We'd never come down to it before.
And I mistrusted Larkins--but we were out six months.

Paul, my boy, chuck it.

You're young; you're clever; you've had a swell education; you come of gentlefolk--my father kept a small hardware shop in Leicester--you have"-- the smitten and generally inarticulate man hesitated--"well, you have extraordinary personal beauty; you have charm; you could do anything you like in the world, save act--and you can't act for toffee.

Why the blazes do you stick to it ?" "I've got to earn my living just like you," said Paul, greatly flattered by the artless tribute to his aristocratic personality and not offended by the professional censure which he knew to be just.
"I've tried all sorts of other things-music, painting, poetry, novel-writing--but none of them has come off." "Your people don't make you an allowance ?" "I've no people living," said Paul, with a smile--and when Paul smiled it was as if Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean Hermes; and then with an outburst half sincere, half braggart--"I've been on my own ever since I was thirteen." Wilmer regarded him wearily.

"The missus and I have always thought you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth." "So I was," Paul declared from his innermost conviction.