"You want excitement," said the other carelessly. "I allow there is not much of that here."
"I want something," cried Walter. "Cards even are better than nothing. I want to feel that I have blood in my veins."
"My dear boy, all that is easily explained. You want money. Money is the thing that mounts the blood in the veins. With money you can have as much excitement, as much movement as you like. Let people say what they please, there is nothing else that does it," said the man of experience. He took a choice cigar leisurely from his case as he spoke. "A bit of a country town like this, what can you expect from it? There is no go in them. They risk a shilling, and go away frightened if they lose. If they don't go to church on Sunday they feel all the remorse of a villain in a play. It's all petty here—everything's petty, both the vices and the virtues. I don't wonder you find it slow. What I find it, I needn't say."
"Why do you stop here, then?" said Walter, not unnaturally, with a momentary stare of surprise. Then he resumed, being full of his own subject. "I know I'm an ass," he said. "I loaf about here doing nothing when I ought to be at work. I don't know why I do it; but neither do I know how to get out of it. You, that's quite another thing. You have no call to stay. I wonder you do: why do you? If I were as free as you, I should be off—before another day."
"Come along then," said Underwood, good-humouredly. "I'll go if you'll go."
At this Walter shook his head.
"I have no money you know. I ought to be in an office or doing something. I can't go off to shoot here or fish there, like you."
"By and by—by and by. You have time enough to wait."
Walter gave him a look of surprise.
"There is nothing to wait for," he said. "Is that why you have said so many things to me about seeing life? I have nothing. We've got no money in the family. I may wait till doomsday, but it will do nothing for me."