Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/64

 New York accent, take a fall out of Euclid, and not get Julius Cæsar confused with Velasquez."

Mrs. Ames, smoothing her gray silk gown, looked troubled. "I've never heard you talk like this before," she said almost plaintively. "I'm sure your father and I always meant to give you as good an education"

"You did, Mums. Or, at least, you offered it to me. I was fool enough not to make the most of it."

"There was that year in Berlin"

"That I wasted, I know. And I might have stayed here and taken a post-graduate course. But I didn't. If dad hadn't died when he did I suppose I'd have done differently. But when a fellow comes into a fortune as big as a skyscraper at twenty-one, why, there's only one thing to do, and that's get busy and dig into it. And the sad part of it is that I haven't even been a success as a spender!"

"That is surely to your credit, Gordon."

"No, it isn't! There's no credit coming to a fellow for falling down on what he attempts. I tried to be a spender and failed from the first. Somewhere inside me there's a—a leaven of New