Billy looked sceptical. “And which is your own particular brand?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I’m going to find out before morning. I must know before to-morrow. Molly must have a bigot to marry.”
“I take it your marriage is upsetting your mental balance,” said Billy tranquilly, with the common sense of the poet. “You’d better go to bed.”
Eddy laughed. “Upsetting my balance! Well, it reasonably might. What should, if not marriage? After all, it has its importance. Come in, Billy, and while you sleep I will decide on my future opinions. It will be much more exciting than choosing a new suit of clothes, because I’m going to wear them for always.”
Billy murmured some poetry as they turned up Beaufort Street.
“The brute, untroubled by gifts of soul,
Sees life single and sees it whole.
Man, the better of brutes by wit,
Sees life double and sees it split.”
“I don’t see,” he added, “that it can matter very much what opinions one has, if any, about party politics, for instance.”
Eddy said, “No, you wouldn’t see it, of course, because you’re a poet. I’m not.”
“You’d better become one,” said Billy, “if it would solve your difficulties. It’s very little trouble indeed really, you know. Anyone can be a poet; in fact, practically all Cambridge people are, except you; I can’t imagine why you’re not. It’s really rather a refreshing change; only I should think it often leads people to mistake you for an Oxford man, which must be rather distressing for you. Now I’m going to bed. Hadn’t you better, too?”
But Eddy had something to do before he went to bed. By the grey light that came through the open window of the sitting-room, he found a pack of cards, and sat down to decide his opinions. First he wrote a list of all the societies he belonged to; they filled a sheet of note-paper. Then he went through them, coupling each two which, he had discovered, struck the ordinary person as incompatible; then, if he had no preference for either of the two, he cut. He cut, for instance, between the League of Young Liberals and the Primrose League. The Young Liberals had it.