JOHN. Sit down, Charlie. (Charlie sits meanly on sofa.)
CHARLIE. What is it?
JOHN. Well, it's like this. Jabez tells me he considers you're wasting your time. He doesn t call you lazy—not exactly lazy, do you, Jabez? He wants you to widen your interests and broaden your ideas. That's it, isn't it?
CHARLIE (to Jabez). Oh, that's it, is it?
JABEZ. It's one way of putting it. I don't know whether it's laziness or what it is, but you certainly fight shy of a bit of honest work.
CHARLIE (leaping up fierily). Work? What else do I do from early morning when I enter the laboratory till late at night when I leave it?
JABEZ (smoothly). Quietly, quietly. Yes, that's all very well, but that's not what I call work. Charlie. What do you call it then?
JABEZ. It's not work to you. You like doing it. Charlie. I loathe it from the bottom of my Soul.
JABEZ. Then why do it?
CHARLIE. Well, as you put me into the works you ought to be able to answer that better than I can. I'd no taste for the work at all, but the laboratory was the department I detested least. I suppose I naturally drifted to it.