rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his attention.  One was, that he discovered, to his confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the turnips, he had robbed those hungry children.  He had not needed the dreadful “fruit,” and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing young things with all his heart.  The other matter that disturbed him was the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach.  It grew and grew, it became more and more insupportable.  Evidently the turnips were “fermenting.”  He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but his anguish conquered him at last.

He rose in the midst of the Colonel’s talk and excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement.  The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a stranger but come and take pot-luck with him every chance he got.  Washington was glad enough to get away and feel free again.  He immediately bent his steps toward home.

In bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his hair gray, and then a blessed calm settled down upon him that filled his heart with gratitude.  Weak and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the brink of unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh, and said to himself that in his heart he had cursed the Colonel’s preventive of rheumatism, before, and now let the plague come if it must—­he was done with preventives; if ever any man beguiled him with turnips and water again, let him die the death.

If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and fortunes of the Hawkins family.

CHAPTER XII

“Oh, it’s easy enough to make a fortune,” Henry said.

“It seems to be easier than it is, I begin to think,” replied Philip.

“Well, why don’t you go into something?  You’ll never dig it out of the Astor Library.”

If there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy to “go into something” it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic.

To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are innumerable and all open; there is invitation in the air and success in all his wide horizon.  He is embarrassed which to choose, and is not unlikely to waste years in dallying with his chances, before giving himself to the serious tug and strain of a single object.  He has no traditions to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break away from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for himself.