CHAPTER VIII
Midsummer faded into late summer, and Dave Cowan was still small-towningit. To the uninformed he might have seemed a staff, fixed and permanent,to Sam Pickering and the Newbern Center _Advance_. But Sam was notuninformed. He was wise in Dave's ways; he knew the longer Dave stayedthe 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 earlySeptember that he would be wise to have a substitute ready. He knew thesigns. Dave would become abstracted, stand longer and oftener at thewindow overlooking the slow life of Newbern. His mind would already beoff and away. Then on an afternoon he would tell Sam that he must see aman in Seattle, and if Sam had taken forethought there would be a newprinter at the case next day. The present sojourn of Dave's had beenlonger than any Sam Pickering could remember, for the reason, it seemed,that Dave had been interested in teaching his remaining son a good loosetrade.
Directly after the apotheosis of Merle his brother had been taken to the_Advance_ office where, perched upon a high stool, his bare legsintricately entwined among its rungs, he had been taught the surfacemysteries of typesetting. At first he was merely let to set up quads inhis stick, though putting leads between the lines and learning the useof his steel rule. Then he was taught the location of the boxes in thecase and was allowed to set real type. By the time Sam Pickering notedthe moving signs in Dave the boy was struggling with copy and winninghis father's praise for his aptitude. True, he too often neglected toreach to the upper case for capital letters, and the galley proofs ofhis takes were not as clean as they should have been, but he waslearning. His father said so.
Every Wednesday he earned a real quarter by sitting against the wallback of the hand press and inking the forms while his father ran off theedition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a longroller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a smallroller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across andacross with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the lengthof the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lowerrollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After thatyou ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the pressbed.
Dave Cowan, across the press, the sleeves of his pink-striped shirtrolled to his elbows, then let down a frame in which he had fixed avirgin sheet of paper, ran the bed of the press back under a weightedshelf, and pulled a mighty lever to make the imprint. Wilbur had heardthe phrase "power of the press." He conceived that this was what thephrase meant--this pulling of the lever. Surmounting the framework ofthe press was a bronze eagle with wings out-spread for flight. Hisfather told him, the first day of his service, that this bird would flapits wings and scream three times when the last paper was run off. Thiswould be the signal for Terry Stamper, the devil, to go across toVielhaber's and fetch a pail of beer. Wilbur had waited for thisphenomenon, only to believe, after repeated disappointments, that it wasone of his father's jokes, though it was true that Terry Stamper broughtthe beer, which was drunk by Dave and Terry and Sam Pickering. Sam hadbeen folding the printed papers, while Terry Stamper operated a machinethat left upon each the name of a subscriber, dropping them into aclothes basket, which he later conveyed to the post office. Wilburenjoyed this work, running the long roller across the forms after eachimpression, spotting himself and his clothes with ink. After he hadlearned some more he would be a printer's devil like Terry, and fetchthe beer and run the job press and do other interesting things. Therewas a little thrill for him in knowing you could say devil in thisconnection without having people think you were using a bad word.
But Dave's time had come. He "yearned over the skyline, where thestrange roads go down," though he put it more sharply to Sam Pickeringone 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 tediousmanagement of bags. He might have been seeking merely the refreshment ofwatching the six-fifty-eight come in and go out, as did a dozen or so ofthe more leisured class of Newbern. When the train came he greeted theconductor by his Christian name, and chatted with his son until itstarted. Then he stepped casually aboard and surrendered himself to itswill. He had wanted suddenly to go somewhere on a train, and now he wasgoing. "Got to see a man in San Diego," he had told the boy. "I'll dropback 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 thathappened 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 tospell better, to use punctuation marks the way the copy said, andcapital letters even if you did have to reach for them, he, too, couldswing onto the smoking car of the six-fifty-eight--after she had reallystarted--and go off where gypsies went, and people that had learned goodloose trades.
There was a new printer at the case in the _Advance_ office thefollowing morning, one of those who constantly drifted in and out ofthat exciting nowhere into which they so lightly disappeared by whim; agaunt, silent man, almost wholly deaf, who stood in Dave Cowan's placeand set type with machine-like accuracy or distributed it withloose-fingered nimbleness, seizing many types at a time and scatteringthem 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 notalk of the outland where gypsies were, and to Wilbur he proved to be ofno human interest, so that the boy neglected the dusty office for themore attractive out-of-doors, though still inking the forms for theWednesday edition, because a quarter is a good thing to have.
When Terry Stamper brought the pail of beer now the new printer drankabundantly of the frothy stuff, and for a time glowed gently with asuggestive radiance, as if he, too, were almost moved to tell of strangecities; but he never did. Nor did he talk instructively about thebeginnings of life and how humans were but slightly advanced simians. Hewould continue to set type, silent and detached, until an evening whenhe would want to go somewhere on a train--and go. He did not smoke, buthe chewed tobacco; and Wilbur, the apprentice, desiring to do all thingsthat printers did, strove to emulate him in this interesting vice; butit proved to offer only the weakest of appeals, so he presentlyabandoned the effort--especially after Winona had detected him with thestuff in his mouth, striving to spit like an elderly printer. Winona washorrified. Smoking was bad enough!
Winona was even opposed to his becoming a printer. Those advantages ofthe craft extolled by Dave Cowan were precisely what Winona deemedundesirable. A boy should rather be studious and of good habits andlearn to write a good hand so that he could become a bookkeeper, perhapseven in the First National Bank itself--and always stay in one place.Winona disapproved of gypsies and all their ways. Gypsies were rollingstones. She strove to entice the better nature of Wilbur with moralplacards bearing printed bits from the best authors. She gave him anentire calendar with an uplifting sentiment on each leaf. One payingproper attention could scarcely have lived the year of that calendarwithout being improved. Unfortunately, Wilbur Cowan never in the leastcared to know what day in the month it was, and whole weeks of thesehomilies went unread. Winona was watchful, however, and fertile ofresource. Aforetime she had devoted her efforts chiefly to Merle asbeing the better worth saving. Now that she had indeed saved him, madeand uplifted him beyond human expectation, she redoubled her attentionsto his less responsive, less plastic brother. Almost fiercely she wasbent 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 hisbrother's social and moral refulgence under his new name. The severanceof Merle
from his former environment had been complete. Not yet had hecome back to see them. But Winona from church and Sunday-school broughtweekly reports of his progress in the esteem of the family which he nowadorned. Harvey D. Whipple was proud of his new son; had already come tofeel a real fatherhood for him, and could deny him nothing. He was sucha son as Harvey D. had hoped to have. Old Gideon Whipple, too, was proudof his new grandson. The stepmother, for whom Fate had been circumventedby this device of adoption, looked up to the boy and rejoiced in herroundabout motherhood, and Miss Murtree declared that he was a perfectlittle gentleman. Also, by her account, he was studious, with a naturalfondness for the best in literature, and betrayed signs of an intellectsuch as, in her confidentially imparted opinion, the Whipple family,neither in root nor branch, had yet revealed. Patricia, the sister, hadabandoned all intention of running away from home to obtain the rightsort of companionship.
Winona meant to pique and inspire Wilbur to new endeavour with thesetales, which, for a good purpose, she took the liberty of embellishingwhere they seemed to invite it--as how the Whipples were often heard towish that the other twin had been as good and well-mannered a boy asMerle--who did not use tobacco in any form--so they might have adoptedhim, too. Winona was perhaps never to understand that Wilbur could notpicture himself as despised and rejected. His assertion that he had notwished 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 ridingthe prophesied pony? But he would have felt embarrassed at meeting hisbrother now face to face. He liked to see him at a distance, on thewonderful pony, or being driven in the cart with other Whipples, and hefelt a great pride that he should have been thus exalted. But he wasshyly determined to have no contact with this splendid being.
When school began in the fall he was again constrained to the halls oflearning. He would have preferred not to go to school, finding the freeouter life of superior interest; but he couldn't learn the good loosetrade without improving his knowledge of the printed word--though he hadnot been warned that printers must be informed about fractions, or evenlong division--but Winona being his teacher it was impracticable to beabsent on private affairs even for a day without annoying consequences.
During the long summer every day but Sunday had been a Saturday in allessentials; now, though the hillsides blazed with autumn colour, ripenuts were dropping, the mornings sparkled a frosty invitation, and therewas a provocative tang of brush fires in the keen air, he must earn hisSaturdays, 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 disadvantageof church attendance, where one fell sleepy while the minister scolded;and Sunday afternoon, even if one might fare abroad, was clouded byreminders of the imminent Monday morning. It was rather a relief whensnow came to shroud the affable woods, bringing such cold that one mightas well be in a schoolroom as any place; when, as Winona put down inher journal, the vale of Newbern was "locked in winter's icy embrace,"and poor old Judge Penniman was compelled to while away the longforenoons 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 theseDave had written, "Having a good time, hope you are the same." One ofthem portrayed a scene of revelry by night, and was entitled Sans SouciDance Hall, Denver, Colorado. Winona bribed this away from the recipientwith money. She wished Dave would use better judgment--choose thepicture 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 offur, glide swiftly past in a sleigh of curved beauty, drawn by horsesthat showered music along the roadway from a hundred golden bells, butthere were no direct encounters save with old Sharon Whipple. Sharon,even before winter came, had formed a habit of stopping to speak toWilbur, pulling up the long-striding, gaunt roan horse and the buggywhich his weight caused to sag on one side to ask the boy idlequestions. Throughout the winter he continued these attentions, andonce, on a day sparkling with new snow, he took the rejected twin into acutter, enveloped him in the buffalo robe, and gave him a joyous rideout 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 ascentof West Hill and the music of the bells became only a silver murmur ofchords. The boy was silent, even at this, for while he was trying tothink of a suitable answer, trying to think what Winona would have himreply, Sharon flicked the roan and the music came loud again. There wasno more talk until Sharon pulled up in the village, the boy being tooshy 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'sformula, "I have had a delightful time and thank you so much for askingme," 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 eyebrowswith a huge gloved thumb he clicked to the roan and was off to asprinkle of bell chimes.
Wilbur resolved not to tell Winona of this ride, because he would haveto confess that he had awkwardly forgotten to say the proper words atthe end. Merle would not have forgotten. Probably Mr. Sharon Whipple,having found him wanting in polish, would never speak to him again. ButSharon did, for a week later, when Wilbur passed him where he hadstopped the cutter in River Street, the old man not only hailed him, butcalled 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 ofimportance; Mouser, the Penniman cat, after being repeatedly foiledthroughout the winter, had gained access to the little house on a daywhen windows and doors were open for cleaning, stalked the immobile bluejay, 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 birdshould not be toothsome in any single part. But the discoverer of thissacrilege was not horrified as he would have been a year before. He hadeven the breadth of mind to feel an honest sympathy for poor Mouser, whohad come upon arsenic where it could not by any known law of Nature havebeen apprehended, and who for two days remained beneath the woodshedsick unto death, and was not his old self for weeks thereafter. Wilburwas growing up.
Soon after this the other notable event transpired. Frank, the dog,became the proud but worried mother of five puppies, all multicolouredlike himself. It is these ordeals that mature the soul, and it was anolder Wilbur who went again to the _Advance_ office to learn the loosetrade, as his father had written him from New Orleans that he must besure to do. He had increased his knowledge of convention in the use ofcapital letters, and that summer, as a day's work, he set up a column ofleaded 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 thisup, too. The item predicted that Wilbur Cowan, son of our fellowtownsman, Dave Cowan, would soon become one of the swiftest ofcompositors.
This summer he not only inked the forms on Wednesday, but he waspermitted to operate the job press. You stood before this and turned alarge wheel at the left to start it, after which you kept it going withone foot on a treadle. Then rhythmically the press opened wide its mawand you took out the printed card or small bill and put in anotherbefore the jaws closed down. It was especially thrilling, because if youshould keep your hand in there until the jaws closed you wouldn't haveit any longer.
But there was disquieting news about the loose trade he intended tofollow. A new printer broug
ht this. He was the second since the deaf oneof the year before, the latter on an hour's notice having taken thesix-fifty-eight for Florida one night in early winter--like one of theidle rich, Sam Pickering said. The new printer, a sour, bald one ofmiddle age, reported bitterly that hand composition was getting to be nogood nowadays; you had to learn the linotype, a machine that was takingthe bread out of the mouths of honest typesetters. He had beheld one ofthese heinous mechanisms operated in a city office--by a slip of a girlthat wouldn't know how to hold a real stick in her hand--and things hadcome to a pretty pass. It was an intricate machine, with thousands ofparts, far more than seemed at all necessary. If you weren't right aboutmachinery, 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 drankheavily to assuage his gloom, even to a degree that caused HermanVielhaber to decline his custom, so that he must lean the gloomy hoursaway 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 bejobs for hand compositors, even in country printing offices; that he,for one, would probably solve his own labour problem by installing amachine and running it himself. But the sad printer refused to be warnedand went from bad to worse.
Wilbur Cowan partook of this pessimism about the craft, and wondered ifhis father had heard the news. If it had ceased to be important that abright boy should set up a column of long primer, leaded, in a day, hemight as well learn some other loose trade in which they couldn't inventa machine to take the bread out of your mouth. It was that summer hespent many forenoons on the steps of the ice wagon driven by his goodfriend, Bill Bardin. Bill said you made good-enough money deliveringice, and it was pleasant on a hot morning to rumble along the streets onthe back steps of the covered wagon, cooled by the great blocks of icestill in its sawdust.
When they came to a house that took only twenty-five pounds Bill wouldlet him carry it in with the tongs--unless it was one where Bill, aknightly person, chanced to sustain more or less social relations withthe bondmaid. And you could chip off pieces of ice to hold in yourmouth, or cool your bare feet in the cold wet sawdust; and you didn'thave to be anywhere at a certain hour, but could just loaf along, givingpeople their ice when you happened to get there. He wondered, indeed, ifdelivering ice were not as loose a trade as typesetting had been, andwhether his father would approve of it. It was pleasanter than sittingin a dusty printing office, and the smells were less obtrusive. Also,Bill Bardin went about bareheaded and clad above the waist only in asleeveless jersey that was tight across his broad chest and gave his bigarms free play. He chewed tobacco, too, like a printer, but cautionedhis young helper against this habit in early youth. He said if indulgedin at too tender an age it turned your blood to water and you died ingreat suffering. Wilbur longed for the return of his father, so he couldtell him about the typesetting machine and about this other good loosetrade that had opened so opportunely.
And there were other trades--seemingly loose enough--in which one drovethe most delightful wagons, and which endured the year round and not, aswith the ice trade, merely for the summer. There was, for example,driving an express wagon. Afternoons, when the ice chests of Newbern hadbeen replenished and Bill Bardin disappeared in the more obscureinterests of his craft, Wilbur would often ride with Rufus Paulding,Newbern's express agent. Rufus drove one excellent horse to a smartgreen wagon, and brought packages from the depot, which he deliveredabout the town. Being a companionable sort, he was not averse to WilburCowan's company on his cushioned seat. It was not as cool work asdelivering ice, and lacked a certain dash of romance present in theother trade, but it was lively and interesting in its own way,especially when Rufus would remain on his seat and let him carrypackages in to people with a book for them to sign.
And there was the dray, driven by Trimble Cushman, drawn by two proudblack horses of great strength. This trade was a sort of elder, heavierbrother of the express trade, conveying huge cases of merchandise fromthe freight depot to the shops of the town. Progress was slower herethan with the express wagon, or even the ice wagon; you had to do lotsof backing, with much stern calling to the big horses, and often it tooka long time to ease the big boxes to the sidewalk--time and gruntingexclamations. Still it was not unattractive to the dilettante, and herode beside Trimble with profit to his knowledge of men and affairs.
But better than all, for a good loose trade involving the direction ofhorses, was driving the bus from the Mansion House to the depot. Themajestic yellow vehicle with its cushioned, lavishly decorated interior,its thronelike seat above the world, was an exciting affair, even whenit rested in the stable yard. When the horses were hitched to it, andStarling Tucker from the high seat with whip and reins directed itsswift progress, with rattles and rumbles like a real circus wagon, itwas thrilling indeed. This summer marked the first admission of Wilburto an intimacy with the privileged driver which entitled him to mountdizzily to the high seat and rattle off to trains. He had patientlycourted Starling Tucker in the office of the Mansion House liverystable, sitting by him in silent admiration while he discoursedlearnedly of men and horses, helping to hitch up the dappled grays tothe bus, fetching his whip, holding his gloves, until it became a matterof course that he should mount to the high seat with him.
This seemed really to be the best of all loose trades. On that highseat, one hand grasping an iron railing at the side, sitting bygrim-faced Starling Tucker in his battered hat, who drove carelesslywith one hand and tugged at his long red moustache with the other, itwas pleasantly appalling to reflect that he might be at any momentdashed to pieces on the road below; to remember that Starling himself,the daily associate of horses and a man of high adventure, had oncefallen from this very seat and broken bones--the most natural kind ofaccident, Starling averred, though gossip had blamed it on PeglegMcCarron'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 tothe Mansion House, but there were interludes of relaxation when youcould sit about in the office of the stables and listen to agreeabletalk from the choice spirits of abundant leisure, with whom work seemedto be a tribal taboo, daily assembled there. The flow of anecdote wasoften of a pungent quality, and the amateur learned some words andphrases that would have caused Winona acute distress; but he learnedabout men and horses and dogs, and enlarged his knowledge of Newbern'sinner life, having peculiar angles of his own upon it from his othercontacts with its needs for ice and express packages and crates ofbulkier merchandise.
His father had once said barbering was a good loose trade that enabledone to go freely about the world, but the boy had definitely eliminatedthis from the list of possible crafts, owing to unfortunate experienceswith none other than Judge Penniman, for the judge cut his hair. Atspaced intervals through the year Winona would give the order and thejudge would complainingly make his preparations. The victim was taken tothe woodshed and perched on a box which was set on a chair. The judgeswathed him with one of Mrs. Penniman's aprons, crowding folds of itinside his neckband. Then with stern orders to hold his head still therite was consummated with a pair of shears commandeered from plain andfancy dressmaking. Loath himself to begin the work, the judge alwayscame to feel, as it progressed, a fussy pride in his artistry; a pridenever in the least justified by results. To Wilbur, after these ordeals,his own mirrored head was a strange and fearsome apparition, the earsappearing to have been too carelessly affixed and the scanty remainderof his hair left in furrows, with pallid scalp showing through. Andthere were always hairs down his neck, despite the apron. Barbering wasnot for him--not when you could drive a bus to all trains, or even adray.
There were also street encounters that summer with old Sharon Whipple,who called the boy Buck and jocularly asked him what he was doing tomake a man of himself, and whom he would vote for at the next election.One sunny morning, while Wilbur on River Street weighed the possibleattractions of the livery-stable office against the immediate certaintyof some pleasant ho
urs with Rufus Paulding, off to the depot to get aload of express packages for people, Sharon in his sagging buggy pulledup 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 eyestwinkled under a wide-brimmed hat of soft straw. He paused to light acigar after the boy was at his side--the buggy continuing to sag asbefore--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 intheir wake, and on through cool woods to a ridge from which the valleyopened, revealing a broad checker-board of ripening grain fields.
"Got to make three of my farms," volunteered Sharon after a silenthour's drive.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, which seemed enough for them both until thefirst of the farms was reached.
Sharon there descended, passing the reins to a proud Wilbur, for talkwith his tenant on the steps of the yellow frame farmhouse. Sharon benthis thick round leg to raise a foot to a rustic seat, and upon thecushion thus provided made figures in a notebook. After a time of this,while Wilbur excitingly held the roan horse, made nervous by a hive ofbees against the whitewashed fence, he came back to the buggy--whichsagged from habit even when disburdened of its owner--and they drove toanother farm--a red brick farmhouse, this time, with yellow rosesclimbing its front. Here Sharon tarried longer in consultation. Wilburstaunchly held the roan, listened to the high-keyed drone of a reaper ina neighbouring field, and watched the old man make more figures in hisblack notebook. He liked this one of the Whipples pretty well. He wasless talkative than Bill Bardin, and his speech was less picturesquethan Starling Tucker's or even Trimble Cushman's, who would oftenthreaten to do interesting and horrible things to his big dray horseswhen 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 tothe barn, and Sharon, taking a pasteboard box from the back of thebuggy, beckoned Wilbur to follow him. They went round the red farmhouse,along a grassy path carelessly bordered with flowers that grew as theywould, and at the back came to a little white spring house in which weremany pans of milk on shelves, and a big churn. The interior was cool anddim, and a stream of clear water trickled along a passage in the cementfloor. They sat on a bench, and Sharon opened his box to produce anastonishing number of sandwiches wrapped in tissue paper, a generousoblong of yellow cheese, and some segments of brown cake splendidlyenriched with raisins.
"Pitch in!" said Sharon.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and did so with an admirable restraint, such asWinona would have applauded, nibbling politely at one of the sandwiches.
"Ain't you got your health?" demanded the observant Sharon, capablyengulfing half a sandwich.
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Eat like it then."
So the boy became less conscious of his manners, and ate like it, toSharon's apparent satisfaction. Midway in the destruction of thesandwiches the old man drew from the churn a tin cup of what proved tobe buttermilk. His guest had not learned to like this, so for him heprocured another cup, and brought it brimming with sweet milk which hehad daringly taken from one of the many pans, quite as if he were athome 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 indisparagement of milk.
They ate the sandwiches and cheese, and upon the guest was conferred thecake. There were three pieces, and he managed the first swiftly, but wascompelled to linger on the second, even with the lubricating help ofanother cup of milk.
"Bring it along," directed the host. So it was brought along to thebuggy, one piece in course of consumption and one carried to be eaten atsuperb leisure as the fed roan carried them down the hot road to stillanother 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 wherethe 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 theboy.
"He has that," affirmed Sharon. "Know horses?"
"Well, I--"
He faltered, but suddenly warmed to talk and betrayed an intimateknowledge of every prominent horse in Newbern. He knew Charley and Dick,the big dray horses; and Dexter, who drew the express wagon; he knew Boband George, who hauled the ice wagon; he knew the driving horses in theMansion stables by name and point, and especially the two dapple graysthat drew the bus. Not for nothing had he listened to the wise talk inthe stable office, or sat at the feet of Starling Tucker, who knewhorses so well he called them hawses. It was the first time he hadtalked to Sharon forgetfully. Sharon nodded his head from time to time,and the boy presently became shy at the consciousness that he had talkeda great deal.
Then Sharon spoke of rumours that the new horseless carriage would soondo away with horses. He didn't believe the rumours, and he spokescornfully of the new machines as contraptions. Still he had seen somespecimens in Buffalo, and they might have something in them. They mightbe 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 todrive horses to one of these useful affairs, but what if they were to berun by machinery? Linotypes to spoil typesetting by hand, and nowhorseless carriages to stop driving horses! He wondered if it would beany use to learn any trade. He would have liked to ask Sharon, buthardly dared.
"Well, it's an age of progress," said Sharon at last. "We got to expectchanges."
Wilbur was at home on this topic. He became what Winona would havecalled informative.
"We can't stop change," he said in his father's manner. "First, therewas star dust, and electricity or something made it into the earth; andsome water and chemicals made life out of this electricity orsomething----"
"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, andthen they changed some more, and stood up on their hind feet, and sothey got to be human beings like us--because--because they had tochange," he concluded, lucidly.
"My shining stars!" breathed Sharon.
"And they lost their tails and got so they would wear neckties and havepost offices and depots and religions," added the historian in a finalflash of memory.
"Well, I'll be switched!" said Sharon.
"It's electricity or something," explained the lecturer. "My father saidso."
"Oh!" said Sharon.
"But he says there's a catch in it somewhere."
"I should think there was," said Sharon. "By gracious goodness, I shouldthink there was a catch in it somewhere! But you understand the wholething 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 authenticWhipple. He would have done so but for the dollar that Sharon absentlybestowed upon him from a crumple of bills when he left the buggy at theentrance to Whipple Old Place. Winona, he instantly knew, would counselhim to save the dollar, and he did not wish to save it. As fast as hisbare feet--with a stone bruise on one heel--would carry him he sped toSolly Gumble's. Yet not with wholly selfish intent. A section of plugtobacco, charmingly named Peach and Honey, was purchased for a quarteras a gift to Bill Bardin of the ice wagon. Another quarter secured threepale-brown cigars, with gay bands about their middles, to be lavishedupon the hero, Starling Tucker.
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