“No, I don’t want pressing. Yes, I’ll come. I should like to very much. You leave one alone, which is the first quality of a host.”
They strolled up again, as the clock began to strike twelve.
“I’m sure I’ve done you much more good than you’d have got in an hour out of your Herodotus,” said Tom. “There is one really good point about you, and that is that if you are told something you think about it. I shouldn’t wonder if I found you dropping matches into the Cam some night soon.”
“It’s quite possible. Let’s see, what is the point of it?—the sudden splash at the end of the silence, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is like so many things. It’s like a mole burrowing silently in the earth, and then suddenly coming out at a different place. You needn’t examine that analogy. It’s like what I am going to do. I’m going to work very hard and quite silently for several years, and then suddenly I’m going to make a splash.”
“But are you going out immediately afterwards—like the match?”
“I don’t know; perhaps I shall—who knows?”
“Tom, are you aware that we are talking exactly like the people in books about Cambridge—the two friends, you know, who walk about on moonlight nights, and meditate on life and being?”
“God forbid!” said Tom piously. “But we’d better go indoors, just to be safe. Those people are so ridiculous only because they are always the same. Of course we all do meditate a little on life and being, but we do other things besides. But they come out in the evening like rabbits out of their burrow, and disappear again till the next evening. I’m going to play cricket to-morrow. They never do that.”
“And drink whisky now. They never do that.”