And I laughed at him, and then I jumped down on the other side of the wall and ran down along the slope of the hill. It was not so steep in this place—towards a little lake with trees beside it, down in the flat wild country.
‘Do you want to see the barbarians?’ Walter asked, and I said:
‘Yes, but they are all gone.’
Walter said:
‘They are not gone, only civilized. Do you ever wish you could get away from civilized people, and culture and books and all that sort of thing?’
And I said:
‘No, I have never wished that. I have never thought about it.’
He said:
‘Perhaps you haven’t been oppressed by it, as I have. Routines and curricula and examinations—always doing what you have got to do and never what you want.’
I said: