“It would only irritate me,” she warned. “I’m sure it would only furnish you with another reason why you shouldn’t go about as much as you do.”
“It would,” he agreed. “That’s why I want to make it clear. Don’t you see that if I keep at this for a few years––”
“Years?” she gasped.
“Well, until I get my ten thousand.”
“But I thought you were planning to have that by next fall at the latest.”
“I’m going to try,” he answered. “I’m going to try hard. But, somehow, it doesn’t look as easy as it did before I started. I didn’t understand what a man has to know before he’s worth all that money.”
“I’m sure I don’t find ten thousand to be very much,” she observed.
“Perhaps it isn’t much to spend,” he admitted, “but it’s a whole lot to earn. I know a bunch of men who don’t earn it.”
“Then they must be very stupid.”