed the shocked Winona; yet there was dismay more than rebuke in her tone, for she had brought the album to view. "If you've been a bad boy perhaps I should not accept this lovely gift from you. Remember—we don't yet know how you obtained all this money."

"Ho! I earned that money good! That old fat Mr. Whipple said I earned it 

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