“And the rum thing is that though he talks such awful piffle, he’s about right,” he said. “We don’t think. I say, his Victor Hugo rag is rather a good one.”
“Top-hole. But what is there to think about except the things that everybody thinks about?”
“Dunno. But somehow he finds them. Do you remember when there was flue here before Easter, and he went round with a handcart and a bell, calling out, ‘Bring out your dead’? That did me a lot of good.”
Badsley yawned.
“I’m going to be a schoolmaster because the governor is,” he remarked, “and Jim’s going to be a clergyman, and Birds is going to be a lord. Jelf’s about right. And to-morrow will be Sunday, so I’m going to bed to-day!”
Birds and Jim were left alone, and Birds began undressing.
“I think I shall begin by being an atheist,” he said. “How am I to start? But it is true that we all do what everybody else does. Are you going to breakfast with me to-morrow, or I with you? I forget whose turn it is.”
“Yours. And we can’t think, at least I can’t. If I sat down to think I shouldn’t know what to think about. All the same——”
Jim took a turn up and down the room, trying to frame words to the idea in his mind.
“He’s rather Puck-like, is Jelf,” he said. “I don’t think he’s really human. He thinks that people who aren’t epigrammatic, don’t feel. I doubt if he likes anybody—really likes, I mean. You aren’t good for much if you don’t.”