“Damn him!” said Billy, after a rapidly covered half-block.

“Oh, Billy, don’t!  What do you care!” Susan said, soothingly.

“I don’t care,” he snapped.  Adding, after another brooding minute, “we ought to have better sense than to go into such places!”

“We’re as good as anyone else!” Susan asserted, hotly.

“No, we’re not.  We’re not as rich,” he answered bitterly.

“Billy, as if money mattered!”

“Oh, of course, money doesn’t matter,” he said with fine satire.  “Not at all!  But because we haven’t got it, those fellows, on thirty per, can throw the hooks into us at every turn.  And, if we threw enough money around, we could be the rottenest man and woman on the face of the globe, we could be murderers and thieves, even, and they’d all be falling over each other to wait on us!”

“Well, let’s murder and thieve, then!” said Susan blithely.

“I may not do that—­”

“You mayn’t?  Oh, Bill, don’t commit yourself!  You may want to, later.”

“I may not do that,” repeated Mr. Oliver, gloomily, “but, by George, some day I’ll have a wad in the bank that’ll make me feel that I can afford to turn those fellows down!  They’ll know that I’ve got it, all right.”

“Bill, I don’t think that’s much of an ambition,” Susan said, candidly, “to want so much money that you aren’t afraid of a waiter!  Get some crisps while we’re passing the man, Billy!” she interrupted herself to say, urgently, “we can talk on the car!”

He bought them, grinning sheepishly.

“But honestly, Sue, don’t you get mad when you think that about the only standard of the world is money?” he resumed presently.

“Well, we know that we’re better than lots of rich people, Bill.”

“How are we better?”

“More refined.  Better born.  Better ancestry.”

“Oh, rot!  A lot they care for that!  No, people that have money can get the best of people who haven’t, coming and going.  And for that reason, Sue,” they were on the car now, and Billy was standing on the running board, just in front of her, “for that reason, Sue, I’m going to make money, and when I have so much that everyone knows it then I’ll do as I darn please.  And I won’t please to do the things they do, either!”

“You’re very sure of yourself, Bill!  How are you going to make it?”

“The way other men make it, by gosh!” Mr. Oliver said seriously.  “I’m going into blue-printing with Ross, on the side.  I’ve got nearly three thousand in Panhandle lots—­”

“Oh, you have not!”

“Oh, I have, too!  Spence put me onto it.  They’re no good now, but you bet your life they will be!  And I’m going to stick along at the foundry until the old man wakes up some day, and realizes that I’m getting more out of my men than any other two foremen in the place.  Those boys would do anything for me—­”