"I am looking strictly to the practical side. In the first place, you would risk the loss of Balfour's friendship, if you should put him in the position of a pauper—for this is the light in which he might regard your interference."
"Oh, no, not a pauper!"
"Well, Balfour is very proud—and in the second place, he could not afford to risk his independence, as he must, if he should accept money from strangers."
"But they wouldn't be strangers; in the South third cousins are very near."
"Well, this isn't the South, and the relationship is on your mother's side, and Mrs. Blair's. Balfour would probably regard the men as strangers. Think over what I have said, Martine, and remember Balfour's disposition."
"It is because he is so bright and industrious that I think it a shame that he should not have as good a chance as Lucian or Robert."
"Balfour has the best possible chance. In the end his friends will be proud of him, and he will be thankful that no one took away his independence."
Martine was sufficiently impressed by what Mrs. Redmond had said to give up for the time the plan she had formed of getting help for Balfour.
When she saw that her father was not quite ready to do what she had planned for Yvonne, she was glad that she had not thrown on him the extra burden of considering the case of Balfour. She decided, however, to interest Lucian in Eunice's brother. In spite of Lucian's fondness for teasing Martine, he was really devoted to her. He was apt in the end to be influenced by her, although in the beginning often pretending to resist her influence.
In his Freshman year, Lucian was drifting into the extravagant habits of an idle group from the preparatory school where he had fitted for Harvard. Fortunately, however, at the critical moment he came under the ken of Fritz Tomkins—a Junior. Between the two there then sprang up a friendship rather unusual in its way. For even at Harvard Freshmen and Juniors are seldom intimate. So it happened that when the summer came, instead of going to Europe with two or three of his classmates, Lucian really preferred a trip with Fritz. The two went to Nova Scotia, and the constant companionship with the sensible Fritz had given Lucian new views of life, or not to put it too seriously—of the value of time and money. Fritz himself was gay and light-hearted, fond of teasing his old friend Amy Redmond, and willing always to have others laugh at him. But beneath all his apparent frivolity was a depth of purpose that those who knew him best fully realized.