He talked, and that was the most interesting part of it all, of his going to work in a factory when he was twelve--" when you Chaps were all with your mammies "--and how he had educated himself of nights until he would fall asleep at his reading.
"It's made many of us keen for all our lives," he remarked, "all that clemming for education. Why! I longed all through one winter to read a bit of Darwin. I must know about this Darwin if I die for it, I said. And I couldno' get the book."
Hatherleigh made an enthusiastic noise and drank beer at him with round eyes over the mug.
"Well, anyhow I wasted no time on Greek and Latin," said Chris Robinson. "And one learns to go straight at a thing without splitting straws. One gets hold of the Elementals."
(Well, did they? That was the gist of my perplexity.)
"One doesn't quibble," he said, returning to his rankling memory of Denson, "while men decay and starve."
