"I’ve got the pluck for anything but to go before their court and say what you want me to say. I took the money because my father and mother, after slaving for society all their lives, had a right to it; I shot a man because they’d got me so jumpy with all the wrongs they’d done me that I didn’t know what my hand was up to. If they won’t let me have my kind of justice, they’ll just have to dope me out their own, and I’ll swallow it." Another conversation, in the same spot, and with heads together in the same way, was gentler. "I know pretty well what they’re going to hand me out—and it’ll be all right. What kind of life would I have now, even if they acquitted me? What could I have had even if I’d never got into this scrape at all? I’m not cut out for big things. I’m just the same size as poor old dad, and I’d have gone the same way. Ma’s got it straight—it’s not good enough. Think of rotting in an office all your life just to reach the gorgeous sum of forty-five a week, and when you’ve got it to be chucked into the hell of the unemployed! Say, Bob, why can’t everyone have enough in a world where there’s plenty to go round?" "I guess it’s because we haven’t the right kind of world." "But why haven’t we? We’ve been at it long enough." "Perhaps not. That may be where the trouble lies. When life came on this planet, to begin with, it took millions of years to get it anywhere. Nobody knows how long it was before the thing that lived in the water could creep on the land; but it was time to be reckoned by ages. When you come to ages, the human race is young. It’s made a life for itself which it doesn’t know how to swing. In a few more ages it may learn; but it hasn’t learned as yet." Teddy reflected. "So you’ve just got to take it as it is." "That seems to be the number. We may kick because it isn’t perfect, but we don’t know how to make it perfect, and that’s all there is to say." "It’s easier for your kind to say than for ours." "It’s not as easy as it seems for any kind. I don’t see anyone, rich or poor, who hasn’t to spend most of his energy in bucking up. The poor think it’s easier for the rich, because they have the money; and the rich think it’s easier for the poor, because they haven’t the responsibilities. So there you are. I begin to think that making yourself strong—_hard_—tough in your inner fiber—is about the biggest asset you can bring to life." "Or death," Teddy said, softly. "Or death," Bob agreed. On another occasion, Teddy was in another mood. "If I didn’t get it now, I guess it would have come along later; so that it’s just as well to have it over." Bob’s mind went back to Stenhouse’s view of Teddy’s character. "What do you mean by that?"