He sat by Helen's bed half a day, and talked to her as to a grown lady, and was gracious and fluent. He brought the best flowers of his worldliness, and jingled all his silver bells to please her.
"Not a finer pair of eyes in Hamilton!" he said to the widow. "Positively she must not have a crick in her back. On my word, impossible."
"We are taught to submit," said the widow, perhaps placidly, at any rate patiently. Thaddeus mounted the stairs with a wrinkled smile.
"Sheep! That woman is a sheep! Helen, my dear, your back will be as straight as my cane, I give you my word."
Nellie's lean hands, on the coverlet, and face, with its bacchante spread of hair above her head on the pillow, were losing their brown tan in the passage of slow weeks. The delicate creeping pallor and helplessness beckoned Thaddeus to something tender, but he took council with wisdom.
"Uncle Tad," she said, "why do you about always feel good?"
"Well, well, I haven't cracked my spine. Never cracked anything but my heart and reputation—a—both of them like old varnish, on my word. Very good, varnish them again. I have"—Thaddeus used his gold eye-glasses gracefully to punctuate, emphasize, distinguish, for illustration, for ornament—"I have the opinion that to feel agreeable and to be agreeable are two habits that one cultivates like a garden. The first is a vegetable, the second a flower. You see? Exactly. In point of fact they are the fruit and flower of the same plant. A—a figure of speech, Nellie. If you kindly wouldn't look at me like the Angel of Judgment. A—look at the ceiling. Thank you."
Thaddeus delicately unfolded his theory of the conduct of life, Nellie's grave eyes now and then confusing him with mute challenge.
To his experience, then, there were two classes of people—those who were more or less pleased with the world, and those who more or less were not. Both personally and morally it was better to be in the former class. Personally, for instance, one lived longer; morally, one, for instance, in point of fact, kept in better relations with Providence. Now this satisfaction was to be compassed partly by a certain inward insistence on feeling agreeable—"When I buy a pair of glasses of a seller of glasses, personally, I buy a pair that—a—slightly idealize"—partly by surrounding one's self by, in point of fact, a judicious selection of circumstances. Circumstances were, in the main, people. One surrounded one's self with—that is, one sought and lived among—agreeable people, and these were found commonly among such as had circumstances already agreeable. Selfishness was a word to keep on good terms with by understanding its nature, and making one's own share of it intelligent. Enlightened selfishness was the root of society. Good society really consisted of people who had the time and took the pains to be pleasant and entertaining, in order to have pleasure and entertainment about them. This was the sensible and experienced thing in the matter of the pursuit of happiness.
"Nellie"—Thaddeus's voice took a note of gravity—"you'll let me have an interest in your pursuit. Some time"—the wrinkles of his smile shot out around his eyes—"I'll explain to you how it is a case of enlightened selfishness. Between you and me, I'm growing old, but ordinarily I deny it."