And here I stand—convicted of having perpetrated another section without one short paragraph and without a single line of conversation. Let me hasten to bring Raymond to my suite and my desk-side, and make him speak.
He came down one morning, as administrator of his mother's estate, to consider the appraisal of the personal property—many familiar items, and some discouraging ones.
"Do you have to do this?" he asked me, with the paper in his hand. "Do you like to do it?"
"The world's work," I rejoined temperately. "It's got to be done."
"H'm!" he returned. "The world's a varied place. And its work is varied too. This blessed town must be taught that."
Was he girding himself to be one of its teachers?
From that time on I resolved to take him patiently and good-humoredly: a friend must bear a friend's infirmities.