THE WORLD IS A WEDDING
and
his
grandchildren more often, if he had money, and if he had
given my sister a dowry. He thinks that his son-in-law would think
more of him and ask him to dinner more often."
"In my opinion," said Rudyard, using the phrase which was
always the introduction of a dogma, "money has nothing whatever
to do with the matter. Pardon me for being intimate, but I would
say that the real cause of all the difficulty is that your father did not
know how to make love, or your mother has never wanted to have
your father make love to her. This is the true meaning of the fact
that she is dissatisfied with him. Love is always the beginning of every–
thing, that's obvious. And perhaps we may go so far as to say, that
if
there had been satisfied love between your parents, your father
would have prospered and made as much money as your mother
wanted him to make."
"That's just an
idea,
that's nothing but an
idea.
Money is the
root of all good!" shouted Laura from the kitchen, helping herself
to one more pony of gin as the visitors arose to depart.
"Everything is mixed in everything else," said Jacob to himself,
thinking of how much Laura desired to be loved.
287
