"I can't stand those fellows, to-day. They seem to feel such a smirk satisfaction at having got out of it all."
They issued upon the river, and he went to the parapet and looked down on the water. "I wonder," he mused aloud, "if it has the same Sunday look to these Sabbathless Italians as it has to us."
"No; Nature isn't puritan," replied the old minister.
"Not at Haddam East Village?"
"No; there less than here; for she's had to make a harder fight for her life there."
"Ah, then you believe in Nature—you're a friend of Nature?" asked Colville, following the lines of an oily swirl in the current with indolent eye.
"Only up to a certain point." Mr. Waters seemed to be patient of any direction which the other might be giving the talk. "Nature is a savage. She has good impulses, but you can't trust her altogether."
"Do you know," said Colville, "I don't think there's very much of her left in us after we reach a certain point in life? She drives us on at a great pace for a while, and then some fine morning we wake up and find that Nature has got tired of us and has left us to taste and conscience. And taste and conscience are by no means so certain of what they want you to do as Nature was."
"Yes," said the minister, "I see what you mean." He joined Colville in leaning on the parapet, and he looked out on the river as if he saw his meaning there. "But by the time we reach that point in life most of us have got the direction which Nature meant us to take, and there's no longer any need of her driving us on."
"And what about the unlucky fellows who haven't got the direction, or haven't kept it?"