"I should say not!" Ten Eyck snorted, with a cloud of smoke. "I've roughed it as rough as any rough-neck going, Forbesy."
Forbes, from the experience of a campaigner, a wilderness hiker, lifted an eyebrow of patronizing incredulity. Ten Eyck retorted:
"You needn't grin. I don't mean any of this roughing de luxe. I had the real thing. I quarreled with the governor once. I was hitting it up pretty hard, and he gave me a call. I told him I didn't need his dirty money; I could earn my own, and I swore I'd never ask him for a cent. I lit out for the Wild and Woolly. What I took with me went fast. I couldn't get a job I'd look at; and by the time I was ready to look at any job I could get, nobody would look at me. Finally they took me on as unskilled labor in the construction camp of a railroad. I slept in cattle-cars, or on the ground, or in wooden bunks with Swedes and Finns, and Huns and coons, and other swine in the adjoining styes. I fought 'em, too, when I had to. Later I waited on the table in a cheap hashery.
"God knows where I'd have ended if my dear old dad hadn't got so homesick he put the Pinkertons on my trail. And when he found me he apologized and begged me to come back. And I very graciously accepted. I had had all the poverty I needed for a lifetime. Hereafter, Forbesy, I'm for the nap on the velvet and the plush on the peach. I tell you, Forbesy, we millionaires may have our little troubles, but we escape the worst of 'em, eh John D.?"
"I wish you'd cut out that talk about my being a millionaire," Forbes broke in, impatiently.
"Millionaire is a newspaper term," Ten Eyck explained, "for anybody who is worth more than a few thousand dollars."
"But I'm not worth anything and never shall be," Forbes confessed. "I'm not rich at all. I've nothing but a few hundred dollars and my picayune salary."
Ten Eyck took the great denial without emotion. "Then I congratulate you on being one of the poor but honest, instead of the criminal rich."
"I'm poor, but I'm not honest," Forbes said; "I'm obtaining courtesy under false pretenses."
"Rot!" said Ten Eyck. "Money couldn't buy what you're getting, and the lack of it couldn't lose what you've gained. They like you. You belong. That's all there is to it."