You're wrong. It isn't that at all. When I say 'I'm the
Earl of Marshmoreton', I mean that I'm a poor spineless fool who's
afraid to do the right thing because he daren't go in the teeth of
the family."
"I don't understand. What have your family got to do with it?"
"They'd worry the life out of me. I wish you could meet my sister
Caroline! That's what they've got to do with it. Girls in my
daughter's unfortunate position have got to marry position or
money."
"Well, I don't know about position, but when it comes to
money--why, George is the fellow that made the dollar-bill famous.
He and Rockefeller have got all there is, except the little bit
they have let Andy Carnegie have for car-fare."
"What do you mean? He told me he worked for a living." Billie was
becoming herself again. Embarrassment had fled.
"If you call it work. He's a composer."
"I know. Writes tunes and things."
Billie regarded him compassionately.
"And I suppose, living out in the woods the way that you do that
you haven't a notion that they pay him for it."
"Pay him? Yes, but how much? Composers were not rich men in my day."
"I wish you wouldn't talk of 'your day' as if you telling the boys
down at the corner store about the good times they all had before
the Flood.
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