On one such occasion Phineas burst into a guffaw.
“Why don’t you talk to the poor body? She’s a respectable girl enough. Where’s the harm?”
“Go ‘square-pushing’?” said Doggie contemptuously, using the soldiers’ slang for walking about with a young woman. “No, thank you.”
“And why not? I’m not counselling you, laddie, to plunge into a course of sensual debauchery. But a wee bit gossip with a pretty innocent girl——”
“My dear good chap,” Doggie interrupted, “what on earth should I have in common with her?”
“Youth.”
“I feel as old as hell,” said Doggie bitterly.
“You’ll be feeling older soon,” replied Phineas, “and able to look down on hell with feelings of superiority.”
Doggie walked on in silence for a few paces. Then he said:
“A thing I can’t understand is this mania for picking up girls—just to walk about the streets with them. It’s so inane. It’s a disease.”