“Well, I maintain that we don’t have to. We aren’t paupers, even though father wasn’t so well fixed as everyone thought. With management and care, we could have stayed in the old house, I believe, and kept up appearances, at least. What’s the use of advertising that we’re broke?”
“But, Steve, you know Mr. Graves said—”
“Oh, yes, I know. You swallowed every word Graves said, Caro, as if he was the whole book of Proverbs. By George, I don’t; I’m from Missouri.”
Mr. Warren, being in the Sophomore class at Yale, was of the age when one is constitutionally “from Missouri.” Probably King Solomon, at sixty, had doubts concerning the scope and depth of his wisdom; at eighteen he would have admitted its all-embracing infallibility without a blush.
“I tell you,” continued Stephen, “there’s no sense in it, Sis. You and I know plenty of people whose incomes are no larger than ours. Do they ‘economize,’ as Graves is continually preaching? They do not, publicly at least. They may save a bit, here and there, but they do it where it doesn’t show and nobody knows. Take the Blaisdells, for instance. When the Sodality Bank went up, and old Blaisdell died, everybody said the family was down and out. They must have lost millions. But did they move into ‘apartments’ and put up a placard, ‘Home of the Dead-Brokes. Walk in and Sympathize?’ I guess they didn’t! They went into mourning, of course, and that let them out of entertaining and all that, but they stayed where they were and kept up the bluff. That’s the thing that counts in this world—keeping up the bluff.”
“Yes, but everyone knows they are—bluffing, as you call it.”
“What of it? They don’t really know, they only suspect. And I met Jim Blaisdell yesterday and he shook my hand, after I had held it in front of his eyes where he couldn’t help seeing it, and had the nerve to tell me he hoped things weren’t as bad with us as he had heard.”
“I never liked the Blaisdells,” declared Caroline, indignantly.
“Neither did I. Neither do most people. But Jim is just as much in the swim as he ever was, and he’s got his governor’s place on the board of directors at the bank, now that it’s reorganized, and an office down town, and he’s hand and glove with Von Blarcom and all the rest. They think he’s a promising, plucky young man. They’ll help his bluff through. And are his mother and sister dropped by the people in their set? I haven’t noticed it.”
“Well, Mrs. Corcoran Dunn told me that everyone was talking about the Blaisdells and wondering how long they could keep it up. And the newspapers have been printing all sorts of things, and hinting that young Mr. Blaisdell’s appointment as director, after his father wrecked the bank, was a scandal. At least, we haven’t that to bear up under. Father was honest, if he wasn’t rich.”