Suddenly Hobart Eddy looked over at us and, “I say, you know,” he said, “what do you think it is all for?”
“The holly?” Pelleas asked unsuspectingly.
“The mistletoe?” I hazarded.
“No, no,” said Hobart Eddy with simplicity, “everything.”
Pelleas and I looked at each other almost guiltily. Here were we two, always standing up for life and promising others that it would yield good things; and yet what in the world could we say to that question of Hobart’s, fairly general though it is: “What is it all for?”
Pelleas spoke first, as became the more philosophical.
“It’s to do one’s best, wouldn’t one say?” he said, “and to let the rest go.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” said Hobart Eddy, talking the primal things in his trim staccato, “but it’s so deuced unnatural not to know why.”
“Yes,” Pelleas admitted, “yes, it is unnatural. But when one does one’s worst it gets more unnatural than ever.”
Hobart Eddy looked critically at the fire.