"What is there to be done?" asked Alfred, by way of reply.
"Nothing," answered Jerry, throwing away the match--"absolutely nothing. It is because there is nothing to be done here I thought the place would do you good."
"Not by way of change?" said Alfred, with a smile.
"Well, doing nothing at Kilcash is very different from doing nothing in London. There you get up, eat breakfast, look at the morning papers, yawn over a book; write three notes to say you have no time to write a letter; wonder what the earlier portion of the day was intended for; resolve to go to bed early that night so as to find out the secret; dress; go out nowhere, anywhere; make a call on a person whom you don't want to see, and who doesn't want to see you; curse yourself for being so stupid as to look him up, and him for being so stupid as not to amuse you; buy a hairbrush you don't want; wonder where people can be going in hansoms at such an hour, and can't find out for the life of you where you could go in a hansom at that time, except to the British Museum, or Tower, or National Gallery, or some other place no respectable person ever yet went to; drop into a club for luncheon, and find that no one you ever saw before lunches at the club, and that those who do are intensely disagreeable; stroll into the park; pick up two dear old boys, who have been looking for you everywhere to tell you about something or other that makes you swear; back to the club to dinner, where you meet every man you care for, and dine; after dinner go somewhere or other--to Brown's, for instance, or to the theatre, or to see the performing Mastodon; afterwards cards or billiards, and bed at half-past two or three."
"That's rather a full and exhausting programme for an idle day. It isn't much good here. What do you do here a day you do nothing?"
"Nothing. Whether it's a busy or an idle day with you here, you can't do anything, except you get books and go in for the exact sciences. You couldn't buy a morning paper here for a sovereign, or a pack of cards for a hundred pounds. The hotel does not take in a paper at this time of the year, and only three come to the village--one each to the clergymen, and one to the police barracks. The garrison of the barracks is six men and a bull-terrier. There's no one to look at here, and no one to call on, except the echoes, which at this time of the year are uncommonly surly, not to say scurrilous. There is no fish, as the fish have all gone away on business; they come here only to stare at the summer visitors. The only thing one can do here is smoke--provided you don't buy the tobacco in the village."
"And walk?" asked Alfred. "Cannot one walk here?"
"Yes, mostly. Not always, though; for when it rains here you have to swim, and when it blows here, you have to fly."
"But to-day, for instance, we can walk."
O'Brien looked aloft, looked down in the light wind, and then out to sea.