“Just that--his own--though why that should make such a difference. Now, Carry was worth a dozen of Charlie. Oh, I didn’t speak very well of Carry just now!--true. She married a fellow not worth his salt, when, perhaps--But there’s no answering for these things. Poor old doctor! There’s scarcely anybody here except my mother that I couldn’t have better spared.” “Let’s hope it’s a good thing for him,” said Bertram, not knowing what to say. “I can’t think dying’s better than living,” said Raaf. “Oh, you mean--that? Well, perhaps; though it’s hard to think of him,” he said, with a sudden laugh, “in his old shiny coat with his brown gaiters in--what one calls--a better world. No kind of place suited him as well as here--he was so used to it. Somehow, though, on a quiet night like this, there’s a kind of a feeling, oh! I can’t describe it in the least, as if--I say, you’ve been in many queer places, Bertram, and seen a lot?” “That is true.” “Did you ever see anything that made you--feel any sort of certainty, don’t you know? There’s these stars, they say they’re all worlds, globes, like this, and so forth. Who lives in them? That’s what I’ve always wanted to know.” “Well, men like us can’t live in them, for one thing, according to what the astronomers say.” “Men like us, ah! but then! We’ll not be fellows like us when we’re--the other thing, don’t you know. There!” said Ralph; “I could have sworn that was the old man coming along to meet us; cut of his coat, gaiters and everything.” “You can’t be well, old fellow, there is nobody.” “I know that as well as you,” said Ralph, with a nervous laugh. “Do you think I meant I saw anything? Not such a fool; no, dear old man, I didn’t see him; I wish I could, just to tell him one or two things about the beasts which he was keen about. I don’t think that old fellow would be happy, Bertram, in a fluid, a sort of a place like a star, for instance, where there were no beasts.” “There’s no reason to suppose they’re fluid. And for that matter there may be beasts, as some people think; only I don’t see, if you take in that, where you are to stop,” said Bertram. “We are drawing it too fine, Wradisley, don’t you think?” “Perhaps we are, it’s not my line of country. I wish you had known that old man. You’re a fellow that makes out things, Bertram. He was quite comfortable--lots of books, and that museum which wasn’t much of a museum, but he knew no better. Besides, there were a few good things in it. And enough of money to keep him all right. And then to think, Lord, that because of a fool of a fellow who was never out of hot water, always getting his father into hot water, never at peace, that good old man should go and break his heart, as they call it, and die.” “It may be very unreasonable, but it happens from time to time,” Bertram said.