THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE




Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow.
Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the
unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better
to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the
great truths of modern life which Hughie Erskine never realised.
Poor Hughie! Intellectually, we must admit, he was not of much
importance. He never said a brilliant or even an ill-natured thing
in his life. But then he was wonderfully good-looking, with his
crisp brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his grey eyes. He was
as popular with men as he was with women and he had every
accomplishment except that of making money. His father had
bequeathed him his cavalry sword and a History of the Peninsular War
in fifteen volumes. Hughie hung the first over his looking-glass,
put the second on a shelf between Ruff's Guide and Bailey's
Magazine, and lived on two hundred a year that an old aunt allowed
him. He had tried everything. He had gone on the Stock Exchange
for six months; but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and
bears? He had been a tea-merchant for a little longer, but had soon
tired of pekoe and souchong. Then he had tried selling dry sherry.
That did not answer; the sherry was a little too dry. Ultimately he
became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect
profile and no profession.