FORE:
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FORE:"Did you think I was at the rear?"
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FORE:Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of making it.
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FORE:XXI THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE
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FORE:He found Emmeline alone, just beginning to make tea in the heavily fluted tea-pot with its equipage of harlequin cups and saucers. Alice and John were somewhere in the grounds. Hugh had gone to see his young lady (the expression was Mrs Keelings), and she herself had suffered a slight eclipse from her usual geniality owing to her mother having stopped the whole afternoon, and having thus interrupted her reading, by which she meant going gently to sleep on the sofa, with her book periodically falling off her lap. The first two times that this happened she almost invariably picked it up, on the third occasion she{48} had really gone to sleep, and the rumble of its avalanche did not disturb her. But the loss of this intellectual refreshment had rendered her rather querulous, and since she was not of very vigorous vitality, her querulousness oozed in a leaky manner from her instead of discharging itself at high pressure. A tea-leaf had stuck, too, in the spout of the tea-pot, which made that handsome piece contribute to the general impression of dribbling at Mrs Keelings tea-table; it also provided her with another grievance, though not quite so acute as that which took its rise from what had occurred at lunch.
FORE:"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of grace, you know there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church this morning--of course; but how often does he go? What's wrong with our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a romanticist. We are relig'--what?"
FORE:"Quite right," responded the Doctor; "it is a machine used in every country where Buddhism is the religion."
FORE:"Yes, I lapsed. Slipped, if you like that betterslipped back about eight thousand years, so far as I can make out. And, of course, everything is different." His arms shot up both together in an abrupt gesture of despair. "And now I am confronted with all these old problems of Time and Space."Upstairs in the bedroom, Arthur hastily removed his flannels and paced the limited amount of floor space between the two beds. What a little box of a place it was, and how absurdly crammed with furniture! You couldn't move an inch without bumping into things or knocking something over. There wasn't room to swing a cat, much less to perform an elaborate toilet with that amount of leisurely comfort necessary to its successful accomplishment. Ordinarily he didn't notice these things; it was only when he was in a[Pg 68] hurry, and had all sorts of little duties to carry out, that the awkwardness of his surroundings forced themselves into his mind and produced a sense of revolt. There were times when everything seemed a confounded nuisance and a chair stuck in your way made you feel inclined to pitch it out of the window. Just when you wanted to enjoy simply being yourself, when your thoughts were running in a pleasant, easeful way, you had to turn to and dress or undress, shave or wash, prepare yourself for the conventions of life. So much of existence was spent in actions that were obligatory only because other people expected you to do the same as themselves. It wasn't so much a waste of time as a waste of life.
FORE:
