"Murtree," she corrected him, and spoke her thanks with a brightening glance. "Here," she added, proffering her treasure, "take a good long suck if you want to."
He did want to. His brother beheld him with anguished eyes. As Merle demonstrated the problem in hydraulics the girl studied him more attentively, then gleamed with a sudden new radiance.
"Oh, I'll tell you what let's do!" she exclaimed. "We'll change clothes with each other, and then I'll be Ben Blunt without waiting till I get to the great city. Cousin Juliana could pass me right by on the street and never know me." She clapped her small brown hands. "Goody!" she finished.
But the twins stiffened. The problem was not so simple.
"How do you mean--change clothes?" demanded Merle.
"Why, just change! I'll put on your clothes and look like a mere street urchin right away."
"Put on my clothes, of course. I explained that."
"Only till you get home; then you can put on your Sunday clothes."
"But they wouldn't be Sunday clothes if I had to wear 'em every day, and then I wouldn't have any Sunday clothes."
"Stupid! You can buy new ones, can't you?"
"I'd give you a lot of money to buy some."
Surprisingly the girl stuck out a foot. Her ankle seemed badly swollen; she seemed even to reveal incipient elephantiasis.
"Money!" she announced. "Busted my bank and took it all. And I put it in my stocking the way Miss Murtree did when she went to Buffalo to visit her dying mother. But hers was bills, and mine is nickels and dimes and quarters and all like that--thousands of dollars' worth of 'em, and they're kind of disagreeable. They make me limp--kind of. I'll give you a lot of it to buy some new clothes. Let's change quick." She turned and backed up to the Merle twin. "Unbutton my waist," she commanded.
The Merle twin backed swiftly away. This was too summary a treatment of a situation that still needed thought.
"Very well!" She sat on the grassy low mound above her forebear, released the top of the long black stocking from the bite of a hidden garter and lowered it to the bulky burden. "Give me your cap," she said, and into Merle's cap spurted a torrent of coins. When this had become reduced to a trickle, and then to odd pieces that had worked down about the heel, the cap held a splendid treasure. Both twins bent excitedly above it. Never had either beheld so vast a sum. It was beyond comprehension. The Wilbur twin plunged a hand thrillingly into the heap.