"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 it's taxes, or a quick
consumption, or a wife and children. And as for those last, there
doesn't seem to be much need of that lately. I have never seen the
time since I came into the world when it was quite so hard to get
things, or quite so easy to get rid of them, as it is now. Say the
word, Henry, and I'll draw up the deed of gift."

Henry looked confused. His eyes fell before the lawyer's sarcastic