The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, “You will hear from me again,” but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me.  That, however, was a secondary issue.  The predominant affair was with Nettie.  I found my mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that might be of service in the letter I would write her.  Scorn, irony, tenderness—­what was it to be?

“Brother!” said Parload, suddenly.

“What?” said I.

“They’re firing up at Bladden’s iron-works, and the smoke comes right across my bit of sky.”

The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts upon him.

“Parload,” said I, “very likely I shall have to leave all this.  Old Rawdon won’t give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked I don’t think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore.  See?  So I may have to clear out of Clayton for good and all.”

Section 3

That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me.

“It’s a bad time to change just now,” he said after a little pause.

Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone.

But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note.  “I’m tired,” I said, “of humdrum drudgery for other men.  One may as well starve one’s body out of a place as to starve one’s soul in one.”

“I don’t know about that altogether,” began Parload, slowly. . . .

And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one of those long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal talks that will be dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until the world comes to an end.  The Change has not abolished that, anyhow.

It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all that meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, though its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear picture in my mind.  I posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly no doubt, a wounded, smarting egotist, and Parload played his part of the philosopher preoccupied with the deeps.

We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer’s night and talking all the more freely for that.  But one thing that I said I can remember.  “I wish at times,” said I, with a gesture at the heavens, “that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed strike this world—­and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, loves, jealousies, and all the wretchedness of life!”

“Ah!” said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him.

“It could only add to the miseries of life,” he said irrelevantly, when presently I was discoursing of other things.

“What would?”

“Collision with a comet.  It would only throw things back.  It would only make what was left of life more savage than it is at present.”