Billy laid a consolatory arm over her shoulder, and patted her awkwardly.
“Cheer up,” he said, “there’s worse things in this world than money. The time may come when you’ll be grateful to your poor little old 11 uncle, for his nifty little fifty thousand per annum.”
Nancy turned a tragic face to him.
“I tell you I’m not grateful to him,” she said, “and I doubt if I ever will be. I don’t want the stupid money. I want to work life out in my own way. I know I’ve got it in me, and I want my chance to prove it. I want to give myself, my own brain and strength, to the job I’ve selected as mine. Now, it’s all spoiled for me. I’m subsidized. I’m done for, and I can’t see any way out of it.”
“You can give the money away.”
“I can’t. Giving money away is a special science of itself. If I devote my life to doing that as it should be done, I won’t have time or energy for anything else. I’m not a philanthropist in that sense. I wanted my restaurant to be philanthropic only incidentally. I wanted to cram my patrons with the full value of their money’s worth of good nourishing food; to increase the efficiency of hundreds of people who never suspected I was doing it, by scientific methods of feeding. That’s my dream.”
“A good little dream, all right.”
“To make people eat the right food; to help 12 them to a fuller and more effective use of themselves by supplying them with the proper fuel for their functions.”
“You could buy a chain of restaurants with the money you’ve got.”
“I don’t want a chain of restaurants.”