'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.'
'Continue.'
'It is a constant going over the same ground—in itself a maddening process. No sooner do the boys reach a certain age and proficiency and become slightly more interesting than they go on to somebody else, and you begin again at the beginning with another batch. You teach in a bare-walled room with enormous glaring windows, and the ring of the electric tram-bell in the street below makes the commas in your sentences. You have been doing this every day for thirty years. The boys you taught at first are fathers of families now. The trees in the playground have grown from striplings into big shady things. Everything has gone on, and so have you—but you have only gone on getting drier and more bored.'
'Continue,' said he, smiling.
'Your intelligence,' said I, coming down a little nearer, 'restless at first, and for ever trying to push green shoots through the thick rind of routine—'
'Good. Quite good. Continue.'
'—through to a wider space, a more generous light—'
'Poetic. Quite poetic. My compliments.'
'Thank you. Your intelligence, then, for ever—for ever—you've interrupted me, and I don't know where I'd got to.'
'You have got to my intelligence having green shoots.'