“No nonsense about it anyhow.
“But what a tortuous, untraceable business the coming of knowledge is! Curiosity. A fad for dissecting. An instinct for cleanliness. Pride. A bigger boy like Troop.... Suppose Troop had been a different sort of boy?...
“But then I suppose Peter and he wouldn’t have hit it off together.”
Oswald scraped, and presently his mind tried over a phrase.
“Inherent powers of selection,” said Oswald. “Inherent.... I suppose I picked my way through a pretty queer lot of stuff....”
He stood wiping his safety-razor blade.
“There was more mystery in my time and more emotion. This is better....
“Facts are clean,” said Oswald, uttering the essential faith with which science has faced vice and priestcraft, magic and muddle and fear and mystery, the whole world over.
“Facts are clean.”