She clapped a pudgy hand to her cheek, squinting furiously at Quarren:
"You can't drop out," she shouted. "Don't you ever want to amount to anything?"
"Yes, I do. That's why I'm doing it."
"Don't act like a fool! Haven't you any ambition?"
"That also is why," he said pleasantly. "I am ambitious to be out of livery and see what my own kind will do to me."
"Well, you'll see!" she threatened—"you'll see what we'll do to you——"
"You're not my kind. I always supposed you were, but you all knew better from the day I took service with you——"
"Ricky!"
"It is perfectly true, Mrs. Sprowl. My admittance included a livery and the perennial prerogative of amusing people. But I had no money, no family affiliations with the very amiable people who found me useful. Only, in common with them, I had the inherent taste for idleness and the genius for making it endurable to you all. So you welcomed me very warmly; and you have been very kind to me.... But, somewhere or other—in some forgotten corner of me—an odd and old-fashioned idea awoke the other day.... I think perhaps it awoke when you reminded me that to serve you was one thing and to marry among you something very different."
"Ricky! Do you want to drive me to the yelling verge of distraction? I didn't say or intimate or dream any such thing! You know perfectly well you're not only with us but of us. Nobody ever imagined otherwise. But you can't marry any girl you pick out. Sometimes she won't; sometimes her family won't. It's the same everywhere. You have no money. Of course I intend that you shall eventually marry money—What the devil are you laughing at?"