"It's not been bad fun," Loring observed, as we glided out of the Isis and O'Rane began to struggle with a muddy bottom and an adverse current. "Damn' _good_ fun, in fact," he added with emphasis. "What are you going to do now, George?"
"I've not the foggiest conception," I said.
The Congested Districts Board was relieving me of land and personal labour in Ireland, but, as it paid me probably more than I should have secured in the open market, there seemed little point in my superfluously trying to earn a livelihood in any of the professions. Sometimes I thought of improving my mind by a year's travel, sometimes I thought of occupying time by reading for the Bar--more usually, however, I waited for something to turn up.
"What about you?" I asked. "Are you going to take Burgess's advice?"
"And bury myself as an extra attaché in some god-forsaken Embassy? Not if I know it! I might have, before the Guv'nor died. As it is, I shall have a certain amount of property to manage and if you Radicals ever come back I shall go down and wreck your rotten Bills a bit. Otherwise I propose to live the life of beautiful uselessness. In punting, as in everything else, our little man seems to effect the minimum of result with the maximum of effort."
Raney drew his pole out of the water and splashed us generously.
"Go on punting, you little beast, and don't mess my flannels!"
The pole was dropped back and the punt moved slowly forward.
"Yes," said O'Rane, "it's very sad, but you're both hogs. As long as there's a full trough for you to bury your snouts in.... Faugh! the sour reek of the pig-bucket hangs about the bristles of your chaps."
"I'm glad I used to thrash you at school," I said.
"What good d'you imagine it did?" he flung back.
"None at all, but I don't get the opportunity now."
He punted in silence under Magdalen Bridge and along the side of Addison's Walk. When we had shot under the bridge by the bathing-place, he broke silence to say:
"I wouldn't go through that first term again for something! My God, I was miserable! Up in dormitory I used to wait till the other fellows were asleep and then bury my head in the clothes and cry. It was an extraordinary thing--frightfully artificial. I'd have died rather than let them hear me; so I hung on--sort of biting on the bullet--till it was quite safe, and, when they were sound asleep, out it came. I don't think I've ever been so lonely before or since. I wanted to be friends, you were all my blood and breed--not like in the old Chicago days. And then--oh, I don't know, everything I did was wrong, and you all seemed such utter fools.... Still, I won through."