We have but to look at Jathrop to see that this is true. Of all the tame, mild-eyed, listless young individuals, Jathrop was the worst, falling asleep on an average of three times an afternoon in school, and never keeping conscious a whole evening. Whether a sudden change in Jathrop's character was the cause of making him a financial power or whether his Klondike-acquired bank account was the cause of his awakening, it still is a fact that now in his quiet way he was a very live person.
Jathrop was indifferent to a degree, also, as witness his appearance with his Chinese boy whom everybody took to be his wife with his great baggy trousers and pigtail that no respectable boy, Chinese or otherwise, should wear. Of course, it must be acceded that Jathrop was indifferent in that case from ignorance. He did not know what the world was saying.
Perhaps that accounts for the lofty attitude, one might say lofty altitude, of so many of our millionaires. They are so far removed from the world that their ears cannot hear what is being said. People talk in whispers about the "very rich," which makes it doubly hard for them to hear, or hearing, to think that it matters very much, else people would shout. However, when all is said, money does make a difference.
Mrs. Lathrop had been a silent, sat-upon, unaggressively-rocking person for years; now Jathrop had come back from the Klondike and altered all that; it was not that she had turned talkative, it was not that she had so far altered the very foundations of her being as to presume ever to try to contradict any other body's opinions, but the return of Jathrop and the wealth of Jathrop had found expression in his mother through the one medium of almost all expression with her. Mrs. Lathrop had ceased to concern herself as to the length or the vigor of her rocking. It was beautiful to see the energy of independence with which she went back and forth, bringing her feet down with an audible clap whenever she desired fresh impetus.
Susan Clegg did not seem to sympathize. Instead, sitting on her straight chair opposite, she shook her head severely, further discontent making itself visible in the manner of her shake.
But Mrs. Lathrop was proof against all manifestations of disapproval now. She flew back and forth in the old-gold-plush stationary rocker like the happy pendulum of some beatific clock. Jathrop was home. Jathrop was rich. Jathrop would buy her anything she wanted.
"I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop," Susan went on, the discontent ringing somewhat more distinctly in her tone, "as I'm much taken with this idea of building us over, even if Jathrop does mean it kindly. I know there's a many as would nigh to go out of their senses at the very idea of being made over new for nothing, but I was never one to go out of my senses easy, and that young man on the woodpile doesn't give me any kind of secure feeling as to what he'll make out of my house. He looks to me like the kind of young man as will open doors square across windows where the knob'll smash the glass sure if you're trying to carry a bureau out at the time of the house-cleaning. The kind of cravats he's got looks to me like his chimneys would be very likely not to draw, and their color gives me a feeling that doughnuts in his house will smell in shut-up closets a week after the frying. You know what shut-up fryings is like after they've had no fresh air for a week, but I wasn't raised that way. When I have fish I have fish and done with it, and when I have onions I have onions, and I ain't very wild over maybe boarding my fish and my onions in my best bonnet henceforth and forever.
"Mrs. Brown was telling me yesterday as she heard of some city woman as had a system of ventilation put into her house, and the rats and mice used it so freely that you couldn't sleep nights. They nested in it, and they fought in it, and they died in it, all as happy and gay as you please, and the family had to have it picked out of the walls in the end and all new paper put on. That's the kind of ideas young men call modern improvements, and that young man on the woodpile is about as modern and improving as they make 'em, I take it.
"I can't say what it is about that young man that I don't like, but, being as I'm always frank and open with you, I will remark that so far I ain't found one thing about him as I do like. He's been down cellar hammering on the wall wherever the wind blew him to listeth to hammer, and I had to sit up-stairs and listen without no chance to blow myself. I caught him down on all fours this morning peeking under my front porch, and he didn't even have the manners to blush. As to the way he makes free with the outside of your house, I wouldn't waste breath with trying to tell you, but my own feeling is that an architect learns his trade on a tight-rope to judge from that young man's manner, and from what I've seen while he was swinging by one arm from your premises, I wouldn't feel safe to take a bath even on top of a chimney, myself."
Susan rose at this and went to the window and looked out; from her expression as she turned, it was plain to be seen that the artist was still at his task.