Grandpa and Papa
Anthony Blaine’s grandfather had all the money in the known world and lived in Tarrytown—a remarkable coincidence. Entirely surrounded by cold cash, he had acquired an austere frigidity of manner and was commonly called “Old Chill Blaine.” This relationship made Anthony constantly conscious of social security, since an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular—whatever that means.
His father, an ineffectual æsthete of that prehistoric period known as the Nineties, had died before he was born, apparently thus reversing the customarily usual process of nature—a phenomenon explicable only on the hypothesis that language sometimes obscures the thought it is supposed to elucidate. The fact is that Anthony was a posthumorous child—a kind of practical joke on his surprised mother.
Anthony inherited from his father nothing but his last name, his taper fingers and a million dollars—a miserable heritage.