"I haven't settled—definitely. But I'm sure I'm not fitted for this." He checked himself from going on to explain that he thought it would mean a waste of all the refinements and elegancies he had been at so much pains to acquire.
"Who's to look after the business when I'm gone?" asked Hiram. "Most of what we've got is invested here. Who's to look after your mother's and sister's interests, not to speak of your own?"
"I'd be willing to devote enough time to it to learn the management," said Arthur, "but I don't care to know all the details."
It was proof of Hiram's great love for the boy that he had no impulse of anger at this display of what seemed to him the most priggish ignorance. "There's only one way to learn," said he quietly. "That's the way I've marked out for you. Don't forget—we start up at seven. You can breakfast with me at a quarter past six, and we'll come down together."
As Arthur walked homeward he pictured himself in jumper and overalls on his way from work of an evening—meeting the Whitneys—meeting Janet Whitney! Like all Americans, who become inoculated with "grand ideas," he had the super-sensitiveness to appearances that makes foreigners call us the most snobbishly conventional people on earth. What would it avail to be in character the refined person in the community and in position the admired person, if he spent his days at menial toil and wore the livery of labor? He knew Janet Whitney would blush as she bowed to him, and that she wouldn't bow to him unless she were compelled to do so because she had not seen him in time to escape; and he felt that she would be justified. The whole business seemed to him a hideous dream, a sardonic practical joke upon him. Surely, surely, he would presently wake from this nightmare to find himself once more an unimperiled gentleman.
In the back parlor at home he found Adelaide about to set out for the Whitneys. As she expected to walk with Mrs. Whitney for an hour before lunch she was in walking costume—hat, dress, gloves, shoes, stockings, sunshade, all the simplest, most expensive-looking, most unpractical-looking white. From hat to heels she was the embodiment of luxurious, "ladylike" idleness, the kind that not only is idle itself, but also, being beautiful, attractive, and compelling, is the cause of idleness in others. She breathed upon Arthur the delicious perfume of the elegant life from which he was being thrust by the coarse hand of his father—and Arthur felt as if he were already in sweaty overalls.
"Well?" she asked.
"He's going to make a common workman of me," said Arthur, sullen, mentally contrasting his lot with hers. "And he's got me on the hip. I don't dare treat him as he deserves. If I did, he's got just devil enough in him to cheat me out of my share of the property. A sweet revenge he could take on me in his will."
Adelaide drew back—was rudely thrust back by the barrier between her and her brother which had sprung up as if by magic. Across it she studied him with a pain in her heart that showed in her face. "O Arthur, how can you think such a thing!" she exclaimed.
"Isn't it so?" he demanded.