The Wrong Twin Read online

  CHAPTER XI

  Archaeologists of a future age will doubtless, in their minuteexplorations of this region, come upon the petrified remains of golfballs in such number as will occasion learned dispute. Found soprofusely and yet so far from any known course, they will perhaps giverise to wholly erroneous surmises. Prefacing his paper with a referenceto lost secrets once possessed by other ancients, citing without doubtthat the old Egyptians knew how to temper the soft metal of copper, acertain scientist will profoundly deduce from this deposit of balls, farfrom the vestiges of the nearest course, that people of this remote daypossessed the secret of driving a golf ball three and a half miles, andhe will perhaps moralize upon the degeneracy of his own times, when thelongest drive will doubtless not exceed a scant mile.

  For three days Sharon sprayed out over the landscape, into idealgolf-ball covert, where many forever eluded even the keen eyes of WilburCowan, one hundred balls originally purchased by the selecter golfingset of Newbern. Hereupon he refused longer to regard the wooden driveras a possible instrument of precision, and forever renounced it. ElihuTitus heard him renounce it balefully in the harness room one lateafternoon, and later entering that apartment found the fragments of ashattered driver.

  It remained for Wilbur Cowan to bring Sharon into the game by anotheravenue. A new campaign was entered upon, doubtfully at first by Sharon,at length with dawning confidence. He was never to touch a wooden club.He was to drive with an iron, not far, but truly; to stay always in thecentre of the fairway and especially to cultivate the shorter approachshots and the use of the putter. The boy laboured patiently with hispupil, striving to persuade him that golf was more than a trial ofstrength. From secret lessons back of the stable they came at length tofurtive lessons over the course at hours when it was least played. JohnKnox McTavish figured at these times as consulting expert.

  "It's th' shor-r-t game that tells th' stor-r-r-y," said John; andSharon, making his whole game a short game, was presently telling thestory understandably, to the vast pride of the middle man who providedendless balls for his lessons.

  It was a day of thrills for them both when Rapp, Senior, publiclychallenged and accepting with dreams of an easy conquest, bent downbefore the craft of Sharon Whipple. Sharon, with his competent iron in ashort half-arm swing--he could not, he said, trust the utensil beyondthe tail of his eye--sent the ball eighteen times not far but straight,and with other iron shots coaxed it to the green, where he sank it withquite respectable putting. Rapp, Senior, sliced his long drivesbrilliantly into shaded grassy dells and scented forest glades, where hetrampled scores of pretty wild flowers as he chopped his way out again.Rapp, Senior, made the course excitingly in one hundred andthirty-eight; Sharon Whipple, playing along safe and sane lines, camethrough with one hundred and thirty-five, and was a proud man, andlooked it, and was still so much prouder than he looked that heshuddered lest it get out on him. Later he vanquished, by the sametactics, other men who used the wooden driver with perfect form inpractice swings.

  Contests in which he engaged, however, were likely to be marred byregrettable asperities rising from Sharon's inability to grasp the nicersubtleties of golf. It seemed silly to him not to lift his ball out ofsome slight depression into which it had rolled quite by accident; notto amend an unhappy lie in a sand trap; and he never came to believethat a wild swing leaving the ball untouched should be counted as astroke. People who pettishly insisted upon these extremes of the game hesneeringly called golf lawyers. When he said that he made a hole innine, he meant nine or thereabouts--approximately nine; nice people, hethought, should let it go at that. So he became feared on the course,not only for his actual prowess but for his matchless optimism incasting up his score. He was a pleased man, and considered golf a goodgame; and he never forgot that Wilbur Cowan had made him the golfer hewas. More than ever was he believing that Harvey D. Whipple had chosenwrongly from available Cowans. On the day when he first made the Newberncourse in, approximately, one hundred and twenty--those short-arm ironshots were beginning to lengthen down the centre of the fairway--he wassure of it.

  * * * * *

  It must be said that Sharon was alone in this conviction. The othersmost concerned, had he allowed it to be known, would have been amazed byit--Winona Penniman most of all. Winona's conviction was that therejected Cowan twin conspicuously lacked those qualities that would makehim desirable for adoption by any family of note, certainly not byWhipples. He had gone from bad to worse. Driving a truck had been bad.There had been something to say in its favour in the early stages of hiscareer, until the neophyte had actually chosen to wear overalls like anycommon driver. In overalls he could not be mistaken for a gentlemanamateur moved by a keen love for the sport of truck driving--and golfwas worse. Glad at first of this change in his life work, Winona hadbeen shocked to learn that golf kept people from the churches. And theclothes, even if they did not include overalls, were not genteel. Wilburwore belted trousers of no distinction, rubber-soled sneakers of aneutral tint, and a sweater now so low in tone that the preciseintention of its original shade was no longer to be divined. A rowdyishcap completed the uniform. No competent bank president, surveying theensemble, would have for a moment considered making a bookkeeper out ofthe wearer. He was farther than ever before, Winona thought, from acareer of Christian gentility in which garments of a Sabbath grandeurare worn every day and proper care may be taken of the hands.

  It was late in this summer that she enforced briefly a demand forgenteel raiment, and kept the boy up until ten-thirty of a sleepyevening to manicure his nails. The occasion was nothing less than thesixteenth birthday of Merle Whipple, to be celebrated by an afternoonfestivity on the grounds of his home. The brothers had met briefly andcasually during Merle's years as a Whipple; but this was to be an affairof ceremony, and Winona was determined that the unworthy twin should--atleast briefly--appear as one not socially impossible.

  She browbeat him into buying a suit such as those that are worn byjaunty youths in advertisements, including haberdashery of supremeelegance, the first patent-leather shoes worn by this particular Cowan,and a hat of class. He murmured at the outlay upon useless finery. Itmaterially depleted his capital--stored with other treasure in a tin boxlabelled "Cake" across its front. But Winona was tenacious. He murmured,too, at the ordeal of manicuring, but Winona was insistent, and labouredto leave him with the finger tips of one who did not habitually engagein a low calling.

  He fell asleep at the final polishing, even after trying to fix his gazeupon the glittering nails of the hand Winona had relinquished, and whileshe sought to impress him with the importance of the approachingfunction. There would be present not only the Whipples, but theirguests, two girl friends of Patricia from afar and a school friend ofMerle's; there would be games and refreshment and social converse, andWinona hoped he would remember not to say "darn it" any time in such ofthe social converse as he provided; or forget to say, on leaving, what acharming time it was and how nice every one had been to ask him. Hedozed through much of this instruction.

  Yet Winona, the next day, felt repaid for her pains. Arrayed in the newsuit, with the modish collar and cravat, the luminous shoes and the hatof merit, the boy looked entirely like those careless youths in thepictures who so proudly proclaim the make of their garments. No oneregarding him would have dreamed that he was at heart but a golf caddieor a driver of trucks for hire. Winona insisted upon a final polish ofhis nails, leaving them with a dazzling pinkish glitter, and she sprayedand anointed him with precious unguents, taking especial pains that hisunruly brown hair should lie back close to his head, to show the wave.

  When he installed her beside him in Sharon Whipple's newest car, pressedupon the youth by its owner for this occasion, she almost wished thatshe had been a bit more daring in her own dress. It was white and neat,but not fancy dressmaking in any sense of the word. She regretted for amoment her decision against pink rosebuds for the hat, so warmly urgedby her mother, who kept saying
nowadays that she would be a girl butonce. Winona was beginning to doubt this. At least you seemed to be agirl a long time. She had been a little daring, though. Her stockingswere white and of a material widely heralded as silkona. Still her skirtwas of a decent length, so that she apprehended no scandal from thisrecklessness.

  When her genteel escort started the car and guided it by an apparentlycareless winding of the wheel she felt a glow that was almost pride inhis appearance and nonchalant mastery of this abstruse mechanism. Shewas frightened at the speed and at the narrow margin by which he missedother vehicles and obtruding corners. When he flourished to animpressive halt under the Whipple porte-cochere she felt a new respectfor him. If only he could do such things at odd moments as a gentlemanshould, and not continuously for money, in clothes unlike those of theexpensive advertisements!

  She descended from the car in a flutter of pretense that she habituallydescended from cars, and a moment later was overjoyed to note that herescort sustained the greetings of the assembled Whipples and theirguests with a practiced coolness, or what looked like it. He shook handswarmly with his brother and Patricia Whipple; was calm under the ordealof introductions to the little friends Winona had warned him of--twogirls of peerless beauty and a fair-haired, sleepy-looking boy with longeyelashes and dimples.

  "THE GIRL WAS ALREADY READING WILBUR'S PALM, DISCLOSINGTO HIM THAT HE HAD A DEEP VEIN OF CRUELTY IN HIS NATURE. PATRICIAWHIPPLE LISTENED IMPATIENTLY TO THIS AND OTHER SINISTER REVELATIONS."]

  These young people were dressed rather less formally than Winona hadexpected, being mostly in flannels and ducks and tennis shoes not toolately cleaned. She was instantly glad she had been particular as toWilbur's outfit. He looked ever so much more distinguished than eitherMerle or his friend. She watched him as he stood unconcerned under thechatter of the three girls. They had begun at once to employ upon himthe oldest arts known to woman, and he was not flustered or "gauche"--aword Winona had lately learned. Beyond her divining was the truth that hewould much rather have been talking to Starling Tucker. She thought he wasmerely trying to look bored, and was doing it very well.

  The little friends of Patricia, and Patricia herself, could have toldher better. They knew he was genuinely bored, and redoubled theirefforts to enslave him. Merle chatted brightly with Winona, with such aman-of-the-world air that she herself became flustered at the memorythat she had once been as a mother to him and drenched his handkerchiefwith perfume on a Sabbath morning. The little male friend of Merle stoodby in silent relief. Patricia and her little guests had for three daysbeen doing to him what they now tried doing to the new boy; he was gladthe new boy had come. He had grown sulky under the incessant onslaughts.

  The girl with black hair and the turquoise necklace was already readingWilbur's palm, disclosing to him that he had a deep vein of cruelty inhis nature. Patricia Whipple listened impatiently to this and othersinister revelations. She had not learned palm reading, but now resolvedto. Meantime, she could and did stem the flood of character portrayal bya suggestion of tennis. Patricia was still freckled, though not soobtrusively as in the days of her lawlessness. Her skirt and her hairwere longer, the latter being what Wilbur Cowan later called rusty. Shewas still active and still determined, however. No girl in her presencewas going to read interminably the palm of one upon whom she had, in away of speaking, a family claim, especially one of such distinguishedappearance and manners--apparently being bored to death by the attentionof mere girls.

  Tennis resulted in a set of doubles, Merle and his little friend playingPatricia and one of her little friends--the one with the necklace andthe dark eyes. The desirable new man was not dressed for tennis, andcould not have played it in any clothes whatever, and so had to watchfrom the back line, where he also retrieved balls. Both girls hadinsisted upon being at his end of the court. Their gentlemen opponentswere irritated by this arrangement, because the girls paid far moreattention to the new man than to the game itself. They delayed theirservice to catch his last remark; delayed the game seriously by pausingto chat with him. He retrieved balls for them, which also impededprogress.

  When he brought the balls to the dark-eyed girl she acknowledged hiscourtesy with a pretty little "Thanks a lot!" Patricia varied this. Shesaid "Thanks a heap!" And they both rather glared at the other girl--amere pinkish, big-eyed girl whose name was Florrie--who lingeredstanchly by the new man and often kept him in talk when he should havebeen watchful. Still this third girl had but little initiative. She didinsinuatingly ask Wilbur what his favourite flower was, but this got hernowhere, because it proved that he did not know.

  The gentlemen across the net presently became unruly, and would play nomore at a game which was merely intended, it seemed, to provide theiropponents with talk of a coquettish character. Wilbur ardently wishedthat Winona could have been there to hear this talk, because thepeerless young things freely used the expletive "Darn!" after ineptstrokes. Still they bored him. He would rather have been on the links.

  He confessed at last to his little court that he much preferred golf totennis. Patricia said that she had taken up golf, and that he must coachher over the Newbern course. The dark-eyed girl at once said that shewas about to take up golf, and would need even more coaching thanPatricia. Once they both searched him--while the game waited--for classpins, which they meant to appropriate. They found him singularly devoidof these. He never even knew definitely what they were looking for.

  He was glad when refreshments were served on the lawn, and atesandwiches in a wholehearted manner that disturbed Winona, who felt thatat these affairs one should eat daintily, absently, as if elevatedconverse were the sole object and food but an incident. Wilbur ate as ifhe were hungry--had come there for food. Even now he was not free fromthe annoying attentions of Patricia and her little friends. They notonly brought him other sandwiches and other cake and other lemonade,which he could have condoned, but they chattered so incessantly at himwhile he ate that only by an effort of concentration could he ignorethem for the food. Florrie said that he was brutal to women. She wasalso heard to say--Winona heard it--that he was an awfully stunningchap. Harvey D. Whipple was now a member of the party, beaming proudlyupon his son. And Sharon Whipple came presently to survey the group. Hewinked at Wilbur, who winked in return.

  After refreshments the young gentlemen withdrew to smoke. They withdrewunostentatiously, through a pergola, round a clump of shrubbery, and onto the stables, where Merle revealed a silver cigarette case, from whichhe bestowed cigarettes upon them. They lighted these and talked as menof the world.

  "Those chickens make me sick," said the little friend of Merle quitefrankly.

  "Me, too!" said Wilbur.

  They talked of horses, Merle displaying his new thoroughbred in the boxstall, and of dogs and motor boats; and Merle and the other boy spokein a strange jargon of their prep school, where you could smoke if youhad the consent of your parents. Merle talked largely of his possessionsand gay plans.

  They were presently interrupted by the ladies, who, having withdrawnbeyond the shrubbery clump to powder their noses from Florrie's goldvanity box, had discovered the smokers, and now threatened to tell ifthe gentlemen did not instantly return. So Merle's little friend saidwearily that they must go back to the women, he supposed. And there wasmore tennis of a sort, more chatter. As Mrs. Harvey D. said, everythingmoved off splendidly.

  Winona, when they left, felt that her charge had produced a favourableimpression, and was amazed that he professed to be unmoved by thiscircumstance, even after being told, as the noble car wheeled themhomeward, what the girl, Florrie, had said of him; and that Mrs. HarveyD. Whipple had said she had always known he was a sweet boy. He merelysniffed at the term and went on to disparage the little friends ofPatricia.

  "You told me not to say 'darn,'" he protested, "but those girls all saidit about every other word."

  "Not really?" said Winona, aghast.

  "Darn this and darn that! And darn that ball! And darned old thing!"insisted the witne
ss, imitatively.

  "Oh, dear!" sighed Winona.

  She wondered if Patricia could be getting in with a fast set. She wasfurther worried about Patricia, because Miss Murtree, over the icecream, had confided to her that the girl was a brainless coquette; thather highest ambition, freely stated, was to have a black velvet eveninggown, a black picture hat, and a rope of pearls. Winona did not impartthis item to Wilbur. He was already too little impressed with theWhipple state. Nor did she confide to him the singular remark of SharonWhipple, delivered to her in hoarsely whispered confidence as Merlespoke at length to the group about his new horse.

  "Ain't he the most languageous critter!" had been Sharon's words.

  And Winona had thought Merle spoke so prettily and with such easyconfidence. Instead of regaling Wilbur with this gossip she insinuatedhis need for flannel trousers, sport shirts with rolling collars, tennisshoes of white. She found him adamant in his resolve to buy no furtherclothes which could have but a spectacular value.

  To no one that day, except to Wilbur Cowan himself, had it occurred thatMerle Whipple's birthday would also be the birthday of his twin brother.

  * * * * *

  Winona hoped that some trace of the day's new elegance would surviveinto Wilbur's professional life, but in this she suffereddisappointment. He refused to wear, save on state occasions, any of thebeautiful new garments, and again went forth in the cap and dingysneakers, the trousers without character, and the indeterminate sweaterwhich would persist in looking soiled even after relentless washing.

  Not even for golf with Patricia Whipple would he sound a higher note inapparel. Patricia came to the course, accompanied by the dark girl, whosaid she was mad about golf, and over the eighteen holes each strove forhis exclusive attention. They bored him vastly. He became mad about golfhimself, because they talked noisily of other subjects and forgot hisdirections, especially the dark girl, who was mad about a great manythings. She proved to be a trial. She was still so hopeless at the sportthat at each shot she had to have her hands placed for her in thecorrect grip. The other two were glad when she was called home, so thatPatricia could enjoy the undivided attention of the coach. The coach wasglad, but only because his boredom was diminished by half; and Patricia,after two mornings alone with him, decided that she knew all of golfthat was desirable.

  The coach was too stubbornly businesslike; regarded her, she detected,merely as someone who had a lot to learn about the game. And the goingof her little friend had taken a zest from the pursuit of thisdeterminedly golfing and unresponsive male. He was relieved when sheabandoned the sport and when he knew she had gone back to school.Sometimes on the course when he watched her wild swings a trick ofmemory brought her back to him as the bony little girl in his ownclothes--she was still bony, though longer--with her chopped-off hairand boyish swagger. Then for a moment he would feel friendly, and smileat her in comradeship, but she always spoiled this when she spoke in hergrand new manner of a grown-up lady.

  Only Winona grieved when these golf sessions were no more. She wonderedif Patricia had not been shocked by some unguarded expression fromWilbur. She had heard that speech becomes regrettably loose in the heatof this sport. He sought to reassure her.

  "I never said the least wrong thing," he insisted. "But she did, youbet! 'Darn' and 'gosh' and everything like that, and you ought to haveheard her once when she missed an easy putt. She said worse than 'darn!'She blazed out and said--"

  "Don't tell me!" protested shuddering Winona. She wondered if Patricia'speople shouldn't be warned. She was now persuaded that golf endangeredthe morals of the young. It had been bad enough when it seemed merely toencourage the wearing of nondescript clothes. But if it led tolanguage--?

  Yet she was fated to discover that the world offered worse than golf,for Wilbur Cowan had not yet completed, in the process of his desultoryeducation, the out-of-doors curriculum offered by even the little worldof Newbern. He was to take up an entirely new study, with thewhole-hearted enthusiasm that had made him an adept at linotypes, gasengines, and the sport of kings. Not yet, in Winona's view, had heactually gone down into the depths of social obliquity; but she soonknew he had made the joyous descent.

  The dreadful secret was revealed when he appeared for his supper oneevening with a black eye. That is, it would have been known technicallyas a black eye--even Winona knew what to call it. Actually it was an eyeof many colours, shading delicately from pale yellow at the edge torichest variegated purple at the centre. The eye itself--it was theright--was all but closed by the gorgeously puffed tissue surroundingit, and of no practical use to its owner. The still capable left eye,instead of revealing concern for this ignominy, gleamed a lively pridein its overwhelming completeness. The malign eye was worn proudly as abadge of honour, so proudly that the wearer, after Winona's first outcryof horror, bubbled vaingloriously of how he had achieved the stigma bystepping into one of Spike Brennon's straight lefts. Nothing less thanthat!

  Winona, conceiving that this talk was meant to describe an accident ofthe most innocent character, demanded further details; wishing to betold what a straight left was; why a person named Spike Brennon keptsuch things about; and how Wilbur had been so careless as to step intoone. She instinctively pictured a straight left to be something like anopen door into which the victim had stepped in the dark. Herenlightenment was appalling. When the boy had zestfully pictured withpantomime of the most informing sort she not only knew what a straightleft was, but she knew that Wilbur Cowan, in stepping into one--inplacing himself where by any chance he could step into one--had flungoff the ultimate restraint of decency.

  It amounted to nothing less, she gathered, than that her charge hadformed a sinister alliance with a degraded prize-fighter, a low bullywho for hire and amid the foulest surroundings pandered to the basestinstincts of his fellowmen by disgusting exhibitions of brute force. Asif that were not enough, this low creature had fallen lower in thesocial scale, if that were possible, by tending bar in the unspeakableden of Pegleg McCarron. It was of no use for Wilbur to explain to herthat his new hero chose this humble avocation because it afforded himleisure for training between his fights; that he didn't drink or smoke,but kept himself in good condition; that it was a fine chance to learnhow to box, because Spike needed sparring partners.

  "Oh, it's terrible!" cried Winona. "A debased creature like that!"

  "You ought to see him stripped!" rejoined the boy in quick pride.

  This closed the interview. Later she refused more than a swift glance ofdismay at the photograph of the bully proudly displayed to her by therecipient. With one eye widened in admiration, he thrust it withoutwarning full into her gaze, whereupon she had gaspingly fled, not evennoting the inscription of which the boy was especially proud: "To myfriend, Mr. Wilbur Cowan, from his friend, Eddie--Spike--Brennon, 133lbs. ringside." It was a spirited likeness of the hero, though takensome years before, when he was in the prime of a ring career now, alas,tapering to obscurity.

  Spike stood with the left shoulder slightly raised, the left footadvanced, the slightly bent left arm with its clenched fist suggestivelyextended. His head was slanted to bring his chin down and in. The rightshoulder was depressed, and the praiseworthy right arm lay in watchfulrepose across his chest. The tense gaze expressed absolute singleness ofpurpose--a hostile purpose. These details were lost upon Winona. She hadnoted only that the creature's costume consisted of the flags of theUnited States and Ireland tastefully combined to form a simple loincloth. Had she raised the boy for this?

  * * * * *

  The deplored intimacy had begun on a morning when Wilbur was earlyabroad salvaging golf balls from certain obscure nooks of the coursewhere Newbern's minor players were too likely to abandon the search forthem on account of tall grass, snakes, poison ivy, and other deterrents.Along the course at a brisk trot had come a sweatered figure, with cappulled low, a man of lined and battered visage, who seemed to trot witha purpose, and yet with
a purpose not to be discerned, for nonepursued him and he appeared to pursue no one.

  "THE MALIGN EYE WAS WORN SO PROUDLY THAT THE WEARERBUBBLED VAINGLORIOUSLY OF HOW HE HAD ACHIEVED THE STIGMA BY STEPPINGINTO ONE OF SPIKE BRENNON'S STRAIGHT LEFTS."]

  He had stopped amiably to chat with the boy. He was sweating profusely,and chewed gum. It may be said that he was not the proud young SpikeBrennon of the photograph. He was all of twenty-five, and his lateryears had told. Where once had been the bridge of his nose was now asharp indentation. One ear was weirdly enlarged; and his mouth, thoughhe spoke through narrowly opened lips, glittered in the morning sun withthe sheen of purest gold. Wilbur Cowan was instantly enmeshed by thisnew personality.

  The runner wished to know what he was looking for. Being told golfballs, he demanded "What for?" It seemed never to have occurred to himthat there would be an object in looking for golf balls. He curiouslyhandled and weighed a ball in his brown and hairy hand.

  "So that's the little joker, is it? I often seen 'em knockin' up flieswith it, but I ain't never been close to one. Say, that pill could hurtyou if it come right!"

  He was instructed briefly in the capacity of moving balls to inflictpain, and more particularly as to their market value. As the boy talkedthe sweating man looked him over with shrewd, half-shut eyes.

  "Ever had the gloves on, kid?" he demanded at last.

  It appeared in a moment that he meant boxing gloves; not gloves in whichto play golf.

  "No, sir," said Wilbur.

  "You look good. Come down to the store at three o'clock. Mebbe you cangive me a work-out."

  Quite astonishingly it appeared then that when he said the store he wasmeaning the low saloon of Pegleg McCarron; that he did road work everymorning and wanted quick young lads to give him a work-out with thegloves in the afternoon, because even dubs was better than shadow boxingor just punching the bag all the time. If they couldn't box-fight theycould wrestle.

  So Wilbur had gone to the store that afternoon, and for many succeedingafternoons, to learn the fascinating new game in a shed that servedMcCarron as storeroom. The new hero had here certain paraphernalia ofhis delightful calling--a punching bag, small dumb-bells, a skippingrope, boxing gloves. Here the neophyte had been taught the niceties offeint and guard and lead, of the right cross, the uppercut, the straightleft, to duck, to side-step, to shift lightly on his feet, to stopprotruding his jaw in cordial invitation, to keep his stomach covered.He proved attentive and willing and quick. He was soon chewing gum asSpike Brennon chewed it, and had his hair clipped in Brennon manner. Helived his days and his nights in dreams of delivering or evading blows.Often while dressing of a morning he would stop to punish an invisibleopponent, doing an elaborate dance the while. It was better thanlinotypes or motor busses.

  In the early days of this new study he had been fearful of hurting SpikeBrennon. He felt that his blows were too powerful, especially that fromthe right fist when it should curve over Spike's left shoulder to stopon his jaw. But he learned that when his glove reached the right placeSpike's jaw had for some time not been there. Spike scorned his efforts.

  "Stop it, kid! You might as well send me a pitcher postcard that it'scomin'. You got to hit from where you are--you can't stop to draw back.Use your left more. G'wan now, mix it! Mix it!"

  They would mix it until the boy was panting. Then while he sat on a beerkeg until he should be in breath again the unwinded Spike would skip therope--a girl's skipping rope--or shadow-box about the room withintricate dance steps, raining quick blows upon a ghostly boxer who wasinvariably beaten; or with smaller gloves he would cause the inflatedbag to play lively tunes upon the ceiling of its support. After an hourof this, when both were sweating, they would go to a sheltered spotbeyond the shed to play cold water upon each other's soaped forms.

  There had been six weeks of this before the boy's dreadful secret wasrevealed to Winona; six weeks before he appeared to startle her with oneeye radiating the rich hues of a ripened eggplant. It had been simpleenough. He had seen his chance to step in and punish Spike, and he hadstepped--and Spike's straight left had been there.

  "You handed yourself that one, kid," Spike had said, applying raw beefto it after their rubdown.

  Wilbur had removed the beef after leaving the store. He didn't want thething to go down too soon. It was an honourable mark, wasn't it? Nothingto make the fuss about that Winona had made. Of course you had to go toPegleg McCarron's to do the boxing, but Spike had warned him never todrink if he expected to get anywhere in this particular trade; not evento smoke. That he had entirely abandoned the use of tobacco at Spike'scommand should--he considered--have commended his hero to Winona'sfavourable notice. He wore the eye proudly in the public gaze; regrettedits passing as it began to pale into merely rainbow tints.

  But Winona took steps. She was not going to see him die, perish morally,without an effort to save him. She decided that Sharon Whipple would bethe one to consult. Sharon liked the boy--had taken an interest in him.Perhaps words in time from him might avert the calamity, especiallyafter her father had refused to be concerned.

  "Prize fighting!" said the judge, scornfully. "What'll he be doing next?Never settles down to anything. Jack-of-all-trades and good at none."

  It was no use hoping for help from a man who thought fighting wasfoolish for the boy merely because he would not earnestly apply himselfto it.

  She went to Sharon Whipple, and Sharon listened even moresympathetically than she had hoped he would. He seemed genuinely shockedthat such things had been secretly going on in the life of his youngfriend. He clicked deprecatingly with his tongue as Winona becamedetailed in her narrative.

  "My great glory!" he exclaimed at last. "You mean to say they mix itdown there every afternoon?"

  "Every single day," confirmed Winona. "He's been going to that low divefor weeks and weeks. Think of the debasing associations!"

  "Just think of it!" said Sharon, impatiently. "Every afternoon--and menot hearing a word of it!"

  "If you could only say a word to him," besought Winona. "Coming from youit might have an influence for good."

  "I will, I will!" promised Sharon, fervently, and there was a gleam ofhonest determination in his quick old eyes.

  That very afternoon, in Pegleg McCarron's shed, he said words to Wilburthat might have an influence for good.

  "Quit sticking your jaw out that way or he'll knock it off!" had beenhis first advice. And again: "Cover up that stomach--you want to getkilled?" He was sitting at one end of the arena, on a plank supported bythe ends of two beer kegs, and he held open a large, thick, respectablegold watch. "Time!" he called.

  Beside him sat the red-eyed and disreputable Pegleg McCarron, whowhacked the floor with the end of his crutch from time to time intestimony of his low pleasure.

  The round closed with one of Wilbur Cowan's right crosses--started fromnot too far back--landing upon the jaw of Spike Brennon with what seemedto be a shattering impact. Sharon Whipple yelled and Pegleg McCarronpounded the floor in applause. Spike merely shook his head once.

  "The kid's showing speed," he admitted, cordially. "If he just hadsomething back of them punches!"

  "It was a daisy!" exclaimed Sharon. "My suffering stars, what a daisy!"

  "'Twas neatly placed!" said Pegleg.

  "I'm surprised at you!" said Sharon later to the panting apprentice."I'm surprised and grieved! You boys mixing it here every day for weeksand never letting on!"

  "I never thought you'd like it," said Wilbur.

  "Like it!" said Sharon. He said it unctuously. "And say, don't you leton to Miss Penniman that I set here and held the watch for you. I ain'twanting that to get out on me."

  "No, sir," said Wilbur.

  Later Sharon tried to avoid Winona one day on River Street, but when hesaw that she would not be avoided he met her like a man.

  "I've reasoned with the boy from time to time," he confessed, gloomily,"but he's self-headed, talking huge high about being a good lightweightand
all that. I don't know--mebbe I haven't taken just the right tackwith him yet."

  Winona thought him curiously evasive in manner. She believed that hefeared the worst for the boy, but was concealing it from her.

  "His eye is almost well where that cowardly bully struck him," she toldSharon. "If only we could get him into something where he could hold hishead up."

  "He does that too much now," began Sharon, impulsively, but stopped,floundering. "I mean he ain't enough ashamed," he concluded feebly, andfeigned that someone had called him imperatively from the door of theFirst National Bank.

  From time to time Spike's boxing manner grew tense for a period of days.He tightened up, as Sharon put it, and left a sore and batteredapprentice while he went off to some distant larger town to fight,stepping nonchalantly aboard the six-fifty-eight with his fightingtrunks and shoes wrapped in a copy of the Newbern _Advance_, andshifting his gum as he said good-bye to Wilbur, who would come down tosee him off.

  Sometimes Spike returned from these sorties unscathed and with money.Oftener he came back without money and with a face--from abrasivethrusts--looking as if a careless golfer had gone over him and neglectedto replace the divots. After these times there were likely to followcomplicated episodes of dentistry at the office of Doctor Patten. Thesewould render the invincible smile of Spike more refulgent than ever.

  The next birthday of Merle Whipple was celebrated at a time when Spikehad been particularly painstaking in view of an approaching combat. Notonly did he leave his young friend with an eye that compelled thenotice, an eye lavishly displaying all the tints yet revealed byspectroscopic analysis, and which by itself would have rendered himsocially undesirable, but he bore a swollen nose and a split and puffylip; bore them proudly, it should be said, and was not enough cast down,in Winona's opinion, that his shameful wounds would deter him frommingling with decent folk. Indeed, Winona had to be outspoken before sheconvinced him that a birthday party was now no place for him. He wouldhave gone without misgiving, and would have pridefully recounted thesickening details of that last round in which Spike Brennon hadpermitted himself to fancy he faced a veritable antagonist. Still hecared little for the festivity.

  He saw Patricia from a distance in River Street, but pulled the dingycap lower and avoided her notice. She was still bony and animated andlooked quite capable of commanding his attendance over eighteen holes ofthe most utterly futile golf in all the world. His only real regret inthe matter of his facial blemishes was that Spike came back with themere loser's end of an inconsiderable purse, and had to suffer anotherinfliction of the most intricate bridge work at the hands of DoctorPatten before he could properly enjoy at the board of T-bone Tommy thatdiet so essential to active men of affairs.