“I liked Reddy,” said Stephen.
“One would have thought that he'd have made fine practice for a lawyer,” said Wade, “but nothing of the sort has happened. The spirit of prophesy has gone wide of the mark in his case; he is so successful, in a moneyed sense I mean, that he's hardly gotten over the surprise of it. He can't repress a latent enthusiasm at the thought that he's Riley Crittendon, with several thousand head of choice beef cattle all his own. Perhaps I found him depressing because he's gotten ahead so quick.”
“But you'll find perhaps that your point of view will change with a little of the same kind of luck, Ben,” said Stephen.
Wade shook his head.
“No, I don't know that it will. I've always expected to succeed; I've been impatient that I should be kept out of my own; but by the same token, I won't feel any special enthusiasm when I come into it.”
When Wade had told him, as he had, that much as he despised society, still from motives that always bore upon professional gains, he found it well worth his while to keep in and do the right thing, Stephen was inclined to jeer. Then he made the discovery that he was curiously involved with Wade; and realized that in assuming the burden of his social destinies as he had done, that thrifty fellow was still doing only the right thing, and with an eye single to his future; that somehow he was to be made contributary to his success present and to come, and that it was something more than mere affection that had prompted him to claim an intimacy on the score of their boyish friendship.
“Every one wants to meet you, Steve,” he had once said.
“Why?” Stephen had asked.
“It's natural, ain't it? First and last, the Landrays have filled a pretty conspicuous place here, and then your relation to Mr. Benson makes you interesting; everybody thinks you'll come into a lot of his money one of these days, and they're none of them above wishing to get next to a potential millionaire.”
“What about your designs on me, Ben?”