where, above or below, when you have ‘passed the time’? What’s the good of you, anyhow?”
“Well, I’m blanked!”
“You are a stick, a stone, a stupid animal, a mere apology for a man. Can’t you live? Can’t you go and fight some one, or do something to amuse some one? You go on like a cranky Chinaman—I suppose the other diggers kicked you out from where you were; you must have bored them to death. Go and get an island of your own, where no one can see you, and be blanked to you!”
He scratched his head, surveyed me up and down, and then burst out laughing.
“They don’t grow your sort up here, Mister. I’ll be blanked if they do. Now what would you have me do? Just name it, and I’m your man, and I’ll not chuck another of them blanked stones, I’ll be blanked if I do!”
“Stop blanking for one thing, you are withering up these already half-withered stunted trees. Do as you please, only drop this silly nonsense of chucking stones about. Why, look at me. I grudge each minute of time that passes, and am so ashamed that I did not get something out of each of those lost minutes. They are gone, absolutely gone, and can never come back. There is not time to think, they go so quickly, and whilst one debates what to do with them they are gone; and yet one can live in each of them, have life, love, joy, laughter, what you will. I am never dull, I have no time for it; I want to do a hundred things in each minute—and you only want to kill those minutes—they are dying, dead as we speak!”
“Well—I’m—blanked!” he said in a dazed manner, as he by force of habit threw another stone.
