"What chance has a young fellow with a small capital?"
"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However...perhaps
you are right....Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I feel more
inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all the ancestral
inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are made and our
characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at least resign from
the club?"
He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of character
his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the first
Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in two ways:
they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in the same way
the men who can give me a leg up in business."
"Are you sure those are the only reasons?"
To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you
shall go on speculating?"
"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can help
me in business."
"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However...At least I'll
send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom no one
will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over. To-morrow I shall
do something. I don't know what it will be, yet."
He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, "that
you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell this
house.
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