“If once he began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at croquet?”
“It's their Damned Modesty,” said Hatherleigh suddenly, “that's what's the matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice dressed up as a virtue and taking the poor dears in. Cambridge is soaked with it; it's some confounded local bacillus. Like the thing that gives a flavour to Havana cigars. He comes up here to be made into a man and a ruler of the people, and he thinks it shows a nice disposition not to take on the job! How the Devil is a great Empire to be run with men like him?”
“All his little jokes and things,” said Esmeer regarding his feet on the fender, “it's just a nervous sniggering—because he's afraid.... Oxford's no better.”
“What's he afraid of?” said I.
“God knows!” exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire.
“LIFE!” said Esmeer. “And so in a way are we,” he added, and made a thoughtful silence for a time.
“I say,” began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos, “what is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?”
But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world.
“What is the adult form of any of us?” asked Benton, voicing the thought that had arrested our flow.
3