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 fo