He paused only to wonder if the girl would have it when she grew up--she now boasted but the rudiments of any nose whatsoever--and dismissed the tribe from his mind.
He waited for Winona and Merle a block up the street from the church.
Winona was silent with importance, preoccupied, grave, and yet uplifted.
Not until they reached the Penniman gate did she issue from this abstraction to ask the Wilbur twin rather severely what lesson he had learned from the morning sermon.

The Wilbur twin, with immense difficulty, brought her to believe that he had not heard a word of the sermon.

This was especially incredible, because it had dealt with the parable of the prodigal son who spent all his substance in riotous living.

One would have thought, said Winona, that this lesson would have come home to one who had so lately followed the same bad course, and she sought now to enlighten the offender.
"And he had to eat with the pigs when his money was all gone," Merle submitted in an effort to aid Winona.
But the Wilbur twin's perverse mind merely ran to the picture of fatted calf, though without relish--he did not like fat meat.
It was good to be back in a human atmosphere once more, where he could hear his father's quips.

The Penniman Sunday dinner was based notably on chicken, as were all other Sunday dinners in Newbern, and his father, when he entered the house, was already beginning the gayety by pledging Mrs.Penniman in a wineglass of the Ajax Invigorator.