"John," said the general, one day, as they were dividing their first five-hundred-dollar fee, "you're a lucky dog. Everything comes so easily with you. Let me tell you something; I've figured this out: if you don't give it back some way—give it back to the world, or society, or your fellows,—or God, if you like to bunch your good luck under one head,—you're surely going to suffer for it. There is no come-easy-go-easy in this world. I've learned that much of the scheme of things."
"You mean that I've got to pay as I go, or Providence will keep books on me and foreclose?" asked John, as he stood patting the roll of bills in his trousers pocket.
"That's the idea, son," smiled the elder man.
The younger man put his hand to his chin and grinned. "I suppose," he replied, "that's why so many men keep the title to their religious proclivities in their wife's name." He went out gayly, and the elder man heard the boyish limp almost tripping down the stairs. Ward walked to the window, straightening his white tie, and stood looking into the street at the young man shaking hands and bowing and raising his hat as he went. Ward's hair was graying at the temples, and his thin smooth face was that of a man who spends many hours considering many things, and he sighed as he saw John turn a corner and disappear.
"No, Lucy, that's not it exactly," said the general that afternoon, as he brought the sprinkler full of water to the flower bed for the eighth time, and picketed little Harriet Beecher Ward out of the watermelon patch, and wheeled the baby's buggy to the four-o'clocks, where Mrs. Ward was working. "It isn't that he is conceited—the boy isn't that at all. He just seems to have too little faith in God and too much in the ability of John Barclay. He thinks he can beat the game—can take out more happiness for himself than he puts in for others."
The wife looked up and put back her sunbonnet as she said, "Yes, I believe his mother thinks something of the kind."
One of the things that surprised John when he came home from the university was the prominence of Lige Bemis in the town. When John left Sycamore Ridge to go to school, Bemis was a drunken sign-painter married to a woman who a few years before had been the scandal of half a dozen communities. And now though Mrs. Bemis was still queen only of the miserable unpainted Bemis domicile in the sunflowers at the edge of town, Lige Bemis politically was a potentate of some power. General Hendricks consulted Bemis about politics. Often he was found in the back room of the bank, and Colonel Culpepper, although he was an unterrified Democrat, in his campaign speeches referred to Bemis as "a diamond in the rough." John was sitting on a roll of leather one day in Watts McHurdie's shop talking of old times when Watts recalled the battle of Sycamore Ridge, and the time when Bemis came to town with the Red Legs and frightened Mrs. Barclay.
"Yes—and now look at him," exclaimed John, "dressed up like a gambler, and referred to in the Banner as 'Hon. E. W. Bemis'! How did he do it?"
McHurdie sewed two or three long stitches in silence. He leaned over from his bench to throw his tobacco quid in the sawdust box under the rusty stove, then the little man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively with his blackened hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of it and waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, and motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head forward, and whispered confidentially:—
"What'd you ruther do or go a-fishing?"