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--"

Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener,
whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He
pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss
Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up
the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He
would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be
lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her
back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist,
she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried
to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If _that_ was the kind
she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or
Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing
Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero."

As for Cousin Bill J., of _course_ he was a loafer! Who wouldn't be if he
had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy
loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox
with one blow of his fist.

Nor was he disturbed seriously by ru