“I thought your father was ill?” said Miss Letty.
“Oh yes, if you mean that kind of illness. He can’t move one of his legs,—but he’s been like that a good while.”
Pressed for his opinion on what he would like best in the world, he answered, with more brightness than he had yet displayed,—
“Plenty of money.”
“Well, you can do anything with it, you see. There’s a fellow in our college, for instance—he’s an awfully low chap—and if his father hadn’t got what they call a ‘boom’ in some stock or other, he couldn’t have got in, for it’s supposed to be a college of gentlemen’s sons only, and his father kept a fish-stall, so they say. And he’s going in for the Army now. You can do everything with money.”
“You can’t buy friends with it,” said the Major.
“Can’t you? I thought you always could!” And Boy smiled, the smile of the superior cynic who knows he has uttered an unpleasant truth.
The Major was taken aback for a moment. But he returned to the charge.
“You can buy social friends, no doubt,” he said,—“but not true ones.”