He himself, especially and peculiarly, had always known the bitterness
of poverty, the humiliation of seeing where money could be well used,
indeed, ought to be used, and at the same time having ground into him
the fact that there was no money to lay one's hand on. He had hated it
even as a boy, because in his case, and that of his people, the whole
thing was undignified and unbecoming. It was humiliating to him now to
bring home to himself the fact that the thing for which he was inclined
to dislike this tall, up-standing girl was her unconscious (he realised
the unconsciousness of it) air of having always lived in the atmosphere
of millions, of never having known a reason why she should not have
anything she had a desire for. Perhaps, upon the whole, he said to
himself, it was his own ill luck and sense of defeat which made her
corner, with its cushions and comforts, her properly attentive maid,
and her cold weather sables expressive of a fortune too colossal to be
decent.
The episode of the plump, despairing Tommy he had liked, however. There
had been a fine naturalness about it and a fine practicalness in her
prompt order to the elderly nurse that the richly-caparisoned donkey
should be sent to her.
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