nasty slam at Wilbur's painful deficiencies as a human being, but she
took it as serious as Wilbur took himself--which is some!

"'Ah, yes, the artist teep,' says she,'the most complex, the most
baffling of all.'

"That was a kind of a sickish jolt to me--the idea that something as low
in the animal kingdom as Wilbur could baffle anyone--but I thinks,
'Shucks! Wait till he lines up alongside of a regular human man like
Chet Timmins!'

"I had Chet up to supper again. He still choked on words of one
syllable if Nettie so much as glanced at him, and turned all sorts of
painful colours like a cheap rug. But I keep thinking the piece will fix
that all right.

"At eight o'clock Wilbur sifted in with his records and something else
flat and thin, done up in paper that I didn't notice much at the time.
My dear heart, how serious he was! As serious as--well, I chanced to be
present at the house of mourning when the barber come to shave old Judge
Armstead after he'd passed away--you know what I mean--kind of like him
Wilbur was, talking subdued and cat-footing round very solemn and
professional. I thought he'd never get that machine going. He cleaned
it, and he oiled it, and he had great trouble picking out the right
fibre needle, holding six or eight of 'em up to the light, doing secret
things to the machine's inwards, looking at us sharp as if we oughtn't
to be talking even then, and when she did move off I'm darned if he
didn't hang in a strained manner over that box, like he was the one that
was doing it all and it wouldn't get the notes right if he took his
attention off.