"I bet you will," said his admiring brother. "I bet you'll get a lot of notice."
"Oh"—Merle waved an assenting hand—"naturally, after I get started good."
CHAPTER XIII
On a certain morning in early September Wilbur Cowan idled on River Street, awaiting a summons. The day was sunny and spacious, yet hardly, he thought, could it contain his new freedom. Despairing groups of half-grown humans, still in slavery, hastened by him to their hateful tasks. He watched them pityingly, and when the dread bell rang, causing stragglers to bound forward in a saving burst of speed, he halted leisurely in sheer exultation. The ecstasy endured a full five minutes, until a last tap of the bell tolled the knell of the tardy. It had been worth waiting for. This much of his future he had found worth planning. He pictured the unfortunates back in the old room, breathing chalk dust, vexed with foolish problems, tormented by discipline. He was never again to pass a public school save with a sensation of shuddering relief. He had escaped into his future, and felt no concern about what it should offer him. It was enough to have escaped.
Having savoured freedom another ten minutes, he sauntered over to the Advance office as a favour to Sam Pickering. A wastrel printer had the night before been stricken with the wanderlust, deciding at five-thirty to take the six-fifty-eight for other fields of endeavour, and Wilbur Cowan had graciously consented to bridge a possible gap.
He strolled into the dusty, disordered office and eased the worry from Sam Pickering's furrowed brow by attacking the linotype in spirited fashion. That week he ran off the two editions of the paper. A spotted small boy sat across the press bed from him to ink the forms. He confided impressively to this boy that when the last paper was printed the bronze eagle would flap its wings three times and scream as a signal for beer to be brought from Vielhaber's. The boy widened eyes of utter belief upon him, and Wilbur Cowan once more felt all his years. But he was still lamentably indecisive about his future, and when a new printer looked in upon the Advance he stepped aside. Whatever he was going to make of himself it wouldn't be someone who had to sit down indoors. He would be slave to no linotype until they were kept in the open. He told Sam Pickering this in so many words.
The former Mansion's stable at length engaged his wandering fancy. The stable's old swinging sign—a carefully painted fop with flowing side whiskers and yellow topcoat swiftly driving a spirited horse to a neat red-wheeled run-about—had been replaced by First-Class Garage. Of its former activities remained only three or four sedate horses to be driven by conservatives; and Starling Tucker, who lived, but lived in the past, dazed and unbelieving—becoming vivacious only in speech, beginning, "I remember when—"
These memories dealt with a remote time, when a hawse was a hawse, and you couldn't have it put all over you by a lot of slick young smarties that could do a few things with a monkey wrench. Starling, when he thus discoursed, sat chiefly in the little office before the rusty stove, idly flicking his memory with a buggy whip from the rack above his head, where reposed a dozen choice whips soon to become mere museum pieces.