The Wrong Twin

CHAPTER VII

The ensuing week was marked for the Cowan-Penniman household by sensational developments. To Dave Cowan on Monday morning, standing at his case in the Advance office, nimbly filling his stick with type, following the loosely written copy turned in by Sam Pickering, the editor, had portentously come a messenger from the First National Bank to know if Mr. Cowan could find it convenient that day to give Harvey D. Whipple a few moments of his time. Dave's business life had hitherto not included any contact with bankers; he had simply never been in a bank. The message left him not a little disturbed.

The messenger, Julius Farrow, a bookkeeper, could answer no questions. He knew only that Harvey D. had been very polite about it, and if Dave couldn't find it convenient to-day he was to say when he might find it convenient to have a conference. Dave felt relieved at hearing the word "conference." A mere summons to a strange place like a bank might be sinister, but a polite invitation to a conference at his convenience was different. He put down his half-filled stick. He had been at work on the Advance locals for the Wednesday paper, two and three-line items to tell of the trivial going and coming of nobodies which he was wont to set up with an accompaniment of satirical comment on small-town activities. He had broken off in the midst of perpetuating in brevier type the circumstance that Adelia May Simsbury was home from normal school over Sunday to visit her parents, Rufus G. Simsbury and wife, north of town.

Julius looked puzzled, but offered no comment. Dave doffed his green eye-shade and his apron of striped ticking, hastily dampened his hands in the tin washbasin and wiped them on a roller towel rich in historic associations. He spent a moment upon his hair before a small, wavy, and diagonally cracked mirror, put on his blue cutaway coat and his derby hat and called, "Back in five minutes, Sam," casually into the open door of another room, where Sam Pickering wrestled with a fearless editorial on the need of better street lighting. It seemed to Dave that five minutes would amply suffice for any talk a banker might be needing with him.

In the back office of the First National Bank he was presently ensconced at a shining table of mahogany across from Harvey D. Whipple and his father—the dubious trousers and worn shoes hidden beneath the table so that visibly he was all but well dressed.

"Smoke?" asked Gideon, and proffered an open cigar case.

"Thanks," said Dave, "I'll smoke it later."

He placed a cigar in the upper left-hand pocket of the eminently plaid waistcoat from whence already protruded the handle of a toothbrush and a fountain pen. He preened his moustache, smoothed his hair, waited.

Harvey D. coughed in a promising manner, set a wire basket of papers square with the corners of the table, and began.

"We have been thinking, Mr. Cowan, my father and I—you see—"

He talked on, but without appeasing Dave's curiosity. Something about Dave's having boys, he gathered, and about the Whipples not having them; but it occurred to Dave again and again as Harvey wandered on that this was a discrepancy not in his power to correct. Once a monstrous suspicion startled him—this conference, so called, was shaping into nothing less than a proposal on behalf of the person he had so carelessly saluted the day before. It was terrifying; he grew cold with pure fright. But that was like some women—once show them a little attention, they expected everything!

Gideon Whipple mercifully broke in while Harvey D. floundered upon an inconclusive period. Gideon was not nervous, and saw little need for strategy with this rather vagabondish fellow.

"In short, Mr. Cowan, my son offers to adopt that boy of yours—make him his own son in name—and opportunities and advantages—his own son."

So it was only that! Dave drew a long, pleasant breath and wiped his brow. Then he took a pencil from the table and began to draw squares and triangles and diamond patterns upon a pad of soft paper that lay at hand.

"Well—I don't know." His eyes followed the pencil point. Nor did he know until it presently developed that the desired adoption was of the Merle twin. He had supposed, without debate, that they would be meaning the other. "You mean Merle," he said at last on some leading of Gideon's.

"To be sure!" said Harvey D., as if there could have been no question of another.

"Oh, him!" said Dave—there was relief in his tone. "You're sure you mean him?"

"But of course!" said Harvey D., brightening.

"All right," said Dave. He felt they were taking the wrong twin, but he felt also that he must not let them see this—they might then want the other. "All right, I'll agree to that. He's a bright boy; it ought to be a good thing for him."

"Ought to be!" quoted Harvey D. with humorous warmth. "But, of course, it will be! You realize what it will mean for him—advantages, opportunities, education, travel, family, a future!--the Whipple estate—but, of course, we feel that under our training he will be a credit to us. He will be one of us—a Whipple in name and in fact."

Dave Cowan ceased to draw angled designs on his pad; he now drew circles, ovals, ellipses, things fluent with curves.

"All right," he said, "I'm willing, I want to do the best I can for the boy. I'm glad you feel he's the right one for you. Of course the other boy—well, they're twins, but he's different."

"We are certain you will never regret it," said Harvey D., warmly.

"We feel that you are wise to agree," said Gideon. "So then—"

"Papers to sign?" said Dave.

"Our lawyer will have them to-morrow," said Harvey D.

"Good!" said Dave.

He was presently back at his case, embalming for posterity the knowledge that Grandma Milledge was able to be out again these sunny days after a hard tussle with her old enemy sciatica. But before passing to the next item he took Gideon's choice cigar from the upper waistcoat pocket, crumpled it, rubbed it to fine bits between the palms of his hands, and filled the calabash pipe with its débris. As he smoked he looked out the window that gave on River Street. Across the way was the yellow brick structure of the bank he had just left. He was seeing a future president of that sound institution, Merle Whipple, born Cowan. He was glad they hadn't wanted the other one. The other one would want to be something more interesting surely than a small-town bank president. Have him learn a good loose trade and see the world—get into real life! But they'd had him going for a minute—when the only meaning he could get from Harvey D.'s roundabout talk was that the old girl of yesterday had misunderstood his attentions. That would have been a nice fix to find himself in! But Merle was off his mind; he would become a real Whipple and some day be the head of the family. Funny thing for a Cowan to fall into! He turned to his dusty case and set up the next item on his yellow copy paper.

"Rumour hath it that Sandy Seaver's Sunday trips out of town mean business, and that a certain bright resident of Geneseo will shortly become Mrs. Sandy."

He paused again. All at once it seemed to him that the Whipples had been hasty. They would get to thinking the thing over and drop it; never mention it to him again. Well, he was willing to let it drop. He wouldn't mention it again if they didn't. He would tell no one.

Nor did he speak of it until the following evening, after the Whipples had surprisingly not only mentioned it again but had operated in the little bank office, under the supervision of Squire Culbreth, a simple mechanism of the law which left him the legal father of but one son. Then he went to astonish the Pennimans with his news, only to find that Winona had secretively nursed it even longer than he had. Mrs. Penniman had also been told of the probability of this great event, but, nevertheless, wept gently when Dave certified to her its irrevocable consummation. Only Judge Penniman remained to be startled; and he, being irritated that others had enjoyed a foreknowledge guiltily withheld from him, chose to pretend that he, too, had been mysteriously enlightened. He had, he said, seen the thing coming. He became at the supper table a creature of gnawing and baffled curiosity which he must hide by boasting an intimate acquaintance with Whipple motives and intentions. He intimated that but for his advice and counsel the great event might not have come about. The initiative had been his, though certain other people might claim the credit. Of course he hadn't wanted to talk about it before. He guessed he could keep a close mouth as well as the next one.

The Merle twin at this momentous meal sat as one enthroned, receiving tribute from fawning subjects. His name was already Merle Whipple, and he was going to have a pony to ride, and he would come sometimes to see them. His cordial tolerance of them quite overcame Mrs. Penniman again. She had to feign an errand to the kitchen stove, and came back dropping the edge of her apron from her eyes. Winona was exalted; she felt that her careful training of the child had raised him to this eminence, and she rejoiced in it as a tribute to her capacity. Her labours had been richly rewarded. Dave Cowan alone seemed not to be enough impressed by the honours heaped upon his son. He jestingly spoke of him as a crown prince. He said if you really had to stay in a small town you might as well be adopted by the Whipples as any one else.

The Wilbur twin was abashed and puzzled. The detail most impressing him seemed to be that, having no longer a brother, he would cease to be a twin. His life long he had been made intensely conscious of being a twin—he was one of a pair—and now suddenly, he gathered, he was something whole and complete in himself. He demanded assurance on this point.

"Then I'm not going to be a twin any longer? I mean, I'm not going to be one of a twins? It won't change my name, too, will it?"

His father enlightened him.

"No, there's still a couple of Cowans left to keep the name going. We won't have to be small-towners unless we want to," he added.

He suspected that the Wilbur twin felt slighted and hurt at being passed over, and would be needing comfort. But it appeared that the severed twin felt nothing of that sort. He was merely curious—not wounded or envious.

"I wouldn't want to change to a new name," he declared. "I'd forget and go back to the old one."

He wanted to add that maybe his new dog would not know him under another name, but he was afraid of being laughed at for that.

"Merle never forgets," said Winona. "He will be a shining credit to his new name." She helped the chosen one to more jelly, which he accepted amiably. "And he will be a lovely little brother to Patricia Whipple," she fondly added.

This left the Wilbur twin cold. He would like to have a pony, but he would not wish to be Patricia Whipple's brother. He now recalled her unpleasantly. She was a difficult person.

"Give Merle another bit of the steak, Mother," urged Judge Penniman.

The judge had begun to dwell upon his own new importance. This thing made him by law a connection of the Whipple family, didn't it? He, Rufus Tyler Penniman, had become at least a partial Whipple. He reflected pleasantly upon the consequences.

"Will he go home to-night?" suddenly demanded the Wilbur twin, pointing at his brother so there should be no mistake. The Merle twin seemed already a stranger to him.

"Not to-night, dear, but in a few days, I would suppose." It sent Mrs. Penniman to the stove again.

"I don't just know when I will go," said the Merle twin, surveying a replenished plate. "But I guess I'll give you back that knife you bought me; I probably won't need it up there. I'll probably have plenty of better knives than that knife."

The Wilbur twin questioned this, but hid his doubt. Surely there could be few better knives in the whole world than one with a thing to dig stones out of horses' feet. Anyway, he would be glad to have it, and was glad the promise had been made before witnesses.

After supper on the porch Dave Cowan in the hammock picked chords and scraps of melody from his guitar, quite as if nothing had happened. Judge Penniman, in his wicker chair, continued to muse upon certain pleasant contingencies of this new situation. It had occurred to him that Dave Cowan himself would be even more a Whipple than any Penniman, and would enjoy superior advantages inevitably rising from this circumstance.

"That family will naturally want to do something for you, too, Dave," he said at last.

"Do something for me?" Dave's fingers hung waiting above the strings.

"Why not? You're the boy's father, ain't you? Facts is facts, no matter what the law says. You're his absolute progenitor, ain't you? Well, you living here in the same town, they'll naturally want you to be somebody, won't they?"

"Oh!" Dave struck the waiting chord. "Well, I am somebody, ain't I?"

The judge waved this aside with a fat, deprecating hand.

"Oh, in that way! Of course, everybody's somebody—every living, breathing soul. But what I'm getting at—they'll naturally try to make something out of you, instead of just being kind of a no-account tramp printer."

"Ha! Is that so, old small-towner?"

"Shouldn't wonder if they'd want to take you into the bank, mebbe—cashier or something, or manage one of the farms or factories, or set you up in business of some kind. You might git to be president of the First National."

"They might make you a director, too, I suppose."

"Well, you can snicker, but stranger things have happened."

The judge reflected, seeing himself truly a bank director, wearing his silk hat and frock coat every day—perhaps playing checkers with Harvey D. in the back office at quiet moments. Bank directing would surely be a suitable occupation for an invalid. Dave muted the vibrant strings with a hand.

"Listen, Old Flapdoodle! I wouldn't tie myself up in this one-horse bunch of hovels, not if they'd give me the bank and all the money in it and all the Whipple farms and throw in the post office and the jail and the depot. Get that?"

"Ho! Sour grapes!" returned the judge, stung to a biting wit by the coarse form of address. But Dave played music above the taunt.

Nevertheless, he was not wholly surprised the following day when, politely invited to another conference at the bank, old Gideon Whipple, alone there, put the matter of his future somewhat after the manner of Judge Penniman, though far less crudely. Old Gideon sat across the table from him, and after Dave had put a cigar in his upper left-hand waistcoat pocket he became considerate but pointed.

"My son and I have been talking, Mr. Cowan, and we agree that something is due you as the boy's father. We want to show you every consideration—show it liberally. You seem to have led rather an—shall we say an unsettled life up to this time? Not that it's anything to be criticised; you follow your own tastes, as every man should. But it occurred to us that you might care to feel more settled in some stable occupation where you could look forward to a solid future—all that sort of thing."

Dave nodded, waiting, trying to word the talk the old man and his son would have had about him. Harvey Whipple would have been troubled at the near presence of the father of his new son as a mere journeyman printer. Undoubtedly the two would have used the phrase the judge had used—they would want him to make something of himself.

"So we've felt," went on Gideon, "that you might care to engage in some business here in Newbern—establish yourself, soundly and prosperously, as it were, so that your son, though maturing under different circumstances, would yet feel a pride in your standing in the community. Of course, this is tentative—I'm sounding you, only. You may have quite other ideas. You may have laid out an entirely different future for yourself in some other field. But I wanted to let you know that we stand ready to finance liberally any business you would care to engage in, either here or elsewhere. It isn't that we are crudely offering you money. I wish you to understand that. But we offer you help, both in money and counsel and influence. In the event of your caring to establish yourself here, we would see that your foundation was substantial. I think that says what I wanted to say."

During much of this Dave Cowan had been musing in a lively manner upon the other's supposition that he should have laid out a future for himself. He was amused at the notion. Of course he had laid out a future, but not the sort a Whipple would lay out. He was already living his future and found it good. Yet he felt the genuine good will of the old man, and sought words to reject his offer gracefully. He must not put it so bluntly as he had to Judge Penniman. The old man would not be able to understand that no bribe within human reach would tempt him to remain in Newbern Center; nor did he wish to be established on a sound basis anywhere else. He did not wish to be established at all.

"I'm much obliged," he said at last, "but I guess I won't trouble you and your son in any way. You see, I kind of like to live round and see things and go places—I don't know that I can explain it exactly."

"We have even thought you might like to acquire the journal on which you are now employed," said Gideon. "We understand it can be bought; we stand ready to purchase it and make it over to you."

"Any country newspaper can always be bought any time," said Dave. "Their owners always want to sell, and it's mighty kind of you and your son, but—well, I just couldn't settle down to be a country editor. I'd go crazy," he confessed in a sudden burst of frankness, and beaming upon Gideon; "I'd as soon be shut in jail."

"Or anything else you might think of," said Gideon, cordially, "not necessarily in this town."

"Well, I'd rather not; I guess I'm not one to have responsibilities; I wouldn't have an easy minute spending your money. I wouldn't ever be able to feel free with it, not the way I feel with my own. I guess I just better kind of go my own way; I like to work when I want to and stop when I want to, and no one having any right to ask me what I quit for and why don't I keep on and make something of myself. I guess it's no good your trying to help me in any way. Of course I appreciate it and all that. It was kindly thought of by you. But—I hope my boy will be a credit to you just the same."

The conference closed upon this. Dave left it feeling that he had eased his refusal into soft, ambiguous phrases; but old Gideon, reporting to Harvey D., said: "That chap hates a small town. What he really wanted to tell me was that he wouldn't settle down here for all the money in the world. He really laughed at me inside for offering him the chance. He pities us for having to stay here, I do believe. And he wouldn't talk of taking money for any enterprise elsewhere, either. He's either independent or shiftless—both, maybe. He said," Gideon laughed noiselessly, "he said he wouldn't ever be able to feel free with our money the way he does with his own."

The Whipples, it proved, would be in no indecent haste to remove their new member from his humbler environment. On Wednesday it was conveyed to Winona that they would come for Merle in a few days, which left the Penniman household and the twins variously concerned as to the precise meaning of this phrase. It sounded elastic. But on Thursday Winona was able to announce that the day would be Saturday. They would come for Merle Saturday afternoon. She had been told this distinctly by Mrs. Harvey D. Though her informant had set no hour, Winona thought it would be three o'clock. She believed the importance of the affair demanded the setting of an exact hour, and there was something about three o'clock that commended itself to her. From this moment the atmosphere of the Penniman house was increasingly strained. There were preparations. The slender wardrobe of the crown prince of the Whipple dynasty was put in perfect order, and two items newly added to it by the direction of Dave Cowan. The boy must have a new hat and new shoes. The judge pointed out to the prodigal father that these purchases should rightly be made with Whipple money. Dave needn't buy shoes and hats for Merle Whipple any more than he need buy them for any other Whipple, but Dave had stubbornly squandered his own money. His boy wasn't going up to the big house like a ragamuffin.

It came to the Wilbur twin that these days until Saturday were like the days intervening in a house of death until the funeral. He became increasingly shy and uncomfortable. It seemed to him that his brother had passed on, as they said, his mortal remains to be disposed of on Saturday at three o'clock. Having led a good life he would go to heaven, where he would have a pony and a thousand knives if he wanted them. The strain in the house, the excitement of Winona, the periodic, furtive weeping of Mrs. Penniman, the detached, uplifted manner of the chief figure, all confirmed him in this impression. Even Judge Penniman, who had been wont to speak of "them twins," now spoke of "that boy," meaning but the Wilbur twin.

By two o'clock of the momentous Saturday afternoon the tension was at its highest. Merle, dressed in his Sunday clothes, trod squeakily in the new shoes, which were button shoes surpassing in elegance any he had hitherto worn. As Dave Cowan had remarked, they were as good shoes as Whipple money would ever buy him. And the new hat, firm of line and rich in texture, a hat such as no boy could possibly wear except on Sunday, unless he were a very rich boy, reposed on the centre table in the parlour. Winona, flushed and tightly dressed, nervously altered the arrangement of chairs in the parlour, or remembered some belonging of the deceased that should go into the suitcase containing his freshly starched blouses. Mrs. Penniman, also flushed and tightly dressed, affected to busy herself likewise with minor preparations for the departure, but this chiefly afforded her opportunities for quiet weeping in secluded corners. After these moments of relief she would become elaborately cheerful, as if the occasion were festal. Even the judge grew nervous with anticipation. In his frock coat and striped gray trousers he walked heavily from room to room, comparing the clock with his watch, forgetting that he was not supposed to walk freely except with acute suffering. Merle chattered blithely about how he would come back to see them, with unfortunate effects upon Mrs. Penniman.

The Wilbur twin knew this atmosphere. When little Georgie Finkboner had died a few months before, had he not been taken to the house of mourning and compelled to stay through a distressing funeral? It was like that now, and he was uncomfortable beyond endurance. Twice Winona had reminded him that he must go and put on his own Sunday clothes—nothing less than this would be thought suitable. He had said he would, but had dawdled skillfully and was still unfitly in bare feet and the shabby garments of a weekday. He knew definitely now that he was not going to be present at this terrible ceremony.

He had no doubt there would be a ceremony—all the Whipples arriving in their own Sunday clothes, maybe the preacher coming with them; and they would sit silently in the parlour the way they did at the Finkboner house, and maybe the preacher would talk, and maybe they would sing or pray or something, and then they would take Merle away. He was not to be blamed for this happily inaccurate picture; he was justified by the behaviour of Winona and her mother. And he was not going to be there! He wouldn't exactly run away; he felt a morbid wish to watch the thing if he could be apart from it; but he was going to be apart. He remembered too well the scene at the Finkboner house—and the smell of tuberoses. Winona had unaccustomed flowers in the parlour now—not tuberoses, but almost as bad. Until a quarter to three he expertly shuffled and dawdled and evaded. Then Winona took a stand with him.

"Wilbur Cowan, go at once and dress yourself properly! Do you expect to appear before the Whipples that way?"

He vanished in a flurry of seeming obedience. He went openly through the front door of the little house into the side yard, but paused not until he reached its back door, where he stood waiting. When he guessed he had been there fifteen minutes he prepared to change his lurking place. Winona would be coming for him. He stepped out and looked round the corner of the little house, feeling inconsequently the thrill of a scout among hostile red Indians as described in a favoured romance.

The lawn between the little house and the big house was free of searchers. He drew a long breath and made a swift dash to further obscurity in the lee of the Penniman woodshed. He skirted the end of this structure and peered about its corner, estimating the distance to the side door. But this was risky; it would bring him in view of a kitchen window whence some busybody might observe him. But there was an open window above him giving entrance to the woodshed. He leaped to catch its sill and clambered up to look in. The woodshed was vacant of Pennimans, and its shadowy silence promised security. He dropped from the window ledge. There was no floor beneath, so that the drop was greater than he had counted on. He fell among loose kindling wood with more noise than he would have desired, quickly rose, stumbled in the dusk against a bucket half filled with whitewash, and sprawled again into a pile of soft coal.

"Gee, gosh!" he muttered, heartily, as he rose a second time.

Both the well-spread pallor of the whitewash and the sable sprinkling of coal dust put him beyond any chance of a felicitous public appearance. But he was safe in a dusky corner. He remained there, breathing heavily. At last he heard Winona call him from the Penniman porch. Twice she called; then he knew she would be crossing to the little house to know what detained him. He heard her call again—knew that she would be searching the four rooms over there. She wouldn't think of the woodshed. He sat there a long while, steadily regarding the closed screen door that led to the kitchen, ready to mingle deceptively with the coal should any one appear.

At last he heard a bustle within the house. There were hurried steppings to and fro by Winona and her mother, the heavy tread of the judge, a murmur of high voices. The Whipples must have come, and every one would be at the front of the house. He crept from his corner, climbed to the floor from where it had been opened for wood and coal, and went softly to the kitchen door. He listened a moment through the screen, then entered and went noiselessly up the back stairs. Coming to the head of the front stairway, he listened again. There were other voices in front, and he shrank to the wall. He gathered that only the Whipple stepmother and Patricia had come—no other Whipples, no preacher. It might not have been so bad. Still he didn't want to be there.

They were at the front door now, headed for the parlour. Someone paused at the foot of the stairs, and in quick alarm he darted along the hall and into an open door. He was in the neat bedroom of Winona, shortbreathed, made doubly nervous by boards that had creaked under his tread. He stood listening. They were in the parlour, a babble of voices coming up to him; excited voices, but not funeral voices. His eyes roved the chamber of Winona, where everything was precisely in its place. He mapped out a dive under her bed if steps came up the stairs. He heard now the piping voice of Patricia Whipple.

"It's like in the book about Ben Blunt that was adopted by a kind old gentleman and went up from rags to riches."

This for some reason seemed to cause laughter below.

He heard, from Winona: "Do try a piece of Mother's cake. Merle, dear, give Mrs. Whipple a plate and napkin."

Cake! Certainly nothing like cake for this occasion had been intimated to him! They hadn't had cake at the Finkboners. Things might have been different, but they had kept still about cake. He listened intently, hearing laughing references to Merle in his new home. Then once more Winona came to the front door and called him.

"Wilbur—Wil-bur-r-r! Where can that child be!" he heard her demand. She went to the back of the house and more faintly he heard her again call his name—"Wilbur, Wil-bur-r-r!" Then, with discernible impatience, more shortly, "Wilbur Cowan!" He was intently regarding a printed placard that hung on the wall beside Winona's bureau. It read:

He remained silent. He was not going to make any noise. At length he could hear preparations for departure.

"Merle, dear, your hat is on the piano—Mother, hand him his hat—I'll bring his suitcase."

"Well, I'll be sure to come back to see you all some day."

"Yes, now don't forget us—no, we mustn't let him do that."

They were out on the porch, going down the walk. The listener stepped lightly to a window and became also a watcher. Ahead walked Patricia Whipple and her new brother. The stepmother and Mrs. Penniman followed. Then came Winona with the suitcase, which was of wicker. Judge Penniman lumbered ponderously behind. At the hitching post in front was the pony cart and the fat pony of sickening memory. Merle was politely helping the step-mother to the driver's seat. It was over. But the watcher suddenly recalled something.

In swift silence, descending the stairs, he entered the parlour. On a stand beneath the powerful picture of the lion behind real bars was a frosted cake of rare beauty. Three pieces were gone and two more were cut. On top of each piece was the half of a walnut meat. He tenderly seized one of these and stole through the deserted house, through kitchen and woodshed, out to the free air again. Back of the woodshed he sat down on the hard bare ground, his back to its wall, looking into the garden where Judge Penniman, in the intervals of his suffering, raised a few vegetables. It was safe seclusion for the pleasant task in hand. He gloated rapturously over the cake, eating first the half of the walnut meat, which he carefully removed. But he thought it didn't taste right.

He now regarded the cake itself uncertainly. It was surely perfect cake. He broke a fragment from the thin edge and tasted it almost fearfully. It wasn't going right. He persisted with a larger fragment, but upon this he was like to choke; his mouth was dry and curiously no place for even the choicest cake. He wondered about it in something like panic, staring at it in puzzled consternation. There was the choice thing and he couldn't eat it. Then he became aware that his eyes were hot, the lids burning; and there came a choking, even though he no longer had any cake in his mouth. Suddenly he knew that he couldn't eat the cake because he had lost his brother—his brother who had passed on. He gulped alarmingly as the full knowledge overwhelmed him. He was wishing that Merle had kept the knife, even if it wasn't such a good knife, so he would have something to remember him by. Now he would have nothing. He, Wilbur, would always remember Merle, even if he was no longer a twin, but Merle would surely forget him. He had passed on.

Over by the little house he heard the bark of Frank, the dog. Frank's voice was changing, and his bark was now a promising baritone. His owner tried to whistle, but made poor work of this, so he called, "Here, Frank! Here, Frank!" reckless of betraying his own whereabouts. His voice was not clear, it still choked, but it carried; Frank came bounding to him. He had a dog left, anyway—a good fighting dog. His eyes still burned, but they were no longer dry, and his gulps were periodic, threatening a catastrophe of the most dreadful sort.

Frank, the dog, swallowed the cake hungrily, eating it with a terrible ease, as he was wont to eat enemy dogs.

CHAPTER VIII

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.