when he fell into the mistake of attempting to study the law.
Before that time his friends were all sociable idlers like himself.
Since that time the burden of bearing with a hard-working young man
has become part of his lot in life. Go where he will now, he can
never feel certain that the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately
waiting for him round a corner, to tell him a little more about the
Law of Real Property. Suffer as he may under the infliction, he
can never complain, for he must always remember, with unavailing
regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank for first
exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore.

These events of his past life, with the significant results that
they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle's memory,
while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming
away the time which his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively
out of doors. Remembering the lesson of laziness which his past
disasters teach, and bearing in mind also the fact that he is
crippled in one leg because he exerted himself to go up a mountain,
when he ought to have known that his proper course of conduct was
to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, and will for the future
firmly continue to hold, by his new resolution never to be
industrious again, on any pretence whatever, for the rest of his
life. The physical results of his accident have been related in a
previous chapter. The moral results now stand on record; and, with
the enumeration of these, that part of the present narrative which
is occupied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now perhaps be
considered, in all its aspects, as finished and complete.

'How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon and
evening?' demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of the