"The Great What Next for you," I said, as his eyes came dancing through a cloud of birdseye, "is Cane Hill or Colney Hatch, if you don't take care."
"I prefer the Village mortuary, if you don't mind, Gilly."
"Either would be so nice for your mother and sister!"
"And I'm such a help to them as I am, aren't I? Think of the bread I win and all the dollars I'm raking in!"
"It would be murder as well as suicide," I went on. "It would finish off one of them, if not both."
He smoked in silence with a fatuous, drunken smile, though he was as sober as a man could be. That made it worse. And it was worst of all when the smile faded from the face to gather in the eyes, in a liquid look of unfathomable cynicism, new to me in Uvo Delavoye, and yet mysteriously familiar and repellent.
"Yes; they're certainly a drawback, Gillon, but I don't know that they've a right to be anything more. We don't ask to be put into this world; surely we can put ourselves out if it amuses us."
"'If it amuses us!'"
"But that's the whole point!" he cried, puffing and twinkling as before. "How many people out themselves for no earthly reason that anybody else can see, and have their memory insulted by the usual idiotic verdict? They're no more temporarily insane than I am. It's their curiosity that gets the better of them. They want to go at their best, with all their wits about them, as you or I might want to go to Court. If they could take a return ticket, they would; they don't really want to go for good any more than I do. They're doing something they don't really want to do, yet can't help doing, as half of us are, half our time."
"They're weak fools," I blustered. "They're destructive children who've never grown up, and they ought to be taken care of till they do."