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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.
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.
Newbern, he kept thinking, would lie four miles beyond that longest ridge, and down that yellow road Sharon Whipple might soon be driving his creaking, weathered buggy and the gaunt roan. The buggy would sag to one side and Sharon would be sitting "slaunchwise," as he called it. Over the ridge, at Newbern's edge, would be the bony little girl who was so funny and willful.
So continuously had Winona dwelt in the loftier realms of social and spiritual endeavour, it is doubtful if she knew that an organization known as the Friday Night Social Club was doing a lot to make life brighter for those of Newbern's citizens who were young and sportive and yet not precisely people of the better sort.
This was in the days of an earlier Newbern, when the twins were four and Winona Penniman began to be their troubled mentor troubled lest they should not grow up to be refined persons; a day when Dave Cowan, the widely travelled printer, could rightly deride its citizenry as small-towners; a day when the Whipples were Newbern's sole noblesse and the Cowan twins not yet torn asunder.
Newbern's better sort denounced the scandal of this, but bought of him clandestinely, for even in that far day, when golf balls in price were yet within reach of the common people, few of them liked to buy a new ball and watch it vanish forever after one brilliant drive that would have taken it far down the fairway except for the unaccountable slice.
It could not be explained to the aggrieved Spike that his opponent had for the moment convinced himself that he faced one of Newbern's best-known business men. Later he contented himself with observing Lyman Teaford at Niagara Falls. The fatuous groom stood heedlessly at the cataract's verge. There was a simple push, and the world was suddenly a better place to live in.
Frank capered at his side, ever and again looking up brightly at his new master. Never had so much attention been shown him. Never before had he been confined by a leash, as if he were a desirable dog. Opposite the Mansion House, Newbern's chief hotel, Frank gave signal proof of his intelligence.
She was recalled from this perilous musing by Rapp, Senior, who came pressing his handkerchief to a brow damp from the last dance. He bowed to Winona. "May I have this pleasure?" he said. Winona rose like a woman of the world. "We're on the map at last," said Rapp, Senior, referring to Newbern's newest big-town feature.
The judge had been obliged to abandon all thoughts of a career. Years before he had been Newbern's justice of the peace, until a gang of political tricksters defeated the sovereign will of the people. And perhaps he would again have accepted political honours, but none had been offered him. Still, the family was prosperous. For in addition to the pension, Mrs.
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