“No, I can't stop for sonnets; my mother is sitting up. I'll look you up tomorrow, sometime or other, and do for goodness' sake try and realise that you're a pestilential scourge, or your find yourself in a most awful fix. Good-night!”

“Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?”

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!”

“You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know!”

“It's a goodly life that you lead, friends; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it!''Yes, it's the life, the only life, to live,' responded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.'I did not exactly say that,' the stranger replied cautiously, 'but no doubt it's the best. I've tried it, and I know. And because I've tried it - six months of it - and know it's the best, here I am, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, the life which is mine and which will not let me go.”

“Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you getaway, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination orwhether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere atall, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; andwhen you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can doit if you like, but you'd much better not.”

“It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment.”