t many years to enjoy anything. When
a man has worked as long as I have in a shoe-shop, and worried as
much and as long as I have, good-luck finds him with his earthworks
about worn out and his wings hitched on."

"Oh, Henry, maybe Dr. Wallace--"

"Maybe he can unhitch the wings?" inquired Henry, with grotesque
irony. "No, Sylvia, no doctor living can give medicine strong enough
to cure a man of a lifetime of worry."

"But the worry's all over now, Henry."

"What the worry's done ain't over."

Sylvia began whimpering softly. "Oh, Henry, if you talk that way it
will take away all my comfort! What do you suppose the property would
mean to me without you?"

Then Henry felt ashamed. "Lord, don't worry," he said, roughly. "A
man can't say anything to you without upsetting you. I can't tell how
long I'll live. Sometimes a man lives through everything. All I meant
was, sometimes when good-luck comes to a man it comes so darned late
it might just as well not come at all."

"Henry, you don't mean to be wicked and ungrateful?"

"If I am I can't help it. I ain't a hypocrite, anyway. We've got some
good-fortune, and I'm glad of it, but I'd been enough sight gladder
if it had come sooner, before bad fortune had taken away my rightful
taste for it."

"You won't have to work in the shop any longer, Henry."

"I don't know whether I shall or not. What in creation do you suppose
I'm going to do all day--sit still and suck my thumbs?"

"You can work around the place."

"Of course I can; but there'll be lots of time when there won't be
any work to be done--then what? To tell you the truth of it, Sylvia,
I've had my nose held to the grindstone so long I don't know as it's
in me to keep away from it and live, now."

Henry had not been at work since Abrahama White's death. He had been
often in Sidney Meeks's office; only Sidney Meeks saw through Henry
Whitman. One day he laughed in his face, as the two men sat in his
office, and Henry had been complaining of the lateness of his
good-fortune.

"If your property has come too late, Henry," said he, "what's the use
in keeping it? What's the sense of keeping property that only
aggravates you because it didn't come in your time instead of the
Lord's? I'll draw up a deed of gift on the spot, and Sylvia can sign
it when you go home, and you can give the whole biling thing to
foreign missions. The Lord knows there's no need for any mortal man
to keep anything he doesn't want--unless