“Yes, I see,” Harlan said grimly. “You think Martha might even admire me enough to marry me, if I’d say to Dan: ‘Here! I won’t accept all this that should have been yours. Here’s half of it.’” “Oh, no,” she cried, “I didn’t mean half of it; I only meant you might——” “No,” Harlan said; “not _any_, mother—not a dime! I won’t impress Martha with a pose. I don’t want her or anybody else to like me because of a pose.” “Would it be a pose,” Mr. Oliphant asked gravely, “to help your brother?” “Wouldn’t it?” Harlan returned as gravely. “Isn’t it a pose to do something that isn’t natural to you, simply to make a woman admire you? I’d call that a pose, myself, though you may have another definition of the word. I’m not caring to get admiration that way, sir.” “All right,” his father said, nodding, as the fragile edifice of Mrs. Oliphant’s gentle cunning was thus dispersed upon the air. “I should say you had the right spirit there. But why need it be an attitude? Wouldn’t you really _like_ to help Dan out a little, Harlan?” Harlan sighed. “Not in a failure, sir. First and last he’s had a pretty long chance to prove what he could do with his Addition, and he’s no nearer succeeding to-day than he was when he began. Instead, he’s lost all his money and all his time. All he’s done was to spoil a farm.” “But if he had some really substantial assistance, it’s not absolutely impossible he might——” “No, sir,” Harlan said definitely; “I don’t believe in it, and I’ll never do it. I didn’t want to supplant him. I didn’t ask for what grandma’s done for me; I never did one thing to get it, or for the purpose of making her like me; and, as a matter of fact, she didn’t do it because she liked me. But she did know I’d take care of it, and I’m going to prove she was right about that, anyhow. I won’t throw any of it away on an attitude to make Martha Shelby think well of me. Of course she’ll be all the surer she’s right about me, now that I don’t do anything for him, though I have so _much_!” He picked up the copy of Mrs. Savage’s will from the table where his father had left it, and, sitting down again, prepared to look over it; but, as he placed in position the eye-glasses already necessary to him when he read, he sent a sidelong glance toward his parents, a glance in which there was the bitterness of an ancient pain. “I wouldn’t even throw any of it away to make my father and mother like me a little better, either,” he said. Mrs. Oliphant cried out reproachfully: “Oh, Harlan!” and she would have said more; but her husband shook his head at her, and she was silent. Harlan finished his reading, set the manuscript down upon the table, and went away without speaking again, so that his parents were left to themselves and a thoughtful, somewhat melancholy silence. Mrs. Oliphant broke it diffidently. “You don’t think mother ever dreamed that——”