sed almost
before it opened.

Winona again approached Sharon Whipple in Wilbur's behalf. But Sharon
was not enough depressed by the circumstance that Wilbur's work was hard
on clothes, or that tasks were chosen at random and irregularly toiled
at.

"Let him alone," advised Sharon. "Pretty soon he'll harden and settle.
Besides, he's getting his education. He ain't educated yet."

"Education?" demanded Winona, incredulous. "But he's left school!"

"He'll get it out of school. Only kind ever I got. He's educating
himself every day. Never mind his clothes. Right clothes are only right
when they fit your job. Give the boy a chance to find himself. He's
still young, Buck is--still in the gristle."

Winona winced at "gristle." It seemed so physiological--almost coarse.

* * * * *

A year went by in which Wilbur was perforce left to his self-education,
working for Porter Howgill or at the garage or for Sam Pickering as he
listed. "I'm making good money," was his steady rejoinder to Winona's
hectoring.

"As if money were everything," wrote Winona in her journal, where she
put the case against him.

Then when she had ceased to hope better things for him Wilbur Cowan
seemed to waken. There were signs and symptoms Winona thus construed. He
became careful in his attire, bought splendid new garments. His lean,
bold jaw was almost daily smoothed by the razor of Don Paley, and Winona
discovered a flask of perfume on his bureau in the little house. The
label was Heart of Flowers. It was perhaps a more florid essence than
Winona would have chosen, having a downright vigour of assertion that
left one in no doubt of its presence; but it was infinitely superior to
the scent of machine oil or printer's ink which had far too often
betrayed the boy's vicinity.

Now, too, he wore his young years with a new seriousness; was more
restrained of speech, with intervals of apparently lofty meditation.
Winona rejoiced at these evidences of an awakening soul. The boy might
after all some day become one of the better sort. She felt sure of this
when he sought her of his own free will and awkwardly invited her to
beautify his nails. He who had aforetime submitted to the ordeal under
protest; who had sworn she should never again so torture him! Surely he
was striving at last to be someone people would care to meet.

Poor Winona did not dream that a great love had come into Wilbur Cowan's
life; a deep and abidin