They wandered along aimlessly while the sunset of an early summer evening marshalled its glories overhead. On a side street children played in the roadway; on a vacant spot a game of ball was in progress. Women sat on their verandas and shot casual glances after them as they passed. Handsome pleasure cars glided about; there was a smell of new flowers in all the air.
“What do you make of it, mate?” said Grant at last.
Linder pulled slowly on his cigarette. Even his training as a sergeant had not made him ready of speech, but when he spoke it was, as ever, to the point.
“It’s all so unnecessary,” he commented at length.
“That’s the way it gets me, too. So unnecessary. You see, when you get down to fundamentals there are only two things necessary—food and shelter. Everything else may be described as trimmings. We’ve been dealing with fundamentals so long—-mighty bare fundamentals at that—that all these trimmings seem just a little irritating, don’t you think?”
“I follow you. I simply can’t imagine myself worrying over a stray calf.”
“And I can’t imagine myself sitting in an office and dealing with such unessential things as stocks and bonds.... And I’m not going to.”
“Got any notion what you will do?” said Linder, when he had reached the middle of another cigarette.
“Not the slightest. I don’t even know whether I’m rich or broke. I suppose if Jones and Murdoch are still alive they will be looking after those details. Doing their best, doubtless, to embarrass me with additional wealth. What are YOU going to do?”
“Don’t know. Maybe go back and work for Transley.”