“What are you going to do when you become rich?” she asked him.
He looked at her. She asked him this as once before he had said to her: “When are you going to get married?” She had answered: “I am not going to get married, perhaps.” He had laughed her denial away.
So now: “I am not going to get rich, perhaps.” And there was she, scoffing at him, holding back her head and saying: “Please, do be serious, David!”
He was. He began to think aloud.
“Not everybody gets rich.”
This had no effect on her. As his silence marked his words as her answer, she shook her head with a faint impatience.
“I know. But what’s that to do with us? You’re my cousin, aren’t you? You’re our sort. You’re in Daddie’s business.”
“What sort don’t get rich, Lois?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She looked at him as if he were stupid. “You ought to know, better than I. You see ’em all around you at Daddie’s business.”
She also had been set to thinking. “How are they different from us?” she asked. Then: “Father says they simply aren’t as clever. Most of them drink too much: and have packs of children: and don’t bathe very often. I guess it’s all these things.”