ming a cruelly painful operation, must have caused some part
of what he felt to penetrate to the young man; for, instead of bursting
out at his father, he said appealingly: "Would it be a very great
disappointment to you if I were to go into--into some--some other line?"

"What line?" asked Hiram.

"I haven't settled--definitely. But I'm sure I'm not fitted for this." He
checked himself from going on to explain that he thought it would mean a
waste of all the refinements and elegancies he had been at so much pains
to acquire.

"Who's to look after the business when I'm gone?" asked Hiram. "Most of
what we've got is invested here. Who's to look after your mother's and
sister's interests, not to speak of your own?"

"I'd be willing to devote enough time to it to learn the management,"
said Arthur, "but I don't care to know all the details."

It was proof of Hiram's great love for the boy that he had no impulse of
anger at this display of what seemed to him the most priggish ignorance.
"There's only one way to learn," said he quietly. "That's the way I've
marked out for you. Don't forget--we start up at seven. You can breakfast
with me at a quarter past six, and we'll come down together."

As Arthur walked homeward he pictured himself in jumper and overalls on
his way from work of an evening--meeting the Whitneys--meeting Janet
Whitney! Like all Americans, who become inoculated with "grand ideas,"
he had the super-sensitiveness to appearances that makes foreigners call
us the most snobbishly conventional people on earth. What would it avail
to be in character _the_ refined person in the community and in position
_the_ admired person, if he spent his days at menial toil and wore the
livery of labor? He knew Janet Whitney would blush as she bowed to him,
and that she wouldn't bow to him unless she were compelled to do so
because she had not seen him in time to escape; and he felt that she
would be justified. The whole business seemed to him a hideous dream, a
sardonic practical joke upon him. Surely, surely, he would presently wake
from this nightmare to find himself once more an unimperiled gentleman.

In the back parlor at home he found Adelaide about to set out for the
Whitneys. As she expected to walk with Mrs. Whitney for an hour before
lunch she was in walking costume--hat, dress, gloves, shoes, stockings,
sunshade, all the simplest, most expensive-looking, most
unpractical-looking white. From hat to heels she wa