Free Alice Munro's Best by Alice Munro

timid scholar.”
    He didn’t like that either.
    â€œIs that how I seem to you, a timid scholar?” It seemed to her he deepened his voice, introduced a few growling notes, drew in his chin, as if for a joke. But he seldom joked with her; he didn’t think joking was suitable when you were in love.
    â€œI didn’t say you were a timid scholar or a leg-grabber. It was just an idea.”
    After a while he said, “I suppose I don’t seem very manly.”
    She was startled and irritated by such an exposure. He took such chances; had nothing ever taught him not to take such chances? But maybe he didn’t, after all. He knew she would have to say something reassuring. Though she was hoping not to, she longed to say judiciously, “Well, no. You don’t.”
    But that would not actually be true. He did seem masculine to her. Because he took those chances. Only a man could be so careless and demanding.
    â€œWe come from two different worlds,” she said to him, on another occasion. She felt like a character in a play, saying that. “My people are poor people. You would think the place I lived in was a dump.”
    Now she was the one who was being dishonest, pretending to throw herself on his mercy, for of course she did not expect him to say, “Oh, well, if you come from poor people and live in a dump, then I will have to withdraw my offer.”
    â€œBut I’m glad,” said Patrick. “I’m glad you’re poor. You’re so lovely. You’re like the Beggar Maid.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œâ€˜King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.’ You know. The painting. Don’t you know that painting?”
    Patrick had a trick – no, it was not a trick, Patrick had no tricks – Patrick had a way of expressing surprise, fairly scornful surprise, when people did not know something he knew, and similar scorn, similar surprise, whenever they had bothered to know something he did not. His arrogance and humility were both oddly exaggerated. The arrogance, Rose decided in time, must come from being rich, though Patrick was never arrogant about that in itself. His sisters, when she met them, turned out to be the same way, disgusted with anybody who did not know about horses or sailing, and just as disgusted by anybody knowing about music, say, or politics. Patrick and they could do little together but radiate disgust. But wasn’t Billy Pope as bad, wasn’t Flo as bad, when it came to arrogance? Maybe. There was a difference, though, and the difference was that Billy Pope and Flo were not protected. Things could get at them: D.P.’s; people speaking French on the radio; changes. Patrick and his sisters behaved as if things could never get at them. Their voices, when they quarrelled at the table, were astonishingly childish; their demands for food they liked, their petulance at seeing anything on the table they didn’t like, were those of children. They had never had to defer and polish themselves and win favor in the world, they never would have to, and that was because they were rich.
    Rose had no idea at the beginning how rich Patrick was. Nobody believed that. Everybody believed she had been calculating and clever, and she was so far from clever, in that way, that she really did not mind if they believed it. It turned out that other girls had been trying, and had not struck, as she had, the necessary note. Older girls, sorority girls, who had never noticed her before began to look at her with puzzlement and respect. Even Dr. Henshawe, when she saw that things were more serious than she had supposed, and settled Rose down to have a talk about it, assumed that she would have an eye on the money.
    â€œIt is no small triumph to attract the attentions of the heir to a mercantile empire,” said Dr. Henshawe, being ironic and serious at the same time. “I don’t despise wealth,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I had some of