What is more, he was for the first time in his life finding himself a person of some importance. Always before he had been under a disadvantage, always conscious of his "queerness," of having a mother who was a laughing-stock and a father who was a scandal. He was priggish and unsociable, but he wasn’t a scholar. He had done very badly in all the various schools to which he had been sent by fits and starts; and when at last he had been somehow got into college, he had done still worse. He had hated his failure there; he had so longed to be popular and friendly, and had been so markedly neither. So he had gone into business at nineteen, and he had found himself at once. He did amazingly well. He had a clever, sympathetic, imaginative brain, he had good judgment, he knew how to handle his people, how to deal with men; but at the same time he had not very much common sense. He was like one of those musical infant prodigies, so shamelessly exploited by their families. He had this amazing talent for making money, and the people about him, well aware of his virtue and his innocence, had known perfectly how to make use of his ability. He was a cruelly driven slave to his exalted idea of family obligations. Eddie wasn’t aware of it, however. He was willing to spend all his youth in acquiring money for other people to spend. He took a sort of pride in exhausting himself. He was young enough and strong enough to enjoy affronting his health. It seemed to him a noble thing to support one’s family. This was one of his pet ideas--ideas which he had got from books or from other people’s talk, none of which had developed quietly and wholesomely from childhood, or from experience. His instincts were sound and admirable. He practically never had a base impulse; but his ideas were grotesque. He was, in some respects, a fool, and he was treated as fools must always be treated by the self-seeking. There was truth in Angelica’s fancy. There was something in this boy that was what men chose to call kingly--a generosity, a fine force, a self-forgetfulness, a profound sense of his obligations, even toward this waif, so recently brought to his attention. He believed it his duty to help her. "Why don’t you go into business?" he asked her abruptly. "Why?" "I think you’d do well. You seem level-headed. And there’d be some sort of future in it, instead of pottering about here like an old woman." "But I don’t like business. I like to be here, with nice people, where I can learn something." "That’s quite right, of course; but what will you do--later?" "Well--I don’t know, exactly. I just think that if I can--sort of improve myself--some sort of chance will come some day." She reflected a moment. "All these magnificent women," she said. "They just kind of waited round for something to turn up, didn’t they? I mean, they didn’t plan what they were going to be. I haven’t thought it all out; but I mean to--oh, to go _up_ all the time, to get to be somebody!"