the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J.
produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this,
beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside
her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet
in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some
ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face and hair and eyes
seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin,
with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought.

Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of
his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt
in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in
the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike.

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