Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

Ethel Frobisher and Duncan Scott were peculiarly wise young people, and not in the least like the "Duck and Ethel" of the shop-boy's world, wonderful creatures who lived in an atmosphere of champagne and motor-cars, yachts and fur coats, Monte Carlo and mystery. The common man dreams of a heaven paved with gold; the wise man would be well content with a heaven of flowers. Nor is it unnatural that the poor, envious industrial crowd should clutch at material things. And, no doubt, the shop-girl viewed Ethel Frobisher as a sort of super-courtezan, loaded with sensual love and diamonds, a gorgeous butterfly, the symbol of all the garish and sensational life that exists only in the mind of the poor little materialist.

Scott was a Balliol man; and had been a schoolmaster, and Ethel Frobisher had come from a Somersetshire parsonage. Both had a sense of humour, and an ironical appreciation of "fame" as it had befallen themselves. They laughed over it. There was nothing American in their mental make-up.