s wrecked. He felt now merely that he ought to settle down to
something. Even Sharon Whipple plainly told him so. He said it was all
right to knock about from one thing to another while you were still in
the gristle. Up to twenty a boy's years were kind of yeasty and
uncertain, and if he was any way self-headed he ought to be left to run.
But after twenty he lost his pinfeathers and should begin to think about
things.

So Wilbur began to think about things. He continued to do everything
that old Porter Howgill was asked to do, to repair cars for the Mansion
garage, and to be a shield and buckler to Sam Pickering in time of need.
The _Advance_ office became freshly attractive at this time, because Sam
had installed a wonderful new power press to print the paper daily; for
the _Advance_, as Sam put it, could be found ever in the van of
progress.

The new press had innermost secrets of structure that were presently
best known to Wilbur Cowan. No smeared small boy was required to ink its
forms and no surmounting bronze eagle was reported to scream for beer
when the last paper was run off. Even Dave Cowan, drifting in from out
of the nowhere--in shoes properly describable as only memories of
shoes--said she was a snappy little machine, and applauded his son's
easy mastery of it.

So the days of Wilbur were busy days, even if he had not settled far
enough down to suit either Sam Pickering, Porter Howgill--who did
everything, if asked--or the First-Class Garage. And the blight put upon
him by a creature as false as she was beautiful proved not to be
enduring. He was able, indeed, to behold her without a tremor, save of
sympathy for one compelled to endure the daily proximity of Lyman
Teaford.

But the war prolonged itself as only he and Winona had felt it would,
and presently it began to be hinted that a great nation, apparently
unconcerned with its beginning, might eventually be compelled to a
livelier interest in it. Herman Vielhaber was a publicly exposed
barometer of this sentiment. At the beginning he beamed upon the world
and predicted the Fatherland's speedy triumph over all the treacherous
foes. When the triumph was unaccountably delayed he appeared mysterious,
but not less confident. The Prussian system might involve delay, but
Prussian might was none the less invincible. Herman would explain the
Prussian system freely to all who cared to listen--and many did
attentively--from high diplomacy to actual fighting. H