"I wonder," said Arnold.
Peter moved impatiently. "Well, I don't see how you can," he said. "Do you think Tommy worries about his sins? Are the men in our mess miserable? Does the girl the good books talked about, who flirts and smokes and drinks and laughs, sit down by night on the edge of her little white bed and feel a blank in her life? Does she, Arnold?"
"I'm blest if I know; I haven't been there! You seem to know a precious lot about it," he added dryly.
"Oh, don't rag and don't be facetious. If you do, I shall clear. I'm trying to talk sense, and at any rate it's what I feel. And I believe you know I'm right too." Peter was plainly a bit annoyed.
The elder padre sat up straight at that, and his tone changed. He stared thoughtfully out to sea and did not smoke. But he did not speak all at once. Peter glanced at him, and then lay back in his chair and waited.
Arnold spoke at last: possibly the harbour works inspired him. "Look here, boy," he said, "let's get back to your illustration, which is no such a bad one. What do you suppose your engineer would do when he got down to the new sea-beach and found the conditions you described? It wouldn't do much good if he sat down and cursed the blessed sea and the sands and the currents, would it? It would be mighty little use if he blamed his good stone and sound timber, useless though they appeared. I'm thinking he'd be no much of an engineer either if he chucked his job. What would he do, d'you think?"
"Go on," said Peter, interested.
"Well," said the speaker in parables, "unless I'm mighty mistaken, he'd get down first to studying the new conditions. He'd find they'd got laws governing them, same as the old—different laws maybe, but things you could perhaps reckon with if you knew them. And when he knew them, I reckon he'd have a look at his timber and stone and iron, and get out plans. Maybe, these days, he'd help out with a few tons of reinforced concrete, and get in a bit o' work with some high explosive. I'm no saying. But if he came from north of the Tweed, my lad," he added, with a twinkle in his eye and a touch of accent, "I should be verra surprised if that foreshore hadn't a breakwater that would do its duty in none so long a while."
"And if he came from south of the Tweed, and found himself in France?" queried Peter.
"I reckon he'd get down among the multitude and make a few inquiries," said Arnold, more gravely. "I reckon he wouldn't be in too great a hurry, and he wouldn't believe all he saw and heard without chewing on it a bit, as our Yankee friends say. And he'd know well enough that there was nothing wrong with his Master, and no change in His compassion, only, maybe, that he had perhaps misunderstood both a little."