II

The Mote in the Eye

A philosopher has noted that at certain periods a great many stupid people have a good deal of stupid money. This condition, describable as plethora, is succeeded by another catalogued as panic.

The number of stupid people who at this time stalked the streets unchecked was phenomenal. Among them was Annandale. It was not a beggarly twenty-five thousand a year that he had, but fifty, with, in addition, more to come. This, though measurably satisfactory, was not brilliant. Not brilliant, that is, as Mrs. Price used that term. Still it was sufficient to remove him from the menagerie of paupers in which she had classed him. Assured whereof, Mrs. Price, pocketing further objections, gave in. Two months by the clock after the episodes at Narragansett she assisted at his marriage to her daughter. A little later Annandale took a house in Gramercy Park.

This house, leased fully furnished from November to June, Fanny selected. She liked the neighborhood. Annandale, whose bachelor quarters had, of course, been given up, liked it too. It was convenient. He had got an idea that he ought to have something to do. The something which he hit on consisted in going downtown every day and standing, in a broker’s office, over a ticker. Such were the quantities of stupid money afloat that the ticker was very loquacious. It talked and talked, generally in jumps. As it jumped Annandale bought. As it continued to jump, he made. Whereupon he regarded himself as a born financier. It was an illusion which that year very many men shared.

But the illusion was agreeable to him. It was equally so to Fanny. It took him out of the way and induced pleasant dreams. He talked of drags and