y Lane, old Bolingbroke, many times a millionaire thanks
to a thriving woolen factory, came up behind him and cried out, "_Well_,
young man! _This_ is something like." In his enthusiasm he put his arm
through Arthur's. "As soon as I read your father's will, I made one
myself," he continued as they hurried along at Bolingbroke's always
furious speed. "I always did have my boys at work; I send 'em down half
an hour before me every morning. But it occurred to me they might bury
their enthusiasm in the cemetery along with me." He gave his crackling,
snapping laugh that was strange and even startling in itself, but seemed
the natural expression of his snapping eyes and tight-curling, wiry
whiskers and hair. "So I fixed up my will. No pack of worthless heirs to
make a mockery of my life and teachings after I'm gone. No, sir-ee!"

Arthur was more at ease. "Appearances" were no longer against
him--distinctly the reverse. He wondered that his vanity could have made
him overlook the fact that what he was about to do was as much the
regular order in prosperous Saint X, throughout the West for that matter,
as posing as a European gentleman was the regular order of the "upper
classes" of New York and Boston--and that even there the European
gentleman was a recent and rather rare importation. And Bolingbroke's
hearty admiration, undeserved though Arthur felt it to be, put what he
thought was nerve into him and stimulated what he then regarded as pride.
"After all, I'm not really a common workman," reflected he. "It's like
mother helping Mary." And he felt still better when, passing the little
millinery shop of "Wilmot & Company" arm in arm with the great woolen
manufacturer, he saw Estelle Wilmot--sweeping out. Estelle would have
looked like a storybook princess about royal business, had she been down
on her knees scrubbing a sidewalk. He was glad she didn't happen to see
him, but he was gladder that he had seen her. Clearly, toil was beginning
to take on the appearance of "good form."

He thought pretty well of himself all that day. Howells treated him like
the proprietor's son; Pat Waugh, foreman of the cooperage, put "Mr.
Arthur" or "Mr. Ranger" into every sentence; the workingmen addressed him
as "sir," and seemed to appreciate his talking as affably with them as if
he were unaware of the precipice of caste which stretched from him down
to them. He was in a pleasant frame of mind as he went home and bathed
and dressed for dinner.