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