"This is too much, my friend—a blanked sight too much. Crushed to earth by such unmerited compliments, I can only repeat my gratification that we meet with your approval. You settle down, and you'll see how insipid it is: then you'll be making some quaint efforts at shrewdness and finesse yourself. Invite me then, and I'll get even with you, old man. But I say, what did you mean about my being a cub at college?"
"Well, you were, you know. Barmaids and ballet-dancers, and that sort of thing."
"Confound you, Hartman, what do you go bringing them up for? There was only one of each, or thereabouts, and they were generally old enough to be my mothers. I was but a child, Jim—a guileless, merry, high-hearted boy, and innocent as the lamb unshorn."
"You were that, and the shearing did you a lot of good. O, you can be easy; I'll not bring up the sins of your youth."
"They were no sins, only follies. I had my early Pendennis stage, of course, and invested every woman I met with the hues of imagination. But Mabel and the girls might not understand that."
"I don't think they would. Happily, it is not necessary they should try to, since you have returned to the path of rectitude. Do you think you belonged to Our Society in those days, Bob?"
"Yes, sir: I did, in embryo. I had it in me to develop into the ornament of our species you behold at present. That's all a boy is good for, anyway. He thinks he's somebody, but he isn't. He doesn't amount to anything, except in the fond hopes of his anxious parents. He knows nothing, and he can do nothing, except learn by his blunders; and some of 'em can't do that. But if he has any stuff in him, he grows and ripens with time, as you and I did. What bosh, to put the prime of life at twenty-five. They ought to move it on a bit; about our age, now, a man ought to be at his best."
"I don't know, Bob. I was an egregious ass at twenty-five, and I'm not sure I'm any better now."
"Then there's hope of you, my boy. But one must go on getting experience. You shut the door too soon and too tight, Jim."
"When I had it open, such an infernal stench and dust came in, that it seemed best to close it. But it's open again now, partly, and this seems a healthier and cleaner atmosphere."