"Why of course?"
The doctor turned nervously, looked at me and said: "Will you please move a little?" motioning with his hand, "You are too close to me."
"Dan," said master, "sit over there."
I went over to the window, the place where I had stood one night and looked down upon a quarrel between Old Master and the doctor.
"Why of course?" master repeated.
"Thought you knew the man I meant."
"He and almost all other men had passed out of my mind, sir," said the young man, leaning with his elbow upon the table. "There are times when I don't think of man, but of what man has said."
The doctor coughed. "Don't you think there's just a little pretense in all that—this learned abstraction?"
"If there's any pretense at all it is just a little. I know men who have more than a little pretense."
For a time they were silent, listening to the crackling of the fire. "But I didn't come to bicker," said the doctor.