Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at his side with all his worldly goods.  Even a less practicable person than Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light—­being endowed with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the precious jewel in the scarlet cravat.  Probably now she would be able to throw her thumbs out of joint, too!

But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance to the town of Edom.  For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to the scenes of his early prowess.

After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets.  And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts deserved.  He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be had for the asking.  Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County marvelling at his strength.

At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this.  Later he came to rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain.  If his hero could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences—­yes, and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm.

It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol.

Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have said “that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different.”  Yet there came a moment when all was changed—­a time of question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J.

He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, “Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—­with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night.  And what’s worse, he’s been seen with that eldest—­”