"If you're a typical——"
"Oh, I wasn't talking about myself; don't take me! When a man's thoughts mean worries, he acquires the habit of keeping them to himself very soon; that is, if he isn't a fool. It isn't calculated to make him popular, but it prevents him becoming a bore."
"Out comes your old bugbear! Isn't it possible for you to believe a man's pals may listen to his worries without being bored?"
"How many times?"
"Oh, damn, whenever they're there!"
"No," said Kincaid meditatively, "it isn't. They'd hide the boredom, of course, but he ought to hide the worries. Let a man do his cursing in soliloquies, and grin when it's conversation."
"Would it be convenient to mention exactly what you do find it possible to believe in?"
"In work, and grit, and Walter Corri. In doing your honest best in the profession you've chosen for the sake of the profession, not in the hope of what it's going to do for you. You can't, quite—that's the devil of it! Your own private ambitions will obtrude themselves sometimes; but they're only vanity, when all's said and done—just meant for the fuel. What does nine out of ten men's success do for anyone but the nine men? Leaving out the great truths, the discoveries that benefit the human race for all time, what more good does a man effect in his success than he did in his obscurity? Who wants to see him succeed, excepting perhaps his mother—who's dead before he does it? Who's the better for his success? who does he think will be any better off for it? Nobody but No. 1! Then, whenever the vanity's sore and rubbed the wrong way, you'd have him go to his friends and take it out of them. What a selfish beast!"
"Bosh!" said Corri. "Oh, I know it isn't argument, but 'bosh!'"
"My dear fellow——"