"My dear fellow, you had a rough time of it yourself for any number of years, and——"
"And they've left their mark. Very naturally! What then?"
"Simply that now you want to stunt all humanity in the unfortunate mould that was clapped on you. You understand the right of every pain to shriek excepting mental pain. You'd sit up all night pitying the whimpers of a child with a splintered finger, but if a man made a moan because his heart was broken, you'd call him a 'selfish beast'!"
Kincaid ejected a circlet of smoke, and watched it sail away before he answered.
"'Weak,'" he said, "I think I should call that 'weak.' It was a very good sentence, though, if not quite accurate. This reminds me of old times; it takes me back ten years to sit in your room and have you bully me. There's something in it, Corri; circumstances are responsible for a deuce of a lot, and we're all of us accidents. I'm a bad case, you tell me; I dare say it's true. You're a good chap to put up with me."
"Don't be a fool," said Corri.
The "fool" stared into the coals, nursing his big knee. He seemed to be considering his chum's accusation.
"When I was sixteen," he said, still nursing the knee and contemplating the fire, "I was grown up. In looking back, I never see any transition from childhood to maturity. I was a kid, and then I was a man. I was a man when I went to school; I never had larks out of hours; I went there understanding I was sent to learn as much, and as quickly as I could. Then from school I was put into an office, and was a man who already had to hide what he felt; my people knew I wanted to make this my profession, and they couldn't afford it. If I had let the poor old governor see—well, he didn't see; I affected contentment, I said a clerkship was 'rather jolly'! Good Lord! I said it was 'jolly'! The abasement of it! The little hypocritical cur it makes of you, that life, where a gape is regarded as a sign of laziness and you're forced to hide the natural thing behind an account-book or the lid of your desk; when the knowledge that you mustn't lay down your pen for five minutes under your chief's eyes teaches you to sneak your leisure when he turns his back, and to sham uninterrupted industry at the sound of—his return. With the humbug, and the 'Yes, sirs,' and the 'No, sirs,' you're a schoolboy over again as a clerk, excepting that in an office you're paid."
"My clerk has yet to come!" said Corri, grimacing.
"Yes, he's being demoralised somewhere else. How I thanked God one night when my father told me if I hadn't outgrown my desire he could manage to gratify it! The words took me out of hell. But when I did become a student I couldn't help being conscious that to study was an extravagance. The knowledge was with me all the time, reminding me of my responsibility—although it wasn't till the governor died that I knew how great an extravagance it must have seemed to him. And I never spreed with the fellows as a student any more than I had enjoyed myself with the lads in the playground. Altogether, I haven't rollicked, Corri. Such youth as I have had has been snatched at between troubles."