"
Colin Semple viewed his companion with a more sympathetic
expression. "I'm sorry you're so hipped," he said,
in gentle tones. "It can't be more than some passing whimsy.
You're in no real trouble, are you?--no family trouble?"
Thorpe shook his head. "The whole thing is rot!"
he affirmed, enigmatically.
"What whole thing?" The broker perched on the edge
of his desk, and with patient philosophy took him up.
"Do you mean eighty thousand a year is rot? That depends
upon the man who has it."
"I know that well enough," broke in the other, heavily.
"That's what I'm kicking about. I'm no good!"
Semple, looking attentively down upon him, pursed his lips
in reflection. "That's not the case," he observed with
argumentative calmness. "You're a great deal of good.
I'm not so sure that what you've been trying to do is
any good, though. Come!--I read you like large print.
You've set out to live the life of a rich country
squire--and it hasn't come off. It couldn't come off! I
never believed it would. You haven't the taste for it
inbred in your bones. You haven't the thousand little
habits and interests that they take in with their
mother's milk, and that make such a life possible.
When you look at a hedge, you don't think of it as
something to worry live animals out of. When you see
one of your labourers, you don't care who his father was,
or which dairymaid his uncle ought to have married,
if he had wanted to get a certain cottage.
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