Willy laughed. "Each person has his own way of doing business; I don't
see how it interferes with you, or what difference it makes to you, if
I spend three minutes or three days writing a letter."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not; but I am terribly upset about Grace," said
Mr. Brookes, and he walked slowly across the room and stood looking at
his Bouguereau; "she'll get over it, but in any case she'll miss her
chance of marrying Berkins; that is what distresses me. The man stinks
of money. I hear that he has been appointed manager of a colliery,
that alone will bring him another thousand a year. His business is
going up, he must be worth now between seven and eight thousand a
year. And he began as an office boy, he hadn't a penny piece, made it
all himself."

"So I should think; a purse-proud ass!"

"Never mind, his eight thousand is as good an eight thousand as any in
the land, better than a great many. I wouldn't give a snap of my
fingers for your broken-down landowners; Berkins has always made
excellent investments, and I hear he is now getting as much as fifteen
per cent. for money invested."

Willy had been to Oxford, and the arrogance and pomposity of this
purse-proud man shocked his sense of decorum. Berkins's vulgarity was
more offensive than that of Mr. Brookes. Mr. Brookes was a simple,
middle-class man, who had made money straightforwardly and honestly,
and he had cultivated his natural taste for pictures to the limit of
his capacities and opportunities. Berkins, however, had been born a
gentleman, but had had to shift for himself, even when a lad, and he