Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/938



T is well to have a definite attitude towards life. To live consistently with such an attitude is the highest success. All philosophy teaches this.

Hiram Doolittle fulfilled both conditions, yet it was many years before Cedarton could realize what an immense success he had made of life. Mr. Doolittle's creed was terse and lucid, if a trifle dogmatic. "I have never worked; I never will." That was the whole of it, the beginning and the end. There were no ifs, no buts. Simple enough in the saying, yet how infinitely difficult to stick to when you consider the circumstances which hampered, the perplexities with which at times he was hedged about.

For Hiram Doolittle, although describing himself as "a gentleman born," had no more than entered upon a self-chosen pursuit of leisure when he awoke one morning to find himself despoiled of all the trappings and furniture of gentility by the untimely ceasing of his father. No one had ever suspected Judge Eben Doolittle of being rich, even in the Cedarton application of that term, yet it was a surprise when the settlement of his estate revealed how near to the brink of actual poverty he had come.

So at two-and-thirty Hiram faced the future with a small trunkful of clothes, a few books, a silver-headed bamboo cane, a full-grown appetite, and a sincere belief in his personal immunity from labor of any kind. Everything else, including the roof which had sheltered him, had been seized by relentless creditors who still remained unsatisfied.

No one save Hiram Doolittle would have counted the widow Prindle as an asset. He did, however. She was his sister. True, he had not recognized her since she had disgraced the family, five years before, by marrying Bill Prindle, a common bayman,—who had somewhat mitigated the offence by getting himself drowned soon after.

"I consider it my duty, Hannah," thus he broke the long silence between them, "to forget what has happened in the past, and to do what I can to help you bear this sad bereavement."

As it was now fully a week after the funeral, and as Hannah's none too poignant grief for her father had almost wholly subsided, she appeared somewhat surprised. However, she took her red hands from the wash-tub, wiped them both carefully on her apron, and extended one to her brother.

"It's—it's real nice of you, Hiram. Take a chair, won't you? Just brush them clothes-pins onto the floor. You don't mind if I go on scrubbin', do you? This is the Brentsalls' wash, and I've got to git it home to-night if I'm goin' to have anything to eat to-morrow."

"That's all right, Hannah; go right ahead. We can talk just the same."

"I suppose (rub-rub), now father's gone and everything's been sold up (rub-rub), that you'll be lookin' 'round after a job. What do you (rub-rub) think of doin', Hiram?"

"As I said before, Hannah,"—here Mr. Doolittle paused to pick up the cat and smooth its neck gently as he tilted comfortably back in the kitchen chair,—"I mean to stand by you and help you in this sad hour of bereavement. It's no more than a brother should do. Although we may have misunderstood each other in the past, I have never forgotten that you are my only sister—a sister who cared for me with a mother's love and tenderness when those were taken from me. I was too young then, Hannah, to appreciate all you did for me, but I do now."

Hannah, bending low over the washboard, furtively diluted the suds with a couple of salty tears.

"I—I did the b-best I knew how, Hiram."

"You did, Hannah, you did. And I