He delighted Sam Pickering by continuing steadily at the linotype for five consecutive weeks, while business piled up at the First-Class Garage and old Porter Howgill was asked vainly to do everything.
Then on a fateful night Lyman Teaford assumed a new and disquieting value in his life.

Lyman Teaford, who for a dozen years had gone with Winona Penniman faithfully if not spectacularly; Lyman Teaford, dignified and genteel, who belonged to Newbern's better set, had one night appeared at an affair of the Friday Night Social Club.

Perhaps because he had reached the perilous forties he had suddenly determined to abandon the safe highway and seek adventure in miry bypaths.

Perhaps he felt that he had austerely played the flute too long.

At any rate, he came and danced with the lower element of Newbern, not oftener with Pearl than with others that first night.