Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/944

876 scrimped and squeezed, living the same hermit existence that she had begun twenty years before, when, as an orphaned girl, she had first opened the Bazar; saving clerk hire by occupying two tiny rooms in the rear of the store, saving here, saving there, until she had pinched her soul as thin as the blue-white, razor-edged ridge of her nose.

Yet this did not wholly account for her extreme impatience at Hiram Doolittle's mode of life. She could not see him walk by on the other side of the street without sniffing contemptuously. And when at last catastrophe did overtake him, great was her satisfaction.

Said catastrophe was in two parts. In part one the ungrateful Ethan suddenly quitted work in the sail-loft to go off and become an inmate of a sailors' home. Almost simultaneously Hannah married a widower with four children and removed to another part of the county, leaving little in the cottage save Hiram's bed and the wash-tubs. There was every evidence of preconcerted action about this double calamity.

Once again did Hiram Doolittle, now ten years older, find himself facing a harsh alternative. Either he must abandon his cherished attitude or cease altogether to exist. Thus, at least, did it seem. Oh, for another sister to comfort! But there was left to him not even a cousin.

"Now we'll see, I guess," cackled Phœbe Needlefit. "They won't let him into the Poorhouse; the overseers told me that. It's work or starve, Hi Doolittle—work or starve."

But even as she made the prediction she looked out to see stepping jauntily across Main Street directly toward the Bazar, his chin held as confidently high as ever, his rusty black cutaway buttoned snugly across his manly breast, a light bamboo cane twirling between his fingers, Mr. Hiram Doolittle himself.

"Land sakes! I mustn't let him see me at the window," and she retreated in panic to the rear of the store. A moment later the door opened and she turned to confront her visitor.

"You could never imagine, Phœbe, why I've come to see you." He said it as if speaking to a dear friend for whom he had a bit of good news.

"You're right, Hiram Doolittle, I couldn't." There was a straight, narrow line where Phœbe's mouth should have been, and her small black eyes seemed to move nearer together as she looked at him.

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha! I thought so. In fact, I was quite sure of it. Well, I've come to take supper with you, Phœbe; just dropped in for supper and a merry little chat about old times."

"You—you—Why, Hi Doolittle, you're crazy!"

"Not a bit of it, Phœbe, not a bit. Never was more sane in my life, or in better humor. Do you remember, Phœbe, the last time we had supper together? I'll wager you do. And so do I. It was the year we were graduated from the high school. I brought you home with me from a class picnic. We had fried bluefish, hot biscuit, thimbleberry jam, and tea—tea in mother's old blue china cups, those odd little ones with the gold roses in the bottom. Ah, Phœbe, how you blushed when my father asked you if you had picked out your wedding-dress yet! And how he laughed when you said, 'No, sir, but I've already chosen my father-in-law.' Do you remember how we—"

"Hi Doolittle, if you think I want to hear such a silly lot of trash as that at this late day you are—"

"Late, Phœbe! It is never late while the sun shines; we are never old while our hearts are young. Here you are, just in your prime, your girlish graces ripened into womanly charms, your brilliant mind polished by experience, hiding yourself in a shell and pretending that you are growing old. But at last I am free to deliver you from yourself. Family ties, as you know, have long bound me fast. These have been cut. Once more I come to you as in the old days, when we were comrades, friends, and—shall I say the word?"

"Young idiots, do you mean?"

"There you go, witty as ever! What was that verse we boys used to sing?

Didn't we, now? Come, you have not forgotten, have you?"

"Why shouldn't I forget all that nonsense?"