CHAPTER XIV.

A different handwriting.

Henry bade Witherspoon good night and went to his room.  A fire was burning in the grate.  At the window there was a rattle of sleet.  He lighted his old briar-root pipe and sat down.  He had, as usual, ceased to argue with himself; he simply mused.  He acknowledged his weakness, and sought a counteracting strength, but found none.  But why should he fight against good fortune?  It was not his fault that certain conditions existed.  Why not starve the past and feed the present?  But he had begun to argue, and he shook himself as though he would be freed from something that had taken hold of him, and he got up and stood at the window.  How raw the night!  And as he stood there, he fancied that the darkness and the sleet of his boyhood were trying to force their way into the warmth and the light of his new inheritance.  He turned suddenly about, and bowing with mock politeness, said to himself:  “You are a fool.”  He lighted his pipe afresh, and sat down to work.  Some one tapped at the door.  Was it Witherspoon come to deliver another argument, and to decide again in his own favor?  No, it was Ellen.  She had been at the theater.

“You bring roses out of the storm,” said Henry, in allusion to the color of her cheeks.

“But I don’t bring flattery.  Gracious!  I am chilled through.”  She took off her gloves and held her hands over the grate.  “Everybody’s gone to bed, and I didn’t know but you might be here, scribbling.  Goodness, what’s that you’ve been smoking?”

“A pipe.”

She turned from the fire and shrugged her shoulders.  “Couldn’t you get a cigar?  Why do you smoke that awful thing?”

“It is an altar of the past, and on it I burn the memories of its day,” he answered, smiling.

“Well, I think I would get a new altar and burn incense for the present!  Oh, but I’ve had the stupidest evening.”

“Wasn’t the play good?”

“No, it was talk, talk, with a stress laid on nothing.  And then my escort wasn’t particularly entertaining.”

“Who?”

“Oh, a Mr. Somebody.  What have you been doing all the evening?”

“Something that I found to be worse than useless.  Father and I have been locking horns over the—­not exactly the labor question, but over the wretchedness of working-women.”

“What do you know about the wretchedness of working-women?” she asked.

“What do I know about it?  What can I help knowing about it?  How can I shut my eyes against it?”

“I don’t see why they are so very wretched.  They get pay, I’m sure.  Somebody has to work; somebody has to be poor.  What are you writing?”

“The necessary rot of an editorial page.” he answered.

“Why, how your handwriting has changed,” she said, leaning over the table.

“How so?”

“Why, this is so different from the letters you wrote before you came home.”