g machine after labouring with too easily diagnosed motor
troubles, or to restore a bit of marquetry in a table, or play at a feat
of locksmithing. The First-Class Garage urged him to quit fiddling round
and become its foreman, but this glittering offer he refused. It was too
much like settling down to your future.

"Got his father's vagabond blood in his veins," declared Judge Penniman.
"Crazy, too, like his father. You can't tell me Dave Cowan was in his
right mind when the Whipples offered, in so many words, to set him up in
any business he wanted to name, and pay all expenses, and he spurned 'em
like so much dirt beneath his heel. Acted like a crazy loon is what I
say, and this Jack-of-all-trades is showing the strain. Mark my words,
they'll both end their days in a madhouse!"

No one did mark his words. Not even Winona, to whom they were uttered
with the air of owlish, head-snapping wisdom which marked so many of the
invalid's best things. She was concerned only with the failure of Wilbur
to select a seemly occupation. His working dress was again careless; he
reeked with oil, and his hands--hard, knotty hands--seemed to be
permanently grimed. Even Lyman Teaford managed his thriving flour and
feed business, with a butter and eggs and farm produce department, in
the garments of a gentleman. True, he often worked with his coat off,
but he removed his cuffs and carefully protected the sleeves of his
white shirt with calico oversleeves held in place by neat elastics. Once
away from the store he might have been anybody--even a banker.

Winona sought to enlist Lyman's help in the matter of Wilbur's future.
Lyman was flaccid in the matter. The boy had once stolen into the
Penniman parlour while Lyman and Winona were out rifling the ice box of
delicacies, and enticed by the glitter of Lyman's flute had thrillingly
taken it into his hands to see what made it go, dropping it in his
panic, from the centre table to the floor, when he heard their returning
steps. Lyman had never felt the same toward Wilbur after that. Now, even
under the blandishments of Winona, he was none too certain that he would
make a capable flour and feed merchant. Wilbur himself, to whom the
possibility was broached, proved all too certain that he would engage in
no mercantile pursuit whatever; surely none in which he might be
associated ever so remotely with Lyman Teaford, whom for no reason he
had always viewed with profound dislike. This incident clo