He saw Patricia from a distance in River Street, but pulled the dingy cap lower and avoided her notice.  She was still bony and animated and looked quite capable of commanding his attendance over eighteen holes of the most utterly futile golf in all the world.  His only real regret in the matter of his facial blemishes was that Spike came back with the mere loser’s end of an inconsiderable purse, and had to suffer another infliction of the most intricate bridge work at the hands of Doctor Patten before he could properly enjoy at the board of T-bone Tommy that diet so essential to active men of affairs.

CHAPTER XII

Once more the aging Wilbur Cowan stood alone by night thrillingly to watch the arched splendour of stars above and muse upon the fleeting years that carried off his youth.  The moment marked another tremendous epoch, for he was done with school.  Now for all the years to come he could hear the bell sound its warning and feel no qualm; never again need sit confined in a stuffy room, breathing chalk dust, and compel his errant mind to bookish abstractions.  He had graduated from the Newbern High School, respectably if not with distinguished honour, and the superintendent had said, in conferring his rolled and neatly tied diploma, that he was facing the battle of life and must acquit himself with credit to Newbern.

The superintendent had seemed to believe it was a great moment; there had been a tremor in his voice as he addressed the class, each in turn.  He was a small, nervous, intent man whose daily worries showed plainly through the uplift of the moment, and Wilbur had wondered what he found to be so thrilled about.  His own battle with life—­he must have gone out to the fight years ago under much the same circumstances—­had apparently brought him none of the glory he was now urging his young charges to strive for.  He had to stay in a schoolroom and breathe chalk dust.

Whatever the battle of life might be, he was going to fight it out-of-doors; not like imprisoned school-teachers and clerks and bookkeepers in First National banks.  Only when alone under that splatter of stars did he feel the moment big with more than a mere release from textbooks.  Then at last he knew that he had become a man and must put away childish things, and his mind floated on the thought, off to those distant stars where other boys had that night, perhaps unwittingly, become men.

He wished that people would not pester him with solemn questions about what he now meant to make of himself.  They seemed to believe that he should be concerned about this.  Winona was especially insistent.  She said he stood at the parting of the ways; that all his future hung upon his making a seemly choice; and she said it gloomily, with frank foreboding, as one more than half expecting him to choose amiss.

Judge Penniman was another who warned him heavily that it was time to quit being a Jack-of-all-trades.  The judge spoke as from a topless tower of achievement, relating anecdotes of his own persistence under difficulties at the beginning of a career which he allowed his hearer to infer had been of shining merit, hampered, it is true, by the most trying ill health.  Even Mrs. Penniman said that they were expecting great things of him, now that he had become a man.