Hugh's Soliloquy

"Tobacco," something whispered, but Hugh answered promptly: "No, sir, I
shan't! I'll sell my shirts, the new ones Aunt Eunice made, before I'll
give up my best friend. It's all the comfort I have when I get a fit of
the blues. Oh, you needn't try to come it!" and Hugh shook his head
defiantly at his unseen interlocutor, urging that 'twas a filthy
practice at best, and productive of no good.

Horses was suggested again. "You have other horses than Bet," and Hugh
was conscious of a pang which wrung from him a groan, for his horses
were his idols. The best-trained in the country, they occupied a large
share of his affections, making up to him for the friendship he rarely
sought in others, and parting with them would be like severing a right
hand. It was too terrible to think about, and Hugh dismissed it as an
alternative which might have to be considered another time. Then hope
made her voice heard above the little blue imps tormenting him so sadly.

He should get along somehow. Something would turn up. Ad might marry and
go away. What made her so different from his mother? He had loved her,
and he thought of her now as she used to look when in her dainty white
frocks, with the strings of coral he had bought with nuts picked on the
New England hills.

He used to kiss those chubby arms--kiss the rosy cheeks, and the soft
brown hair. But that hair had changed sadly since the days when its
owner had first lisped his name, and called him "Ugh," for the bands and
braids coiled around 'Lina's haughty head were black as midnight. Not
less changed than 'Lina's tresses was 'Lina herself, and Hugh, strong
man that he was, had often felt like crying for the little baby sister,
so lost and dead to him in her young womanhood. What had changed Ad so?