human
I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you, old man. You don’t know it, but you’re in a groove. You go about like a shuttle from the house to the works and the works to the house. And you never think beyond the works and the house.
gpt
Oh, don’t I?
human
No, you don’t. You’ve become a good specimen of the genus ’domesticated business man.’ You’ve forgotten what life is. You fancy you’re at full stretch all the time, but you’re in a coma. I suppose you’ll never see forty again--and have you ever been outside this island? You went to Llandudno this year because you went last year. And you’ll go next year because you went this year. If you happen now and then to worry about the failure of your confounded Liberal Party you think you’re a blooming broad-minded publicist. Where are your musical evenings? When I asked you to go with me to a concert at Manchester last week but one, you thought I’d gone dotty, simply because it meant your leaving the works early and not getting to bed until the unheard-of-time of one thirty a.m.
gpt
I was never told anything about any concert,
human
Go on! Go on!
gpt
I will, said Ingpen with tranquillity, as though discussing impartially and impersonally the conduct of some individual at the Antipodes.
human
Where am I? Well, you’re always buying books, and I believe you reckon yourself a bit of a reader. What d’you get out of them? I daresay you’ve got decided views on the transcendent question whether Emily Brontë was a greater writer than Charlotte. That’s about what you’ve got. Why, dash it, you haven’t a vice left. A vice would interfere with your lovely litho. There’s only one thing that would upset you more than a machinery breakdown at the works----
gpt
And what’s that?
human
What’s that? If one of the hinges of your garden-gate came off, or you lost your latchkey! Why, just look how you’ve evidently been struck all of a heap by this servant affair! I expect it occurred to you your breakfast might be five minutes late in the morning.
gpt
Stuff!