He had even the breadth of mind to feel an honest sympathy for poor Mouser, who had come upon arsenic where it could not by any known law of Nature have been apprehended, and who for two days remained beneath the woodshed sick unto death, and was not his old self for weeks thereafter.

Wilbur was growing up.
Soon after this the other notable event transpired.

Frank, the dog, became the proud but worried mother of five puppies, all multicoloured like himself.

It is these ordeals that mature the soul, and it was an older Wilbur who went again to the _Advance_ office to learn the loose trade, as his father had written him from New Orleans that he must be sure to do.

He had increased his knowledge of convention in the use of capital letters, and that summer, as a day's work, he set up a column of leaded long primer which won him the difficult praise of Sam Pickering.
Sam wrote a notice of the performance and printed it in the _Advance_--the budding craftsman feeling a double glow when he sat this up, too.