Midsummer faded into late summer, and Dave Cowan was still small-towning
it. To the uninformed he might have seemed a staff, fixed and permanent,
to Sam Pickering and the Newbern Center _Advance_. But Sam was not
uninformed. He was wise in Dave's ways; he knew the longer Dave stayed
the more casually would he flit; an hour's warning and the _Advance_
would be needing a printer. So Sam became aware on a day in early
September that he would be wise to have a substitute ready. He knew the
signs. Dave would become abstracted, stand longer and oftener at the
window overlooking the slow life of Newbern. His mind would already be
off and away. Then on an afternoon he would tell Sam that he must see a
man in Seattle, and if Sam had taken forethought there would be a new
printer at the case next day. The present sojourn of Dave's had been
longer than any Sam Pickering could remember, for the reason, it seemed,
that Dave had been interested in teaching his remaining son a good loose
trade.
Directly after the apotheosis of Merle his brother had been taken to the
_Advance_ office where, perched upon a high stool, his bare legs
intricately entwined among its rungs, he had been taught the surface
mysteries of typesetting. At first he was merely let to set up quads in
his stick, though putting leads between the lines and learning the use
of his steel rule. Then he was taught the location of the boxes in the
case and was allowed to set real type. By the time Sam Pickering noted
the moving signs in Dave the boy was struggling with copy and winning
his father's praise for his aptitude. True, he too often neglected to
reach to the upper case for capital letters, and the galley proofs of
his takes were not as clean as they should have been, but he was
learning. His father said so.
Every Wednesday he earned a real quarter by sitting against the wall
back of the hand press and inking the forms while his father ran off the
edition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a long
roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small
roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and
across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length
of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower
rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that
you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the press
bed.
Dave Cowan, across the press, the sleeves of his pink-striped shirt
rolled to his elbows, then let down a frame in which he had fixed a
virgin sheet of paper, ran the bed of the press back under a weighted
shelf, and pulled a mighty lever to make the imprint. Wilbur had heard
the phrase "power of the press." He conceived that this was what the
phrase meant--this pulling of the lever. Surmounting the framework of
the press was a bronze eagle with wings out-spread for flight. His
father told him, the first day of his service, that this bird would flap
its wings and scream three times when the last paper was run off. This
would be the signal for Terry Stamper, the devil, to go across to
Vielhaber's and fetch a pail of beer. Wilbur had waited for this
phenomenon, only to believe, after repeated disappointments, that it was
one of his father's jokes, though it was true that Terry Stamper brought
the beer, which was drunk by Dave and Terry and Sam Pickering. Sam had
been folding the printed papers, while Terry Stamper operated a machine
that left upon each the name of a subscriber, dropping them into a
clothes basket, which he later conveyed to the post office. Wilbur
enjoyed this work, running the long roller across the forms after each
impression, spotting himself and his clothes with ink. After he had
learned some more he would be a printer's devil like Terry, and fetch
the beer and run the job press and do other interesting things. There
was a little thrill for him in knowing you could say devil in this
connection without having people think you were using a bad word.
But Dave's time had come. He "yearned over the skyline, where the
strange roads go down," though he put it more sharply to Sam Pickering
one late afternoon:
"Well, Sam, I feel itchy-footed."
"I knew it," said Sam. "When are you leaving?"
"No train out till the six-fifty-eight."
And Sam knew he would be meaning the six-fifty-eight of that same day.
He never meant the day after, or the day after that.
That evening Dave sauntered down to the depot, accompanied by his son.
There was no strained air of expectancy about him, and no tedious
management of bags. He might have been seeking merely the refreshment of
watching the six-fifty-eight come in and go out, as did a dozen or so of
the more leisured class of Newbern. When the train came he greeted the
conductor by his Christian name, and chatted with his son until it
started. Then he stepped casually aboard and surrendered himself to its
will. He had wanted suddenly to go somewhere on a train, and now he was
going. "Got to see a man in San Diego," he had told the boy. "I'll drop
back some of these days."
"Maybe you'll see the gypsies again," said Wilbur a bit wistfully.
But he was not cast down by his father's going; that was a thing that
happened or not, like bad weather. He had learned this about his father.
And pretty soon, after he went to school a little more and learned to
spell better, to use punctuation marks the way the copy said, and
capital letters even if you did have to reach for them, he, too, could
swing onto the smoking car of the six-fifty-eight--after she had really
started--and go off where gypsies went, and people that had learned good
loose trades.
There was a new printer at the case in the _Advance_ office the
following morning, one of those who constantly drifted in and out of
that exciting nowhere into which they so lightly disappeared by whim; a
gaunt, silent man, almost wholly deaf, who stood in Dave Cowan's place
and set type with machine-like accuracy or distributed it with
loose-fingered nimbleness, seizing many types at a time and scattering
them to their boxes with the apparent abandon of a sower strewing seed.
He, too, was but a transient, wherever he might be found, but he had no
talk of the outland where gypsies were, and to Wilbur he proved to be of
no human interest, so that the boy neglected the dusty office for the
more attractive out-of-doors, though still inking the forms for the
Wednesday edition, because a quarter is a good thing to have.
When Terry Stamper brought the pail of beer now the new printer drank
abundantly of the frothy stuff, and for a time glowed gently with a
suggestive radiance, as if he, too, were almost moved to tell of strange
cities; but he never did. Nor did he talk instructively about the
beginnings of life and how humans were but slightly advanced simians. He
would continue to set type, silent and detached, until an evening when
he would want to go somewhere on a train--and go. He did not smoke, but
he chewed tobacco; and Wilbur, the apprentice, desiring to do all things
that printers did, strove to emulate him in this interesting vice; but
it proved to offer only the weakest of appeals, so he presently
abandoned the effort--especially after Winona had detected him with the
stuff in his mouth, striving to spit like an elderly printer. Winona was
horrified. Smoking was bad enough!
Winona was even opposed to his becoming a printer. Those advantages of
the craft extolled by Dave Cowan were precisely what Winona deemed
undesirable. A boy should rather be studious and of good habits and
learn to write a good hand so that he could become a bookkeeper, perhaps
even in the First National Bank itself--and always stay in one place.
Winona disapproved of gypsies and all their ways. Gypsies were rolling
stones. She strove to entice the better nature of Wilbur with moral
placards bearing printed bits from the best authors. She gave him an
entire calendar with an uplifting sentiment on each leaf. One paying
proper attention could scarcely have lived the year of that calendar
without being improved. Unfortunately, Wilbur Cowan never in the least
cared to know what day in the month it was, and whole weeks of these
homilies went unread. Winona was watchful, however, and fertile of
resource. Aforetime she had devoted her efforts chiefly to Merle as
being the better worth saving. Now that she had indeed saved him, made
and uplifted him beyond human expectation, she redoubled her attentions
to his less responsive, less plastic brother. Almost fiercely she was
bent upon making him the moral perfectionist she had made Merle.
As one of the means to this end she regaled him often with tales of his
brother's social and moral refulgence under his new name. The severance
of Merle from his former environment had been complete. Not yet had he
come back to see them. But Winona from church and Sunday-school brought
weekly reports of his progress in the esteem of the family which he now
adorned. Harvey D. Whipple was proud of his new son; had already come to
feel a real fatherhood for him, and could deny him nothing. He was such
a son as Harvey D. had hoped to have. Old Gideon Whipple, too, was proud
of his new grandson. The stepmother, for whom Fate had been circumvented
by this device of adoption, looked up to the boy and rejoiced in her
roundabout motherhood, and Miss Murtree declared that he was a perfect
little gentleman. Also, by her account, he was studious, with a natural
fondness for the best in literature, and betrayed signs of an intellect
such as, in her confidentially imparted opinion, the Whipple family,
neither in root nor branch, had yet revealed. Patricia, the sister, had
abandoned all intention of running away from home to obtain the right
sort of companionship.
Winona meant to pique and inspire Wilbur to new endeavour with these
tales, which, for a good purpose, she took the liberty of embellishing
where they seemed to invite it--as how the Whipples were often heard to
wish that the other twin had been as good and well-mannered a boy as
Merle--who did not use tobacco in any form--so they might have adopted
him, too. Winona was perhaps never to understand that Wilbur could not
picture himself as despised and rejected. His assertion that he had not
wished to be adopted by any Whipples she put down to envious bravado.
Had he not from afar on more than one occasion beheld his brother riding
the prophesied pony? But he would have felt embarrassed at meeting his
brother now face to face. He liked to see him at a distance, on the
wonderful pony, or being driven in the cart with other Whipples, and he
felt a great pride that he should have been thus exalted. But he was
shyly determined to have no contact with this splendid being.
When school began in the fall he was again constrained to the halls of
learning. He would have preferred not to go to school, finding the free
outer life of superior interest; but he couldn't learn the good loose
trade without improving his knowledge of the printed word--though he had
not been warned that printers must be informed about fractions, or even
long division--but Winona being his teacher it was impracticable to be
absent on private affairs even for a day without annoying consequences.
During the long summer every day but Sunday had been a Saturday in all
essentials; now, though the hillsides blazed with autumn colour, ripe
nuts were dropping, the mornings sparkled a frosty invitation, and there
was a provocative tang of brush fires in the keen air, he must earn his
Saturdays, and might even of these earn but one in a long week. Sunday,
to be sure, had the advantage of no school, but it had the disadvantage
of church attendance, where one fell sleepy while the minister scolded;
and Sunday afternoon, even if one might fare abroad, was clouded by
reminders of the imminent Monday morning. It was rather a relief when
snow came to shroud the affable woods, bringing such cold that one might
as well be in a schoolroom as any place; when, as Winona put down in
her journal, the vale of Newbern was "locked in winter's icy embrace,"
and poor old Judge Penniman was compelled to while away the long
forenoons with his feet on a stock of wood in the kitchen oven.
From Dave Cowan came picture postcards addressed to his son,
gay-coloured scenes of street life or public buildings, and on these
Dave had written, "Having a good time, hope you are the same." One of
them portrayed a scene of revelry by night, and was entitled Sans Souci
Dance Hall, Denver, Colorado. Winona bribed this away from the recipient
with money. She wished Dave would use better judgment--choose the
picture of some good church or a public library.
The Whipple family, including its latest recruit, continued remote.
Wilbur would happily observe his one-time brother, muffled in robes of
fur, glide swiftly past in a sleigh of curved beauty, drawn by horses
that showered music along the roadway from a hundred golden bells, but
there were no direct encounters save with old Sharon Whipple. Sharon,
even before winter came, had formed a habit of stopping to speak to
Wilbur, pulling up the long-striding, gaunt roan horse and the buggy
which his weight caused to sag on one side to ask the boy idle
questions. Throughout the winter he continued these attentions, and
once, on a day sparkling with new snow, he took the rejected twin into a
cutter, enveloped him in the buffalo robe, and gave him a joyous ride
out over West Hill along the icy road that wound through the sleeping,
still woods. They were silent for the most of this drive.
"You don't talk much," said Sharon when the roan slowed for the ascent
of West Hill and the music of the bells became only a silver murmur of
chords. The boy was silent, even at this, for while he was trying to
think of a suitable answer, trying to think what Winona would have him
reply, Sharon flicked the roan and the music came loud again. There was
no more talk until Sharon pulled up in the village, the boy being too
shy to volunteer any speech while this splendid hospitality endured.
"Have a good time?" demanded Sharon at parting.
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.
"Good!" said Sharon, and touching the outer tips of his frosted eyebrows
with a huge gloved thumb he clicked to the roan and was off to a
sprinkle of bell chimes.
Wilbur resolved not to tell Winona of this ride, because he would have
to confess that he had awkwardly forgotten to say the proper words at
the end. Merle would not have forgotten. Probably Mr. Sharon Whipple,
having found him wanting in polish, would never speak to him again. But
Sharon did, for a week later, when Wilbur passed him where he had
stopped the cutter in River Street, the old man not only hailed him, but
called him Buck. From his hearty manner of calling, "Hello, there,
Buck!" it seemed that he had decided to overlook the past.
* * * * *
The advent of the following summer was marked by two events of
importance; Mouser, the Penniman cat, after being repeatedly foiled
throughout the winter, had gained access to the little house on a day
when windows and doors were open for cleaning, stalked the immobile blue
jay, and falling upon his prey had rent the choice bird limb from limb,
scattering over a wide space wings, feathers, cotton, and twisted wire.
Mouser had apparently found it beyond belief that so beautiful a bird
should not be toothsome in any single part. But the discoverer of this
sacrilege was not horrified as he would have been a year before. He had
even the breadth of mind to feel an honest sympathy for poor Mouser, who
had come upon arsenic where it could not by any known law of Nature have
been apprehended, and who for two days remained beneath the woodshed
sick unto death, and was not his old self for weeks thereafter. Wilbur
was growing up.
Soon after this the other notable event transpired. Frank, the dog,
became the proud but worried mother of five puppies, all multicoloured
like himself. It is these ordeals that mature the soul, and it was an
older Wilbur who went again to the _Advance_ office to learn the loose
trade, as his father had written him from New Orleans that he must be
sure to do. He had increased his knowledge of convention in the use of
capital letters, and that summer, as a day's work, he set up a column of
leaded long primer which won him the difficult praise of Sam Pickering.
Sam wrote a notice of the performance and printed it in the
_Advance_--the budding craftsman feeling a double glow when he sat this
up, too. The item predicted that Wilbur Cowan, son of our fellow
townsman, Dave Cowan, would soon become one of the swiftest of
compositors.
This summer he not only inked the forms on Wednesday, but he was
permitted to operate the job press. You stood before this and turned a
large wheel at the left to start it, after which you kept it going with
one foot on a treadle. Then rhythmically the press opened wide its maw
and you took out the printed card or small bill and put in another
before the jaws closed down. It was especially thrilling, because if you
should keep your hand in there until the jaws closed you wouldn't have
it any longer.
But there was disquieting news about the loose trade he intended to
follow. A new printer brought this. He was the second since the deaf one
of the year before, the latter on an hour's notice having taken the
six-fifty-eight for Florida one night in early winter--like one of the
idle rich, Sam Pickering said. The new printer, a sour, bald one of
middle age, reported bitterly that hand composition was getting to be no
good nowadays; you had to learn the linotype, a machine that was taking
the bread out of the mouths of honest typesetters. He had beheld one of
these heinous mechanisms operated in a city office--by a slip of a girl
that wouldn't know how to hold a real stick in her hand--and things had
come to a pretty pass. It was an intricate machine, with thousands of
parts, far more than seemed at all necessary. If you weren't right about
machinery, and too old to learn new tricks, what were you going to do?
Get sent to the printer's home, that was all! The new printer drank
heavily to assuage his gloom, even to a degree that caused Herman
Vielhaber to decline his custom, so that he must lean the gloomy hours
away on the bar of Pegleg McCarron, where they didn't mind such things.
Sam Pickering warned him that if this kept on there would no longer be
jobs for hand compositors, even in country printing offices; that he,
for one, would probably solve his own labour problem by installing a
machine and running it himself. But the sad printer refused to be warned
and went from bad to worse.
Wilbur Cowan partook of this pessimism about the craft, and wondered if
his father had heard the news. If it had ceased to be important that a
bright boy should set up a column of long primer, leaded, in a day, he
might as well learn some other loose trade in which they couldn't invent
a machine to take the bread out of your mouth. It was that summer he
spent many forenoons on the steps of the ice wagon driven by his good
friend, Bill Bardin. Bill said you made good-enough money delivering
ice, and it was pleasant on a hot morning to rumble along the streets on
the back steps of the covered wagon, cooled by the great blocks of ice
still in its sawdust.
When they came to a house that took only twenty-five pounds Bill would
let him carry it in with the tongs--unless it was one where Bill, a
knightly person, chanced to sustain more or less social relations with
the bondmaid. And you could chip off pieces of ice to hold in your
mouth, or cool your bare feet in the cold wet sawdust; and you didn't
have to be anywhere at a certain hour, but could just loaf along, giving
people their ice when you happened to get there. He wondered, indeed, if
delivering ice were not as loose a trade as typesetting had been, and
whether his father would approve of it. It was pleasanter than sitting
in a dusty printing office, and the smells were less obtrusive. Also,
Bill Bardin went about bareheaded and clad above the waist only in a
sleeveless jersey that was tight across his broad chest and gave his big
arms free play. He chewed tobacco, too, like a printer, but cautioned
his young helper against this habit in early youth. He said if indulged
in at too tender an age it turned your blood to water and you died in
great suffering. Wilbur longed for the return of his father, so he could
tell him about the typesetting machine and about this other good loose
trade that had opened so opportunely.
And there were other trades--seemingly loose enough--in which one drove
the most delightful wagons, and which endured the year round and not, as
with the ice trade, merely for the summer. There was, for example,
driving an express wagon. Afternoons, when the ice chests of Newbern had
been replenished and Bill Bardin disappeared in the more obscure
interests of his craft, Wilbur would often ride with Rufus Paulding,
Newbern's express agent. Rufus drove one excellent horse to a smart
green wagon, and brought packages from the depot, which he delivered
about the town. Being a companionable sort, he was not averse to Wilbur
Cowan's company on his cushioned seat. It was not as cool work as
delivering ice, and lacked a certain dash of romance present in the
other trade, but it was lively and interesting in its own way,
especially when Rufus would remain on his seat and let him carry
packages in to people with a book for them to sign.
And there was the dray, driven by Trimble Cushman, drawn by two proud
black horses of great strength. This trade was a sort of elder, heavier
brother of the express trade, conveying huge cases of merchandise from
the freight depot to the shops of the town. Progress was slower here
than with the express wagon, or even the ice wagon; you had to do lots
of backing, with much stern calling to the big horses, and often it took
a long time to ease the big boxes to the sidewalk--time and grunting
exclamations. Still it was not unattractive to the dilettante, and he
rode beside Trimble with profit to his knowledge of men and affairs.
But better than all, for a good loose trade involving the direction of
horses, was driving the bus from the Mansion House to the depot. The
majestic yellow vehicle with its cushioned, lavishly decorated interior,
its thronelike seat above the world, was an exciting affair, even when
it rested in the stable yard. When the horses were hitched to it, and
Starling Tucker from the high seat with whip and reins directed its
swift progress, with rattles and rumbles like a real circus wagon, it
was thrilling indeed. This summer marked the first admission of Wilbur
to an intimacy with the privileged driver which entitled him to mount
dizzily to the high seat and rattle off to trains. He had patiently
courted Starling Tucker in the office of the Mansion House livery
stable, sitting by him in silent admiration while he discoursed
learnedly of men and horses, helping to hitch up the dappled grays to
the bus, fetching his whip, holding his gloves, until it became a matter
of course that he should mount to the high seat with him.
This seemed really to be the best of all loose trades. On that high
seat, one hand grasping an iron railing at the side, sitting by
grim-faced Starling Tucker in his battered hat, who drove carelessly
with one hand and tugged at his long red moustache with the other, it
was pleasantly appalling to reflect that he might be at any moment
dashed to pieces on the road below; to remember that Starling himself,
the daily associate of horses and a man of high adventure, had once
fallen from this very seat and broken bones--the most natural kind of
accident, Starling averred, though gossip had blamed it on Pegleg
McCarron's whisky. Not only was it delectable to ride in the high place,
to watch trains come and go, to carry your load of travellers back to
the Mansion House, but there were interludes of relaxation when you
could sit about in the office of the stables and listen to agreeable
talk from the choice spirits of abundant leisure, with whom work seemed
to be a tribal taboo, daily assembled there. The flow of anecdote was
often of a pungent quality, and the amateur learned some words and
phrases that would have caused Winona acute distress; but he learned
about men and horses and dogs, and enlarged his knowledge of Newbern's
inner life, having peculiar angles of his own upon it from his other
contacts with its needs for ice and express packages and crates of
bulkier merchandise.
His father had once said barbering was a good loose trade that enabled
one to go freely about the world, but the boy had definitely eliminated
this from the list of possible crafts, owing to unfortunate experiences
with none other than Judge Penniman, for the judge cut his hair. At
spaced intervals through the year Winona would give the order and the
judge would complainingly make his preparations. The victim was taken to
the woodshed and perched on a box which was set on a chair. The judge
swathed him with one of Mrs. Penniman's aprons, crowding folds of it
inside his neckband. Then with stern orders to hold his head still the
rite was consummated with a pair of shears commandeered from plain and
fancy dressmaking. Loath himself to begin the work, the judge always
came to feel, as it progressed, a fussy pride in his artistry; a pride
never in the least justified by results. To Wilbur, after these ordeals,
his own mirrored head was a strange and fearsome apparition, the ears
appearing to have been too carelessly affixed and the scanty remainder
of his hair left in furrows, with pallid scalp showing through. And
there were always hairs down his neck, despite the apron. Barbering was
not for him--not when you could drive a bus to all trains, or even a
dray.
There were also street encounters that summer with old Sharon Whipple,
who called the boy Buck and jocularly asked him what he was doing to
make a man of himself, and whom he would vote for at the next election.
One sunny morning, while Wilbur on River Street weighed the possible
attractions of the livery-stable office against the immediate certainty
of some pleasant hours with Rufus Paulding, off to the depot to get a
load of express packages for people, Sharon in his sagging buggy pulled
up to the curb before him and told him to jump in if he wanted a ride.
So he had jumped in without further debate.
Sharon's plump figure was loosely clad in gray, and his whimsical eyes
twinkled under a wide-brimmed hat of soft straw. He paused to light a
cigar after the boy was at his side--the buggy continuing to sag as
before--then he pushed up the ends of his eyebrows with the blunt thumb,
clicked to the long-striding roan, and they were off at a telling trot.
Out over West Hill they went, leaving a thick fog of summer dust in
their wake, and on through cool woods to a ridge from which the valley
opened, revealing a broad checker-board of ripening grain fields.
"Got to make three of my farms," volunteered Sharon after a silent
hour's drive.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, which seemed enough for them both until the
first of the farms was reached.
Sharon there descended, passing the reins to a proud Wilbur, for talk
with his tenant on the steps of the yellow frame farmhouse. Sharon bent
his thick round leg to raise a foot to a rustic seat, and upon the
cushion thus provided made figures in a notebook. After a time of this,
while Wilbur excitingly held the roan horse, made nervous by a hive of
bees against the whitewashed fence, he came back to the buggy--which
sagged from habit even when disburdened of its owner--and they drove to
another farm--a red brick farmhouse, this time, with yellow roses
climbing its front. Here Sharon tarried longer in consultation. Wilbur
staunchly held the roan, listened to the high-keyed drone of a reaper in
a neighbouring field, and watched the old man make more figures in his
black notebook. He liked this one of the Whipples pretty well. He was
less talkative than Bill Bardin, and his speech was less picturesque
than Starling Tucker's or even Trimble Cushman's, who would often
threaten to do interesting and horrible things to his big dray horses
when they didn't back properly; but Wilbur felt at ease with Sharon,
even if he didn't say much or say it in startling words.
When Sharon had done his business the farmer came to lead the roan to
the barn, and Sharon, taking a pasteboard box from the back of the
buggy, beckoned Wilbur to follow him. They went round the red farmhouse,
along a grassy path carelessly bordered with flowers that grew as they
would, and at the back came to a little white spring house in which were
many pans of milk on shelves, and a big churn. The interior was cool and
dim, and a stream of clear water trickled along a passage in the cement
floor. They sat on a bench, and Sharon opened his box to produce an
astonishing number of sandwiches wrapped in tissue paper, a generous
oblong of yellow cheese, and some segments of brown cake splendidly
enriched with raisins.
"Pitch in!" said Sharon.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and did so with an admirable restraint, such as
Winona would have applauded, nibbling politely at one of the sandwiches.
"Ain't you got your health?" demanded the observant Sharon, capably
engulfing half a sandwich.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Eat like it then."
So the boy became less conscious of his manners, and ate like it, to
Sharon's apparent satisfaction. Midway in the destruction of the
sandwiches the old man drew from the churn a tin cup of what proved to
be buttermilk. His guest had not learned to like this, so for him he
procured another cup, and brought it brimming with sweet milk which he
had daringly taken from one of the many pans, quite as if he were at
home in the place.
"Milk's good for you," said Sharon.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"A regular food, as much as anything you want to name."
"Yes, sir." The boy agreed wholly, without wishing to name anything in
disparagement of milk.
They ate the sandwiches and cheese, and upon the guest was conferred the
cake. There were three pieces, and he managed the first swiftly, but was
compelled to linger on the second, even with the lubricating help of
another cup of milk.
"Bring it along," directed the host. So it was brought along to the
buggy, one piece in course of consumption and one carried to be eaten at
superb leisure as the fed roan carried them down the hot road to still
another farm.
They drove back to Newbern in the late afternoon, still largely silent,
though there was a little talk at the close on stretches of hill where
the roan would consent to slacken his pace.
"What you think of him?" Sharon demanded, nodding obliquely at the roan.
"He's got good hocks and feet--good head and shoulders, too," said the
boy.
"He has that," affirmed Sharon. "Know horses?"
"Well, I--"
He faltered, but suddenly warmed to talk and betrayed an intimate
knowledge of every prominent horse in Newbern. He knew Charley and Dick,
the big dray horses; and Dexter, who drew the express wagon; he knew Bob
and George, who hauled the ice wagon; he knew the driving horses in the
Mansion stables by name and point, and especially the two dapple grays
that drew the bus. Not for nothing had he listened to the wise talk in
the stable office, or sat at the feet of Starling Tucker, who knew
horses so well he called them hawses. It was the first time he had
talked to Sharon forgetfully. Sharon nodded his head from time to time,
and the boy presently became shy at the consciousness that he had talked
a great deal.
Then Sharon spoke of rumours that the new horseless carriage would soon
do away with horses. He didn't believe the rumours, and he spoke
scornfully of the new machines as contraptions. Still he had seen some
specimens in Buffalo, and they might have something in them. They might
be used in time in place of horse-drawn busses and ice wagons and drays.
Wilbur was chilled by this prediction. He had more than half meant to
drive horses to one of these useful affairs, but what if they were to be
run by machinery? Linotypes to spoil typesetting by hand, and now
horseless carriages to stop driving horses! He wondered if it would be
any use to learn any trade. He would have liked to ask Sharon, but
hardly dared.
"Well, it's an age of progress," said Sharon at last. "We got to expect
changes."
Wilbur was at home on this topic. He became what Winona would have
called informative.
"We can't stop change," he said in his father's manner. "First, there
was star dust, and electricity or something made it into the earth; and
some water and chemicals made life out of this electricity or
something----"
"Hey?" said the startled Sharon, but the story of creation continued.
"And there was just little animals first, but they got to be bigger,
because they had to change; and pretty soon they become monkeys, and
then they changed some more, and stood up on their hind feet, and so
they got to be human beings like us--because--because they had to
change," he concluded, lucidly.
"My shining stars!" breathed Sharon.
"And they lost their tails and got so they would wear neckties and have
post offices and depots and religions," added the historian in a final
flash of memory.
"Well, I'll be switched!" said Sharon.
"It's electricity or something," explained the lecturer. "My father said
so."
"Oh!" said Sharon.
"But he says there's a catch in it somewhere."
"I should think there was," said Sharon. "By gracious goodness, I should
think there was a catch in it somewhere! But you understand the whole
thing as easy as crack a nut, don't you?"
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Giddap there!" said Sharon.
Wilbur did not tell Winona of this day's encounter with an authentic
Whipple. He would have done so but for the dollar that Sharon absently
bestowed upon him from a crumple of bills when he left the buggy at the
entrance to Whipple Old Place. Winona, he instantly knew, would counsel
him to save the dollar, and he did not wish to save it. As fast as his
bare feet--with a stone bruise on one heel--would carry him he sped to
Solly Gumble's. Yet not with wholly selfish intent. A section of plug
tobacco, charmingly named Peach and Honey, was purchased for a quarter
as a gift to Bill Bardin of the ice wagon. Another quarter secured three
pale-brown cigars, with gay bands about their middles, to be lavished
upon the hero, Starling Tucker.