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classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don’t want anyone
interfering with me; I’ll make the best of a bad job, and the
devil take the hindmost.’
‘D’you call life a bad job?’ said Athelny. ‘Never! We’ve
had our ups and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve al-
ways been poor, but it’s been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred
times I say when I look round at my children.’
‘You do talk, Athelny,’ she said, looking at him, not with
anger but with scornful calm. ‘You’ve had the pleasant part
of the children, I’ve had the bearing of them, and the bear-
ing with them. I don’t say that I’m not fond of them, now
they’re there, but if I had my time over again I’d remain
single. Why, if I’d remained single I might have a little shop
by now, and four or five hundred pounds in the bank, and
a girl to do the rough work. Oh, I wouldn’t go over my life
again, not for something.’
Philip thought of the countless millions to whom life is
no more than unending labour, neither beautiful nor ugly,
but just to be accepted in the same spirit as one accepts
the changes of the seasons. Fury seized him because it all
seemed useless. He could not reconcile himself to the belief
that life had no meaning and yet everything he saw, all his
thoughts, added to the force of his conviction. But though
fury seized him it was a joyful fury. life was not so horrible
if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense
of power.