Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/348

 that we are at fault, that we are the least bit envious, or even that our conviction of the other fellow's swell-headedness is a hastily formed conclusion. He is so irritatingly successful, and we have missed it, and confound him anyway!

If he has become grave and reserved in these years of hard work and success we are sure he is conceited and intolerable. If he is suave and smiling we are sure to detect a patronizing note. Who is he, to be patronizing us? Why, we can remember when—and so on. If he is hurt and draws in when we have taken great pains to show him that we are not greatly flattered merely because he likes us—there! didn't we tell you he was haughty and queer? And if he overlooks our snubs—Ha! he thinks he can afford to be magnanimous to us.

And so on. As a man grows older he finds that he has fewer real friends than he thought he had, and that it takes only a trifling puff of success to blow away some of those he had not thought were chaff. You have to pay for success as well as for