CHAPTER IV



When Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for
two hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a
misgiving that he was growing industrious. He therefore set
himself next, to explore the country from the tops of all the steep
hills in the neighbourhood.

He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle
what he had seen. Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great
composure, and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills,
and bothered himself with those views, and walked all those miles?

'Because I want to know,' added Thomas, 'what you would say of it,
if you were obliged to do it?'

'It would be different, then,' said Francis. 'It would be work,
then; now, it's play.'

'Play!' replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the reply. 'Play!
Here is a man goes systematically tearing himself to pieces, and
putting himself through an incessant course of training, as if he
were always under articles to fight a match for the champion's
belt, and he calls it Play! Play!' exclaimed Thomas Idle,
scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air. 'You CAN'T play.
You don't know what it is. You make work of everything.'