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A year went by in which Wilbur was perforce left to his self-education, working for Porter Howgill or at the garage or for Sam Pickering as he listed. "I'm making good money," was his steady rejoinder to Winona's hectoring. "As if money were everything," wrote Winona in her journal, where she put the case against him.
Wilbur tried earnestly to remember that he should reply in Winona's formula, "I have had a delightful time and thank you so much for asking me," but he stared at Sharon, muffled in a great fur coat and cap, holding the taut lines with enormous driving gloves, and could only say "Fine!" after which he stopped, merely looking his thanks.
The still capable left eye, instead of revealing concern for this ignominy, gleamed a lively pride in its overwhelming completeness. The malign eye was worn proudly as a badge of honour, so proudly that the wearer, after Winona's first outcry of horror, bubbled vaingloriously of how he had achieved the stigma by stepping into one of Spike Brennon's straight lefts. Nothing less than that!
The others most concerned, had he allowed it to be known, would have been amazed by it Winona Penniman most of all. Winona's conviction was that the rejected Cowan twin conspicuously lacked those qualities that would make him desirable for adoption by any family of note, certainly not by Whipples. He had gone from bad to worse. Driving a truck had been bad.
She hung a moment on this, searching Winona's face with clear eyes. "I have no blind husband," she finished. "You're a dear," said Winona. "I'm so glad for you," said Juliana. "I must guard him in so many ways," confided Winona. "He's happy now he's forgotten for the moment. But sometimes it comes back on him terribly what he is, you know.
"'Ah, Great Mystery! why do you punish a poor girl so? Let me go with the spirit of Morning Star! "It was evening. The pale moon arose in the east and the stars were bright. At this very hour the news of the disaster was brought home by a returning scout, and the village was plunged in grief, but Winona's spirit had flown away. No one ever saw her again. "This is enough for to-day, my boy.
Now, you are preparing the bridal feast, but you shall see how well I can defeat your designs." She then commenced a plaintive song of death, which ran thus: WINONA'S DIRGE.
He did what he could to fan the judge's resentment. He said it was probably, knowing Winona's ways, that she had wed a dissolute French nobleman, impoverished of all but his title. He hoped for the best, but he had always known that the girl was a light-minded baggage. He wondered how she could ever justify her course to Matthew Arnold if the need rose.
It should be said that he was now arrayed as Winona would have him, in summer sports attire of careless but expensive appearance, including a silk shirt alleged by the maker to be snappy, and a cap of real character. The instinct of the male for noticeable plumage had at last worked the reform that not all of Winona's pleading had sufficed for.
Winona's assumption of carelessness had been meant to deceive passers-by into believing that she looked upon these gauds with a censorious eye, and not as one meaning flagrantly to purchase of them. Her actual dire intention was nothing to flaunt in the public gaze. Nor did she mean to voice her wishes before a shopful of people who might consider them ambiguous.
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