She lost all patience with her friend.
CHAPTER IX
Before her maid came to her Amber had reflected also upon the cases of Mr. Guy Overton and Mr. Willie Bateman, and the consciousness of the fact that neither of these young men had tried (after the first attempt) to make love to her was a source of the greatest gratification to her. (To such a point of self-deception may the imagination of a young woman born in an atmosphere of science lead her.)
Guy Overton was a young man who was certainly in no need to try the Stock Exchange as a means of livelihood. He was the only son of Richard Over-ton, the once well-known Australian, who had been accidentally killed when acting as his own Stevedore beside the hold of one of his steamers. Guy had inherited from this excellent father a business which he had speedily sold for a trifle over half a million, and a spirit of thrift which was very unusual, people said, on the part of the idle son of a self-made man—a self-made man is a man who has made himself wealthy at the expense of others.
It was a great disappointment to his many friends to find out, as they did very soon after his father’s death, that young Mr. Overton was in no way disposed to fling his money about in the light-hearted way characteristic of the youth who becomes a prodigal by profession. He could not see, he said, why he should buy spavined horses simply because he was half a millionaire. Of course he knew it was an understood thing that spavined horses were to be got rid of upon light-hearted aspiring sons of fathers with humble beginnings in life; but he rather thought that, for the present at least, he would try to pass his time apart from the cheering companionship of the spavined horse.
And then as regards the purchase of that couple of cases of choice Manila cigars—the hemp yarn which entered largely into their composition undoubtedly did come from Manila—he expressed the opinion to the friend who had thoughtfully suggested the transaction, that, until he felt more firmly on his feet in carrying out the rôle of the complete prodigal he would struggle to repress his natural tendency to smoke the sweepings of the rope walks of the Philippine Islands.
In short young Mr. Overton was fortunate enough to obtain, not by slow degrees, but in a single month after his father’s death, a sound practical reputation for being a skinflint.
It was his study to justify all that was said of him by his disappointed friends in respect of the closeness of his pockets.