“I’ve a notion I won’t.” “It’d do you no end of good. You’ll get to know people—shepherds, carters—” He waved his arms vaguely, indicating democracy. “Then you’ll sing.” “And then?” “Plop.” “Precisely.” “But I’ll catch you,” promised Stephen. “We shall carry you up the hill to bed. In the morning you wake, have your row with old Em’ly, she kicks you out, we meet—we’ll meet at the Rings!” He danced up and down the carriage. Some one in the next carriage punched at the partition, and when this happens, all lads with mettle know that they must punch the partition back. “Thank you. I’ve a notion I won’t,” said Rickie when the noise had subsided—subsided for a moment only, for the following conversation took place to an accompaniment of dust and bangs. “Except as regards the Rings. We will meet there.” “Then I’ll get tight by myself.” “No, you won’t.” “Yes, I will. I swore to do something special this evening. I feel like it.” “In that case, I get out at the next station.” He was laughing, but quite determined. Stephen had grown too dictatorial of late. The Ansells spoilt him. “It’s bad enough having you there at all. Having you there drunk is impossible. I’d sooner not visit my aunt than think, when I sat with her, that you’re down in the village teaching her labourers to be as beastly as yourself. Go if you will. But not with me.” “Why shouldn’t I have a good time while I’m young, if I don’t harm any one?” said Stephen defiantly. “Need we discuss it again? Because you harm yourself.” “Oh, I can stop myself any minute I choose. I just say ‘I won’t’ to you or any other fool, and I don’t.” Rickie knew that the boast was true. He continued, “There is also a thing called Morality. You may learn in the Bible, and also from the Greeks, that your body is a temple.” “So you said in your longest letter.” “Probably I wrote like a prig, for the reason that I have never been tempted in this way; but surely it is wrong that your body should escape you.” “I don’t follow,” he retorted, punching. “It isn’t right, even for a little time, to forget that you exist.” “I suppose you’ve never been tempted to go to sleep?” Just then the train passed through a coppice in which the grey undergrowth looked no more alive than firewood. Yet every twig in it was waiting for the spring. Rickie knew that the analogy was false, but argument confused him, and he gave up this line of attack also. “Do be more careful over life. If your body escapes you in one thing, why not in more? A man will have other temptations.” “You mean women,” said Stephen quietly, pausing for a moment in this game. “But that’s absolutely different. That would be harming some one else.” “Is that the only thing that keeps you straight?” “What else should?” And he looked not into Rickie, but past him, with the wondering eyes of a child. Rickie nodded, and referred himself to the window.