Been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages
like English. I suppose he's got money enough to live
without lifting a hand, any more than his father does;
son of Bromfield Corey, you know. But the thing was in him.
He's a natural-born business man; and I've had many
a fellow with me that had come up out of the street,
and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his
original opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it.
I believe the fellow would like to stick at that desk
of his night and day. I don't know where he got it.
I guess it must be his grandfather, old Phillips Corey;
it often skips a generation, you know. But what I say is,
a thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born
in him, all the privations in the world won't put it there,
and if it is, all the college training won't take it
out."
Sometimes Lapham advanced these ideas at his own table,
to a guest whom he had brought to Nantasket for the night.
Then he suffered exposure and ridicule at the hands of
his wife, when opportunity offered. She would not let him
bring Corey down to Nantasket at all.
"No, indeed!" she said. "I am not going to have them
think we're running after him. If he wants to see Irene,
he can find out ways of doing it for himself."
"Who wants him to see Irene?" retorted the Colonel angrily.
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