There's no use talking, he's got an
awfully uppish way with him, that boy."

Jim nodded an emphatic assent. Along with other smaller grievances there
still rankled in his mind the memory of how, when Allison had first come
as station agent to the little town, a year ago now, he had one day
asked Jim if he did not suppose that the nice-looking girl who had
passed their house with Jim the Sunday before could be induced to come
and work for them. Allison had asked the question in all innocence, not
dreaming that this unshaven young man in blue seersucker shirt and
greasy trousers considered himself in every way Allison's equal, and was
as much affronted by this suggestion as Allison would have been by one
of the same sort. Jim could not forgive him for it--any admiration he
felt for Allison was invariably tempered by resentful remembrance.

"It's about time he woke up to the fact that he doesn't have a father
worth two millions behind him these days," Barbour went on.
"Extravagant! Lord, he never stops to ask what a thing costs before
getting it, as long as he has money in his pockets. Went into the
book-store the other afternoon to get some magazines--carried off about
everything Henry had in the place. Three dollars and fifteen cents his
bill was. Never thinks, when he's buying anything in the way of shirts
or ties, of getting less than half a dozen at a time--s'pose he hasn't
found out you can buy them any other way. And his laundry bills--guess
he about runs the laundry. And just yesterday he was telling me in the
most off-hand way that he would pay five dollars a week to a hired girl.
Five dollars a week! I could hardly believe my ears. But I guess he's
gone back on that." The postmaster smiled sourly.

The young man of whom they were talking was almost at the top of the
hill by this time. So far he had met few people; and those whom he had
met had not forced any formal recognition from him. But as he passed
Mrs. Jennings, she called out a greeting that could not be ignored.
Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of
shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by
her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question
about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same
inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully
unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching
before him an interminable vista of d