Lydia did not smile. “I don’t know whether we have the book or not, but Miss Slater told us the story of the Minotaur. There’s a picture of Theseus and Ariadne in Europe somewhere—Munich, I think—or maybe Siena. It was where one of the girls had a sore throat, I remember, and we had to stay quite a while. Miss Slater told us about it then.”
The doctor stood up. “Julia, it’s nearly half-past now. Who remembered this time? I’m off, all of you. Rankin, see that Lydia gets home safely, will you?”
“Oh, I must go too—now, with you.” The girl jumped up. “I didn’t realize it was so late. They’ll be wondering at home.”
“Come along, then, both of you. I’ll go with you to the corner where I take my car.”
The chill of the night air sent them along at a brisk gait, Lydia swinging easily between them, her head on a level with Rankin’s, the doctor’s hat on a level with her ear. She said nothing, and the two talked across her, disjointed bits of an argument apparently under endless discussion between them.
The doctor flung down, with a militant despondency, “It’d be no use trying to do anything, even if you weren’t so slothful and sedentary as you are! It moves in a vicious circle. Because material success is what the majority want, the majority’ll go on wanting it. Hardy says somewhere that it’s innate in human nature not to desire the undesired of others.”
Rankin sang out a ringing “Aw, g’wan! It’s innate in human nature to murder and steal whenever it pleases, and I guess even Hardy’d admit that those aren’t the amusements of the majority quite so extensively as they used to be—what? First thing you know people’ll begin to desire things because they’re worth desiring and not because other folks have them—even so astonishing a flight as that!” he made a boyish gesture—“and what a grand time that’ll be to live in, to be sure!”
They were waiting at the corner for the doctor’s street car, which now came noisily down toward them. He watched it advance, and proffered as a valedictory, his gloom untempered to the last, “You’re a wild man that lives in the woods. I’ve doctored everybody in the world for thirty years. Which knows human nature best?”
Rankin roared after him defiantly, waking the echoes and startling the occupants of the car, “I do! I do! I do!”
The car bore the doctor away, a perversely melancholy little figure, contemplating the young people blackly.