"I can't agree with you. For twenty-five years I had real, hard, unpleasant work five days in the week, and it profited neither myself nor anybody else. I went on with it because it seemed impossible to leave it. It left me, and my life has been a much brighter and healthier thing to me. Panoukian is young enough to talk himself into action. I shall go on talking forever." And he went on talking. Matilda produced a workbox and a pile of stockings and began darning them. They sat one on either side of the fireplace, and in the chimney sounded the explosive coo of a pigeon. "My dear," said Old Mole, "you know, I believe in Panoukian. I believe he will make something of himself. I fancy that when he is mature enough to know what he wants he will be absolutely ruthless in making for it." "Do you?" Matilda rolled a pair of stockings up into a ball and tossed them into a basket on the sofa some yards away. It was a neat shot, and Old Mole admired the gesture with which she made it, the fling of the arm, the swift turn of the wrist. "I do," he said. "Until then there can be no harm in his talking." "No. I suppose not. But you do go on so." Panoukian returned. Matilda made ready, and they set out. Old Mole took them up to the Holborn gate and watched them walk along toward Chancery Lane. It was a July evening. He watched them until they were swallowed up in the hurrying crowd, the young man tall and big, towering above Matilda small and neat. He saw one or two men in the street turn and look at her, at them perhaps, for they made a handsome couple. He admired them and was moved, and a mist covered his spectacles. He took them off and wiped them. Then, kindling to the thought of a quiet evening to end in the excitement of their return, he walked slowly back under the windows flaring in the sunset. "Truly," he said, "the world is with the young men. There can be no pleasanter task for the middle-aged than to assist them, but, alas! we can teach them nothing, for, as the years go by, there is more and more to learn."