Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/942

874 firmly insist. They were merely temporary idlers. To-day they loafed about with a guilty, hangdog air. To-morrow you might find them at work. Hiram was one who made a profession of leisure; or rather, one on whom leisure sat as a well-fitting cloak. Seeing him watch the studding rise for a new building you might, not knowing the facts, conclude that here was the owner, viewing with critical eye each step of the work.

With the village loafers who hung about the corners he had nothing in common. He neither mingled nor fraternized with them. He was most at home among men of affairs, the lawyers, doctors, retired sea-captains, and other local dignitaries. As a rule, too, he was well received, for Hiram was not only a good talker, but an eloquent listener.

"Not that he says anything of much account," the town clerk once confessed, "but somehow he makes you feel that you have."

He never failed to impress strangers. His bearing towards them was an odd mixture of genial affability and kindly condescension. He showed them about the village with an air of proprietorship, much as a landed lord might escort visitors over his estate.

"Yes, we think we have a charming little town, sir," he would admit with becoming modesty.

"Him?" the stranger's later inquiry would bring forth. "Oh, that's Hi Doolittle."

"But who is he? What office does he hold? In which of those fine houses does he live?"

"Who—Hi Doolittle? Why, he's Hi Doolittle, that's all. Lives with his brother 'n' sister in a little shack up Shinbone Alley."

Yet openly Hiram Doolittle maintained the standard which he had set for himself. Even though in the background there were Hannah scrubbing and Ethan sewing sails, Hiram lived the life of a gentleman of leisure to all intents and purposes, and as such he was generally accepted. Among the few in Cedarton who refused to take him at his own estimate was, as has been hinted, Miss Phœbe Needlefit.

"Don't quote Hi Doolittle to me," she would say, acidly. "That shameless loafer, letting his sister work her fingers to the bone to keep his great lazy carcass fed and clothed! Never worked and never will, eh? Well, I hope to live to see the day when he has to go to work or starve, and I wouldn't lift one finger to help him, either. Hi Doolittle! Huh! Hi Donothing, I call him."

Miss Phœbe's tongue was a sharp one, but it seemed to have a keener edge when she darted it at Hiram. Most of the stinging witticisms at his expense, quips which passed current in Cedarton as conversational coin of rare value, bore the stamp of her mintage. You may be sure that none of these failed to reach Hiram's ears, but no hint of resentment had he ever shown. Never did he pass her on the street without raising his hat in most courtly fashion, and never did Miss Phœbe acknowledge the salute other than by a slight palpitation of her thin nostrils as she inhaled a sneer.

Besides the bank and the shoemaker's shop, the one establishment where Hiram never ventured to spend his unlimited leisure was the Cedarton Bazar, in which Miss Needlefit buzzed about like a bee in a bottle. Folks went to the bazar when they needed buttons and tape and dress patterns. They did not drop in casually or without specific errand, as one might at Ashton's general store, or the harness-shop, or Doubleby's pharmacy, or a dozen other places where were to be found convenient counters, cracker-barrels, and nail-kegs.

Miss Phœbe was a business woman all the time. If she had a social side no one knew of it. Only on one other subject was she approachable, and that had to do with foreign missions. To local charities she could never be induced to subscribe, reserving her cash and her sympathy for the remote heathen; and the more remote they were, the deeper she felt for them. Her annual contribution of ten dollars to the mission fund stood as a ward between her and all other appeals. By no other cause was her attention distracted from the price of shoe-buttons and toilet soap and the profit thereon.

And what wonders she had accomplished, piling penny on penny, dollar on dollar. Four business buildings and half a dozen dwellings represented only a portion of the accreted profits. Still she