handsome. These are attributes of nearly everyone at some time in his
life. But to do a great deed or a good deed, and to rejoice that it
has been done and the world is better for it, and not because you did
it and the world knows it, that is different. So often our modesty
consists in using as much effort to walk with hanging head and sloping
shoulders as we should need for a majestic strut.

She called me modest. Yet there I sat in my old khaki uniform. It was
ragged and dirty, and I was proud of it. It was a bit thin for a
chilly autumn day, but in spite of Tim's expostulation I had worn it,
refusing his offers of a warmer garb. I was clinging to my glory.
While I had on that old uniform, I was a soldier. When I laid it
aside, I should become as Aaron Kallaberger and Arnold Arker. A year
hence people would ask me if I had been a railroad man in my time.

She called me modest. That very morning Tim told me she was coming.
She had made some jellies, so she said, for the soldier of the valley.
They were her offering to the valley's idol. She thought the idol
would consume them, for bachelor cooking was never intended for
bachelor invalids. Tim had mentioned this casually. I suspected that
he believed that the visit to me was simply a pretence and that she
knew he was to be working in the field by the house. But I took no
chances. In the seclusion of my room I brushed every speck off the
uniform and made sure that every inch of it fitted snugly and without
an unnecessary wrinkle. Then when my hair had been parted and smoothed
down, I crowned myself with my campaign hat at the dashingest possible
tilt. Thus arrayed I fixed myself on the porch, to be smoking my pipe
in a careless, indifferent way when she came. An egotist, you say--a
vain man. No--just a man. For who when She comes would not look his
best? We prate a lot about the fair sex and its sweet vanities. Yet