Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/178

Rh neither money nor position: you have both; it makes some difference with the girls themselves, and a great deal with their mothers."

"It's sickening then," declared Floyd. "Do you mean that they're all mercenary? Why, take Tom Bergen and me. He's a fellow with a lot to him, a gentleman, who's making his own way, and who has a good future ahead of him at the law; good-looking too. But they cut him out right off; and it's everything for me—because I've got the Steel Works behind me, and never mind what else I may be!"

"It is reprehensible but human," replied Mrs. Halket. "After all, if you philosophize a little about such a view, you feel more indulgent toward the person who acts on it. Mrs. Dinsmore has experienced 'love in a cottage,' and probably has no very idyllic recollections; she knows what it is to rub along with one servant, or even none, and keep up appearances and worry about the next month's rent. What has she progressed for if her daughter is simply to drop back and retrace the same old tedious ground? The Dinsmores are not so extravagantly rich; it's a matter of some importance to them whom Mabel marries.

"I will drop the whole thing," Floyd said with decision,—"society I mean,—if I have to feel that I am so different from other fellows, and must inspire such different feelings. I don't like it; it's undignified and humiliating, and it makes me ashamed of people."

"Oh," answered his grandmother, "you need not feel so about society, if you only go into it as other young men do, and not as the chevalier of plain ladies in distress."

"Besides," continued Floyd virtuously, "it's a great waste of time. I've got as much good out of it already as I'm likely to get, and I must learn to omit the unessential. It's time I was thinking about getting things accomplished; this sort of play does n't help at all."

"To choose the right woman for wife may help a good