Closeted with Oscar and his notes, they had, as Bertie put it, salted down the early Greek bucks by seven on Monday evening. By the same midnight they had, as Billy expressed it, called the turn on Plato. Tuesday was a second day of concentrated swallowing. Oscar had taken them through the thought of many centuries. There had been intermissions for lunch and dinner only; and the weather was exceedingly hot. The pale-skinned Oscar stood this strain better than the unaccustomed Bertie and Billy. Their jovial eyes had grown hollow to-night, although their minds were going gallantly, as you have probably noticed. Their criticisms, slangy and abrupt, struck the scholastic Oscar as flippancies which he must indulge, since the pay was handsome. That these idlers should jump in with doubts and questions not contained in his sacred notes raised in him feelings betrayed just once in that remark about “orriginal rresearch.”
“Nine--ten--eleven--twelve,” went the little timepiece; and Oscar rose.
“Gentlemen,” he said, closing the sacred notes, “we have finished the causal law.”
“That’s the whole business except the ego racket, isn’t it?” said Billy.
“The duality, or multiplicity of the ego remains,” Oscar replied.
“Oh, I know its name. It ought to be a soft snap after what we’ve had.”
“Unless it’s full of dates and names you’ve got to know,” said Bertie.
“Don’t believe it is,” Billy answered. “I heard him at it once.” (This meant that Billy had gone to a lecture lately.) “It’s all about Who am I? and How do I do it?” Billy added.
“Hm!” said Bertie. “Hm! Subjective and objective again, I suppose, only applied to oneself. You see, that table is objective. I can stand off and judge it. It’s outside of me; has nothing to do with me. That’s easy. But my opinion of--well, my--well, anything in my nature--”
“Anger when it’s time to get up,” suggested Billy.
“An excellent illustration,” said Bertie. “That is subjective in me. Similar to your dislike of water as a beverage. That is subjective in you. But here comes the twist. I can think of my own anger and judge it, just as if it were an outside thing, like a table. I can compare it with itself on different mornings or with other people’s anger. And I trust that you can do the same with your thirst.”