“Absolutely, old sport.”
Daisy went upstairs to wash her face—too late I thought with humiliation of my towels—while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.
“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he demanded. “See how the whole front of it catches the light.”
I agreed that it was splendid.
“Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.”
“I thought you inherited your money.”
“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the war.”
I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered: “That’s my affair,” before he realized that it wasn’t an appropriate reply.
“Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected himself. “I was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I’m not in either one now.” He looked at me with more attention. “Do you mean you’ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?”
Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.