Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/64

50 stand, Hugh. Morse is sick, sick—not lonesome. He ’s got" something worse than flu. Nobody can stand what he ’s got.”

Hugh looked at him in bewilderment. This was a new Carl, some one he had n’t met before. Gone was the slang flippancy, the hard roughness. Even his voice was softened.

Carl knocked his pipe empty on the knob of an andiron, sank deeper into his chair, and began to speak slowly.

“I think I’m going to tell you a thing or two about myself. We ’ve got to room together, and I—well, I like you. You’re a good egg, but you don’t get me at all. I guess you’ve never run up against anybody like me before.” He paused. Hugh said nothing, afraid to break into Carl’s mood. He was intensely curious. He leaned for¬ ward and watched Carl, who was staring dreamily into the fire.

“I told you once, I think,” he continued, “that my old man had left us a lot of jack. That’s true. We ’re rich, awfully rich. I have my own account and can spend as much as I like. The sky’s the limit. What I did n’t tell you is that we ’re nou¬ veau riche—no class at all. My old man made all his money the first year of the war- He was a commission-merchant, a middleman. Money just rolled in, I guess. He bought stocks with it, and they boomed; and he had sense enough to sell them