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.