"You wish to make your fortune equal to that of some wealthy girl's."
"A wealthy girl's...." The drummer looked at the Spanish girl quite blankly, then, as her implication penetrated him, he was moved to a somewhat abrupt denial:
"No, señora, no girls for mine ... at least not yet." He shifted his bulk a trifle and lay looking at her defensively; then he saw where her logic had led her. "Why, the idea! We were talking about why all Americans work so, and you think they work because they want to get married. What an idea!"
"But doesn't that explain a great many, señor?"
"Mighty few business fellows. When we are boys we have our sweethearts, of course, but when we get out into business, women sort of drop out of our lives for eight or ten years. We chase 'em a little, but not much. Later, when our business justifies it, we buy us a motor, a bungalow, and a girl,—I mean, we pick out a girl and marry her,—but getting married is just a symptom that a man is getting on in his business; it's not the aim of his business, at all. The business clicks away just the same, whether he marries or not."
It would be difficult to say just how much the señora was moved at this reversal of ordinary human motives. She looked at the drummer for several moments, and finally asked in an odd voice:
"How do you decide you have the reached a position to marry, Señor Tomas?"
"Oh, that depends on your ideals. When I was a kid I thought fifteen a week and a flivver would do. As I got older my ideals went up, and now I've got to have ten thousand a year and a twelve-cylinder."
"And you have no particular girl in view?"
The drummer laughed weakly.