“If they asked me from that point of view—yes—probably. But what has that to do with it?”
“It ’as this to do with it that when you arsk me what sort that young lydy is I ’ave to reply as she’s 155 not the sort to accept money from strynge gentlemen, because it ain’t what she’s after.”
“Then what on earth is she after? Whatever it is she can have it, if I can only find out what it is.”
Steptoe answered this in his own way. “It’s very ’ard for the poor to see so much that’s good and beautiful in the world, and know that they can’t ’ave none of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where I am now. ’Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor girl can’t go out into the street without seein’ the things they’re cryvin’ for in their insides flaunted at ’em like—shook in their fyces—while the law and the police and the church and everythink what mykes our life says to ’em, ‘There’s none o’ this for you.’”
“Well, money would buy it, wouldn’t it?”
“Money’d buy it if money knew what to buy. But it don’t. Mr. Rash must ’ave noticed that there’s nothink ’elplesser than the people with money what don’t know ’ow to spend it. I used to be that wye myself when I’d ’ave a little cash. I wouldn’t know what to blow myself to what wouldn’t be like them vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar only because our life ’as put the ’orse before the cart with ’em, as you might sye, in givin’ them the money before showin’ ’em what to do with it.”
Having straightened the lines of magazines to the last fraction of an inch he found a further excuse for lingering by moving back into their accustomed places the chairs which had been disarranged.
“You ’ave to get the syme kind of ’ang of things as you and me’ve got, Mr. Rash, to know what it is 156 you want, and ’ow to spend your money wise like. Pleasure isn’t just in ’avin’ things; it’s in knowin’ what’s good to ’ave and what ain’t. Now this young lydy’d be like a child with a dime sent into a ten-cent store to buy whatever ’e’d like. There’s so many things, and all the syme price, that ’e’s kind of confused like. First ’e thinks it’ll be one thing, and then ’e thinks it’ll be another, and ’e ends by tykin’ the wrong thing, because ’e didn’t ’ave nothink to tell ’im ’ow to choose. Mr. Rash wouldn’t want a young lydy to whom ’e’s indebted, as you might sye, to be like that, now would ’e?”
“It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve got anything to do with it. If I offer her the money, and can get her to take it––”
“That’s where she strikes me as wiser than Mr. Rash, for all she don’t know but so little. That much she knows by hinstinck.”