"Nothing, only he is by nature fitted to smile at everything."
Howard got up, went over to a bookcase, took down a book, put it back, went to the open door, and stood there looking at a doctor's sign, just across the hall. Goyle got up with a yawn, came walking slowly toward the door, and Howard, hearing him, but without looking round, stepped aside to let him pass out. In the hall he halted to repeat that he would return during the afternoon.
"You have the privilege to come and go as often as you like, being George's friend," said Howard, "but, so far as you and I are concerned, I don't think we are suited to each other."
Goyle laughed and stepped back a pace or two. "Why, on account of my nonsense just now? That was all guff; I didn't mean it. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to condemn the whole of creation, and I talk that way when my mind is too dull to act. Why, I am going out now to knock an eye tooth out of the wolf."
"And you didn't mean what you said about old men?"
"Not a word of it."
"Why did you happen to speak of my father?"
"Merely to refute what I had said about old men in general. Well, so long."
Howard went into the doctor's office, as musty a den as ever a fox inhabited. The physician was an old man, who had no future and who prescribed in the past. During the best years of his life he had dozed or talked under the influence of opium, so given to harmless fabrication when awake that it followed him into his slumber, snoring a lie; now cured of the habit but not of the evil it had wrought. When Howard entered the old man was reading a medical journal of 1849, and he glanced up disappointed to see the visitor looking so well. He had met Howard many a time, but his memory was short.
"Ah, come in, sir. Have a seat. You are—let me see.