"Juliana took the twins home in the pony cart, with Wilbur wearing Patricia's dress--it's a plaid gingham I made myself--and someone gave him a lot of money and let him go, and they didn't give Merle any because Ed Seaver saw them on River Street, and Wilbur had it all.

And what did Patricia Whipple say to Don Paley but that she was going to have one of the twins for her brother, because no one else would get her a brother, and so she must.
But what would she want one of those little cutthroats for?
That's what puzzles me." "Merle is not a cutthroat," said Winona with tightening lips.

"He never will be a cutthroat." She left all manner of permissible suspicions about his brother.
"Well, it just beat me!" confessed her mother.

"Maybe they've been reading Wild West stories." "Wilbur, perhaps," insisted Winona.

"Merle is already very choice in his reading." "A puzzle, anyway--why, there they come!" And the manner of their coming brought more bewilderment to the house of Penniman.