"Well, I wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't told me. It seems sort of queer when you come to think about it." "What's queer about it?" "Why, this. I never meant that you should do anything of that kind, schemed to avoid it--sent you to Oxford, made a gentleman of you, as the saying is; and why did I do it? Because I'd had a hard life, and didn't want you to have it. And here you go and do just what I did at your age--work like a common labourer. Seems a kind of destiny in it, as if it had to be." "Then destiny has been kind, father, for I have never been so truly happy as at Kootenay. I would a thousand times rather work with my hands, and eat the fruit of my labour, than get the softest job a city could offer me." "Don't you get thinking that living in a city is a soft job, for it isn't. But I know what you mean. There's a kind of satisfaction in working out of doors with your hands; that's what you mean, isn't it? Well, I used to feel that way--once. I can mind how I used to whistle at my work, and had a jest for my mates, and got more real pleasure out of a pot of ale and a plate of bread-and-cheese than I've ever had since, in fine living.... I don't know but what that was the happiest time of my life, after all; though of course I didn't think so then. I can mind the little house I lived in, and the patch of garden. I'd be working in that garden by five o'clock on a summer morning, and again late at night, after work. Seems to me, as I look back, that in those days I hadn't got a real care. It's a queer thing to think about. Makes you feel as if life had fooled you after all. But I reckon that's about what life is for most of us--kind of game of blind hookey. Well, I've lost the game, that's evident; and it seems as if you'd won it." It was a curious confession from such a man. Arthur recollected that Bundy had said much the same thing. He also had spoken of a little house with mignonette under the window, with its unforgetable memories of content and peace, and had summed up his life in one little bit of dearly bought wisdom--"We don't know what we want, and, with all our trying, get the wrong thing after all." Had his father also made that sad discovery, and made it too late? All that evening Masterman was very quiet and subdued. He talked at intervals, and in snatches, of various things in his own past life, speaking of them with ironic sad composure, as of things which lay a long way off, in which he had ceased to be interested. And yet there appeared to be some method in this vague reminiscent talk, some point toward which his thoughts were working, something that he found it difficult to say. At last he reached his point. "When you and me parted--" He stopped, as though swallowing something bitter, and began again. "When you went away, do you remember you said something to me? You said I was dishonest. You didn't ought to have said that." "O father! don't speak of that!"