Now school was over for another summer and Trimble Cushman's dray could be driven at a good wage--by a boy overnight become a man. There were still carpers who would regard him as a menace to life and limb. Judge Penniman was among these. A large truck in sole charge of a boy--still in his teens, as the judge put it--was not conducive to public tranquillity. But this element was speedily silenced. The immature Wilbur drove the thing acceptably, though requiring help on the larger boxes of merchandise, and Trimble Cushman, still driving horses on his other truck, was proud of his employee. Moreover, the boy became in high repute for his knowledge of the inner mysteries of these new mechanisms. New cars appeared in Newbern every day now, and many of them, developing ailments of a character more or less alarming to their purchasers, were brought to his distinguished notice with results almost uniformly gratifying. He was looked up to, consulted as a specialist, sent for to minister to distant roadside failures, called in the night, respected and rewarded.
It was a new Newbern through whose thoroughfares the new motor truck of Trimble Cushman was so expertly propelled. Farm horses still professed the utmost dismay at sight of vehicles drawn by invisible horses, and their owners often sought to block industrial progress by agitation for a law against these things, but progress was triumphant. The chamber of commerce recorded immense gains in population. New factories and mills had gone up beside the little river. New people were on the streets or living in their new houses. New merchants came to meet the new demand for goods.
The homy little town was putting on airs of a great city. There was already a Better Newbern club. The view down River Street from its junction with State, Masonic Hall on the left and the new five-story Whipple block on the right, as preserved on the picture postcards sold by the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, impressed all purchasers with the town's vitality. The _Advance_ appeared twice a week, outdoing its rival, the _Star_, by one issue; and Sam Pickering, ever in the van of progress, was busy with plans for making his journal a daily.
Newbern was coming on, even as boys were coming on from bare feet to shoes on week-days. Ever and again there were traffic jams on River Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers' wagons, buggies, delivery carts, about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles. High in the centre would be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate, sure hands on a potent wheel. Never did he kill or maim either citizen or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman. Traffic jams to him were a part of the day's work.