LL his life Joel Rice had cherished what may seem a humble ambition. Exactly why Joel had considered the ownership of a little retail dry-goods store in a country town the apex of his ambition was puzzling. As a child he had played at keeping store, with a soap-box for a counter and pins for the currency of the realm. His lack of success in that juvenile venture ought to have warned him of his entire unfitness for carrying out his scheme, but it failed to do so. Even when he had disposed of countless stocks of cups of sweetened water, of bits of broken china gathered from back yards, of green apples and the cores thereof, and his customers had not only defrauded him of pins, but had mocked him from vantage-points of safety, he remained sublime in his determination that when he was a man he would “keep store.”
However, he was made to take a course in bookkeeping, by his mother, who was of a less sanguine nature than he, and understood much better his capacity.
“Poor boy!” she had observed to his father, after repeated bankruptcies of the soap-box store, with its currency of pins — “poor boy! He will never make a storekeeper. He would be cheated out of his eye-teeth in a month.”
Joel's father, a saturnine man, with much confidence in his wife's judgment, had nodded assent.
It was thus settled, even while Joel, in his dauntless ambition, was starting another store on the soap-box, and inviting bankruptcy to call again, which invitation was promptly accepted. Joel kept all the neighborhood children in green apples and broken china for seasons, without a pin's worth of profit to himself, but his faith in the enterprise remained beautiful and serene.
A year after Joel left school his father died. His mother owned the home, and there was a small life insurance. Before her marriage she had been a dressmaker. She took up her old employment, and kept herself and Joel in comfort, while he attended a business college in a near-by city.
When Joel graduated he obtained a position as bookkeeper in a factory. His pay was moderate at first, and the hours were long. Joel did not marry when he was young. His mother had died and he was nearing middle-age before his salary was raised, and he asked a girl — hardly a girl by that time — to marry him. Both of them had had expectant eyes upon each other for years. The girl whom he married brought him enough money to pay off a mortgage on the house, which had been necessitated by his mother's long illness. She insisted upon doing so with the savings of her work as a music-teacher.
They lived together happily enough, and a little girl was born. She was a delicate, sweet, little creature. Joel's wife was contented. She reveled in her motherhood and her little home. She did not dream of Joel's state of mind. He was secretive as to his inmost emotions. He was happy, but always at his heart teased the old ambition. He was tired of bookkeeping. He longed for the store of his boyish dreams. Joel had never actually grown up. In his increased stature lived still the naïve, trusting, boy who had kept the pin-store on the soap-box and risen from bankruptcy with a perennial courage worthy of something larger.
Of course Joel's wife, Susan, knew her husband would like to own a store; he had told her that much. Perhaps three times since their marriage he had spoken of his ambition.
Susan had not paid very much attention. She considered that her husband had a good position and she was entirely satisfied. She failed to grasp the fact that Joel was not.
However, she glimpsed facts when her aunt out West died and left her five thousand dollars. She opened an account in the local bank while she deliberated what disposal to make of the money.
One evening Joel regarded her with a look like that of a good, faithful, starved dog as she talked of it.
“I feel as if it ought to be well invested,” said she. “It will be good to know that we have a little nest-egg, especially as Vivien grows up.” Vivien was the little girl. Her mother had allowed herself one lapse into the romantic when she named the child Vivien. “I wish I knew what to do with that money,” she said.
In Joel's eyes the look of a faithful, intensely loving, wistful dog — wistful beyond the reach of humanity — remained.
“What is it?” asked Susan.
“Nothing,” said Joel. He sighed.
Susan eyed him sharply. “What is it that you are reading so intently in the paper?” said she.
“Nothing.”
“Let me see.”