don't listen to gossip," said the girl, loftily.
"And besides," continued the inquisitor, "if you think boys are such bad ones, what you trying to be one for, and be Ben Blunt and all like that?"
"You're too young to understand if I told you," she replied with a snappish dignity.
The Merle twin was regretting these asperities. His eyes clung constantly to the lemon and candy.
"She can be Ben Blunt if she wants to," he now declared in a voice of authority. "I bet she'll have a better moustache than that old Miss Murphy's."
"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."
"But what am I going to—"
"Put on my clothes, of course. I explained that."
"Be dressed like a girl?"
"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?"
"Well, I don't know."
"I'd give you a lot of money to buy some."
"Let's see it."
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.
"Let's see your money," he demanded.
"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.
"Gee, gosh!" he murmured from the sheer loveliness of it. Shining silver—thousands of dollars of it, the owner had declared.
"Now I guess you'll change," said the girl, observing the sensation she had made.
The twins regarded each other eloquently. It seemed to be acknowledged between them that anything namable would be done to obtain a share of this hoard. Still it was a monstrous infamy, this thing she wanted. Merle filtered coins through his fingers for the wondrous feel of them.
"Well, mebbe we better," he said at last.
"How much do we get?" demanded Wilbur, exalted but still sane.
"Oh, a lot!" said the girl, carelessly. Plainly she was not one to haggle. "Here, I'll give you two double handfuls—see, like that," and she measured the price into the other cap, not skimping. They were generous, heaping handfuls, and they reduced her horde by half. "Now!" she urged. "And hurry! I must be far by nightfall. I'll keep my shoes and stockings and not go barefoot till I reach the great city. But I'll take your clothes and your cap. Unbutton my waist."
Again she backed up to Merle. He turned to Wilbur.
"I guess we better change with her for all that money. Get your pants and waist off and I'll help button this thing on you."
It was characteristic of their relations that there was no thought of Merle being the victim of this barter. The Wilbur twin did not suggest it, but he protested miserably.
"I don't want to wear a girl's clothes."
"Silly!" said the girl. "It's for your own good."
"You only put it on for a minute, and sneak home quick," reminded his brother, "and look at all the money we'll have! Here, show him again all that money we'll have!"
And the girl did even so, holding up to him riches beyond the dreams of avarice. There was bitterness in the eyes of the Wilbur twin even as they gloated on the bribe. The ordeal would be fearful. He was to become a thing—not a girl and still not a boy—a thing somehow shameful. At last the alternative came to him.
"You change with her," he said, brightening. "My pants got a tear here on the side, and my waist ain't so clean as yours."
"Now don't begin that!" said his brother, firmly. "We don't want a lot of silly arguments about it, do we? Look at all the money we'll have!"
"Your clothes are the best," said the girl. "I must be filthy and ragged. Oh, please hurry!" Then to Merle: "Do unbutton my waist. Start it at the top and I can finish."
Gingerly he undid the earliest buttons on that narrow back of checked gingham, and swiftly the girl completed the process to her waist. Then the waist was off her meagre shoulders and she stepped from the hated garment. The Wilbur twin was aghast at her downright methods. He had a feeling that she should have retired for this change. How was he to know that an emergency had lifted her above prejudices sacred to the meaner souled? But now he raised a new objection, for beneath her gown the girl had been still abundantly and intricately clad, girded, harnessed.
"I can't ever put on all those other things," he declared, indicating the elaborate underdressing.
"Very well, I'll keep 'em on under the pants and waist till I get to the great city," said the girl, obligingly. "But why don't you hurry?"
She tossed him the discarded dress. He was seized with fresh panic as he took the thing.
"I don't like to," he said, sullenly.
"Look at all the money we'll have!" urged the brother.
"Here,"
