Chapter 8 eight

I figured it out, I should never have left you alone, and before I had recovered from the shock of finding him here, Phineas went on, Where did you find these clothes!His bright eyes surveyed me from head to toe indignantly, from my battered gray hat to my frayed tracksuit and painted trousers to my clumsy shoes.Don't advertise yourself like that, we all know you're the least dressed person in the class. I've been working, that's all.These are all work clothes. In the boiler room? Shovel snow on the railroad. He sat back in the chair.Railroad plowing snow.It made sense, we did it all the first semester.

I took off my heavy tracksuit, and underneath it was a regatta raincoat, a kind of canvas blouse.Phineas stared at it silently.I like the way it looks, he whispered at last.I took it off to reveal the military shirt my brother had given me.Very well timed.Phineas said through gritted teeth.After taking it off, all that's left is the sweat-stained underwear.He smiled and looked at my undershirt for a moment, then, with an effort to get up from his chair, he said, "Look, you're supposed to wear it all day and nothing else."It really has taste.All your other clothes are superfluous with this undershirt.

Glad you said that. You're welcome.He answered vaguely, reaching for a pair of crutches leaning on the table. I watched this scene calmly. I saw him on crutches last year when he broke his ankle playing football.In German, crutches became almost as common a sporting item as shoulder pads.Never have I seen the skin of a sick man shine with such a healthy radiance, which accentuates the clarity of his eyes; nor have I seen anyone use his armpits and arms like this to use crutches, It was as if he were playing parallel bars, as if he would somersault on them if he wanted to.Phineas skipped across the room to his little bed, threw off the coverlet, and moaned, Oh my God, the bed wasn't made.What kind of maid should be cancelled?

The maid is gone, I said, it was a war after all.It wasn't much of a sacrifice, considering the people who were starved and bombed and all that stuff.My unselfishness reflects the trend of 1942 well.Over the past few months, Phineas and I have gradually disagreed on this point; I don't think I agree with his complaints about the loss of enjoyment and the fact that we are at war.After all, I repeated, there is war. fight?He muttered absently.I don't bother with him at all, he's always talking, asking rhetorical questions, repeating other people's words when his mind is elsewhere.

I found some sheets and made his bed.He was not at all sensitive about being helped, not at all trying to be independent like the disabled.I included this in my prayers in bed this evening, the first time in a long time.Now that Phineas is back, it seems time to start praying again. My peculiar silence after lights out let him know I was praying, and he was silent for about three minutes before he began to speak.He had never been able to sleep without talking first, and it seemed to him that praying for more than three minutes was just for show.God is never idle in Finey's universe, be ready to listen.Anyone who didn't catch his gist within three minutes, as I sometimes did to tease him, Phineas didn't try again, except me.

I fell asleep while he was still talking.The next morning, the air was icy cold, and one of our windows had a gap an inch high, allowing the cold air to pour into the room, and I was woken up by his utterly indignant yelling, Good job canceling some maid!He sat up on the bed as if about to jump off, refreshed and wide awake.I have to laugh at the indignant athlete, who is using the strength of five, complaining about the service.He threw back his quilt and said: Pass me my crutches. Until now, no matter what, I have welcomed each new day as if each new day was a new life in which all previous failures and problems were erased and all Future possibilities and joys are open and available, presumably before nightfall.Now, from this winter of snow and Phineas' crutches, I'm beginning to understand that each morning reaffirms the problems of the previous night, that sleep puts everything on hold and nothing changes, and you can't wake up at dawn Transform yourself between dusk and twilight.Phineas, however, did not believe this.I am sure he looks down at his leg first thing in the morning, whenever he thinks of it, to see if it has fully recovered during his sleep.On his first morning back in Devon, when he found it still limping and still in a cast, he said with his usual self-made air: Hand me my crutches.

Next door Brinker.Hadley's waking is always a fast train.There will be a lot of noise from the other side of the wall, Brinker jumping out of bed, coughing rough, feet thumping on the floor, thumping through the cold air, going to the closet to get clothes , ran loudly down the corridor, to the bathroom.Today, however, he changed direction and broke into our room instead of going to the bathroom. Ready to sign up?He yelled before he entered the door, you are ready, Finny! are you ready what?Finny pressed from his bed.Who is ready to sign up, and what? Feeney.Omg, you're back! That's right, Finny confirmed, a faintly amused smile breaking across his face.

So, Brinker pouted at me, your little plot wasn't too successful. What is he saying?he said as I put the cane under Finny's arm. Gossip, let me put it briefly, what else can Brinker say? You know exactly what I'm talking about. No, I do not know. Ah, you know. Are you telling me what I know? That's right. What was he talking about, Finny asked. It was very cold in the room.I stood trembling in front of Phineas, still clutching my crutches in place, unable to turn and face Brinker and his obsessed joke, the devastating joke. He wanted to know if I went with him to sign up, and I said, enlist.This is the ultimate question for all seventeen-year-olds this year, and the words drive Brinker's innuendo off everyone but me.

Yes, Brinker said. enlist!Finny yelled at the same time.His big bright eyes turned to me with a strange look in them.I've never seen him look like this before.After he looked at me carefully, he said: Are you going to join the army? Ah, I just thought that after working on the railroad last night Did you think you could sign up for the army?He continued, carefully turning his eyes away. Brinker took one of his deep senatorial breaths, but found nothing to say.The three of us stood shivering in the pale New Hampshire morning light, Finny and I in our pajamas, Brinker in a blue flannel bathrobe and moccasin slippers with slits.When are you going?Finny continued.

Ah, I don't know, I said, that's just what Brinker happened to say last night, that's all. I said it, Brinker said in a differently defensive tone than usual, and glanced at Phineas quickly, I said I signed up for the army today. Finny limped to the dresser and picked up his soap dish.I shower first.He said. You can't get the plaster wet, can you?Brinker asked. Yes, I put my legs outside the curtain. I'll help you.Brinker said. No, Finny said, without even looking at him, I could do it myself. how can youBrinker held on relentlessly. I can do it myself.Finny repeated sullenly.

Although I can hardly believe this, it is so clearly imprinted on the rigid expression of his face that there is nothing wrong with it, and it is too easy to detect what lies beneath his flat tone: Phineas because I Shocked to want to go.For some reason, he needs me.He needs me.I was the least trustworthy person he ever met.I know this and he knows or should know this too.I even told him.I told him.But there was an unmistakable indifference in his face and voice.He needs me by his side.At this point, the war was gone, and the train of dreams of being a soldier, escaping reality, and starting clean again lost all their meaning to me. Of course you can shower yourself, I said, but so what?alright.Brinker was always Brinker was always first.Sign up to join the army!What a crazy idea.It's just that Brinker wants to grab the first place again.Even if you are the eldest son of General MacArthur, I will not sign up with you to join the army. Brinker straightened up proudly.Who do you think I am!But Finny didn't listen to him.His face had already broken into a blinding smile at what I had said, and his whole face lit up.Sign up to join the army!I can't stop talking, even if you are Elliott.Roosevelt [Note: Theodore.President Roosevelt's brother; Franklin. d.Father of President Roosevelt's wife. ], I will not sign up to join the army with you either. Cousin, Brinker said with a nosed chin, the president's second cousin. Even if you are Chiang Kai-shek's wife and Feeney joins in, he will not sign up for the army with you. Ah, I whispered, he really is Song Meiling. No way, Finny yelled, showing us a look of utterly petrified wonder, who would have thought that!Chinese, Yale.Peryl, right here in Devon. This is the only part of our conversation worth saving, so far as the history of the German school of 1943 is concerned.Brinker.Hadley had been giving nicknames to others for four years, but he evaded them cleverly. He didn't get a single nickname, and now he finally got one.Yale.Peryl Hadley spread throughout the campus at the speed of the flu, and it must be said that the nickname stuck with Brinker, though he was sometimes called Yale instead of He Peryl. But I forgot about that a week later, and I've never forgotten the stunned look on Finny's face when he thought I was going to dump him the first day he got back to Devon expression.I don't know why he chose me, why he can only show me the most self-deprecating side of his disability.I do not mind.For the war no longer corrodes the peace of that peaceful summer which I cherished most in Devon.Even though the sports field was crusted under a foot of snow and the creek was a gray ice trail between dead trees, for me peace was back in Devon. So, war is like a seashore overwhelming wave, gathering energy and volume, rushing towards us, drowning us in its raging sweep, seemingly inescapable, and then, at the last moment, a word from Phineas makes us hide. past.I just ducked my head and that was all, and the mighty force of the wave spun harmlessly over our heads, no doubt throwing the others hard on the beach, but leaving us wading peacefully as before .I didn't stop to think that, as the tide rises, the waves inevitably follow one another, each bigger and more powerful than the last. I like winter.For the fourth time this morning when we returned from chapel, Finny reassured me. Ah, but winter doesn't like you.In order to facilitate walking, many sections of the road in the school are paved with wooden sidewalks, but there are patches of ice everywhere on the wooden boards.One misplaced crutch, and he would fall on a frozen plank or into crusted snow. Even Devin's interior is full of pitfalls for him.With a large gift from an oil family a few years ago, the school had undergone a massive rebuilding of the school building in a certain Puritan grandeur, as if it had brought Versailles and adapted it for Sunday school needs.This mixture of pomp and demure betrayed the disunity of the school, as different as the two rivers it spanned.Seen from the outside, the school building is made of straight red bricks and white partitions, which is subtle and simple. There are shutters standing guard next to every window, and a few unobtrusive white walls are scattered here and there on the roof. The domes, because their presence is expected, are not pretty, like pilgrim hats. But once you pass through those characteristic thirteen-state doorways, dotted only with fan windows or low relief columns suggesting that some kind of understated ornamentation is permissible, you enter A story featuring Madame de Pompadour [Note: The famous mistress and courtesan of King Louis XV of France. 】 Style luxurious farce.Vaulted and vaulted ceilings rest above pink marble walls and white marble floors; one chamber is decorated in the style of the Italian Renaissance at its height, while the other is illuminated by the flames of crystal balls on chandeliers brightly lit; a whole wall of fragile French windows overlooking an Italian garden dotted with marble; the library on the first floor is French Provence, the second floor is Rococo.Except for the dormitories, all floors and stairs are made of smooth marble, which is even more dangerous than icy sidewalks. Winter loves me too, he retorted, and then, not liking the odd sound, added, I mean, you could almost say the seasons love too.I mean, I love winter, and when you really love something, it loves you back, in whatever way it loves.I don't think it's right. My seventeen years of experience have shown me that there's far more wrong than right in this statement, but it's like Feeney's thoughts and beliefs about other things: it should be Yes.So I didn't argue. The boardwalk ended, and he walked a little ahead of me as we descended a ramp that led to our classroom.He walked with astonishing care.He was a man who had previously used the ground primarily as a starting point, a specific element in a suspended world as he leaped into space, and now it is incredible that this man walks with such care.Now I remembered something I hadn't paid much attention to before: how Phineas used to walk.In Devon, we have all kinds of gait: the clumsy shuffling of a boy who suddenly grows thirty centimeters taller, the wobbly cowboy gait of feeling how wide his shoulders have grown. There are leisurely slow steps, some staggering walks, some brisk and flexible steps, and some giants' swift steps.But Phineas continued to walk with a smooth balance, so easy that he seemed to be floating along effortlessly.Now he limped along between patches of ice.One thing Dr. Stempel concluded was that Phineas could walk again.But another thought lingered in front of me: He couldn't walk like that anymore. Do you have classes?he asked when we reached the steps of the school building. have. Me too, let's not go. do not go?What can be used as an excuse? Let's just say I came back from chapel tired and exhausted, and he looked at me and gave me a faint smile, you have to take care of me. It's your first day back at school, Feeney.You shouldn't be absent from class. I know I know.I need to study.I really want to learn.Although it is mainly you who help me make up my homework, I have to study as hard as possible.Only not today, it wasn't the first thing to do.Not now, I don't want to learn linking verbs before I even watch school.I want to see this place, but I haven't seen anything but our room and the chapel.I don't want to see classrooms, not now, not yet. What do you want to see? He started to turn around so his back was towards me.Let's go to the gym.he said briefly. The gymnasium was at the other end of the school, at least four hundred meters away, and it was covered in ice all the way.Without saying anything else, we set off. When we got there, sweat was running down Finny's face like oil, and his hands and arms were shaking as he paused.The leg in the cast dragged behind him like a sea anchor.The semblance of power I had seen in my dorm room this morning must be the same semblance he used at home to trick doctors and family into allowing him to return to Devon. We're standing on the frozen grass in front of the gym, and he's getting ready to go in, resting for a while so he can show energy going in.Later, it became his habit; I often caught him standing in front of a building, pretending to think, or pretending to look at the sky, or taking off his gloves, but the trick never fooled me.Phineas is a poor liar with little practice. We walked into the gym, walked down the hall, and to my amazement, we passed the trophy room where his name was already engraved on a trophy, embroidered on a pennant, inscribed on a football.I'm sure that's his purpose, to contemplate these lost glories.I was so ready for it, I even thought of a few positive inspirational quotes to cheer him up.But without thinking, he walked past the prize room, down a set of steep marble steps, and into the dressing room.I kept following him in bewilderment.There was a stack of dirty towels in the corner.Feeney pulled them with a cane, and grumbled with a smile: "It's all right, which kind of maid will be cancelled?" At this time, the locker room was empty, with rows of dark green lockers separated by wide wooden benches.Pipes hang from the roof.It was a dreary room in Devon, dark green and tan and gray, except that at the end there was a great marble arcade, gleaming white, which led to the swimming pool. Feeney sat down on the bench, struggled to remove his sheepskin-lined winter coat, and took a deep breath of the gym air.No dressing room smells more pungent than Devon's; sweat is the most notable, but there's a lot of paraffin, rubber, soaked wool, smeared oil mixed in with it, yes. For those who know the truth, there is also the smell of fatigue, lost hope and lost victory, and the smell of physical struggle.I think it's a bad smell.It is mainly the smell of the human body when it is used to its limit, and it is as meaningful and stimulating to any athlete as it is to any lover. Phineas looked around. He looked at the horizontal bar above a bunker next to the wall, at the set of weightlifting bars on the floor, at the rolled up wrestling mat, at the pair of kicks that had been kicked under the storage locker. spikes. It's the same old place, right?As he spoke, he turned to me and nodded slightly. After a while, I replied softly: Not exactly. He didn't pretend he didn't understand.After a pause, he said in an optimistic tone: You are going to be a big star now, and then added with some embarrassment that you can catch up quickly.He pats me on the back, goes there, and does dozens of pull-ups.What sport did you try out for in the end? None of them participated. Did not participate, his contemptuous face, eyes staring at me like torches, still working as a senior assistant to the rowing team leader? No, I resign from this errand.I just kept coming to the gym for classes, the kind of gym classes that are just for people who don't do any tryouts. He struggled to twist himself on the bench.The joke was over, his mouth gaping angrily.What the hell are you, his voice dropped dramatically on the word, why did he do that? It was too late to sign up for any other programs, and seeing him blushing and thick necked, about to throw a tantrum at my excuse, I stammered on, anyway, now that there is war and sports teams don't go out much.After all, sports didn't seem to be that important during the war. You totally believe all that war crap? No, of course I was so absorbed in rebutting him that I didn't catch his remark until I was halfway through the rebuttal; now my eyes flew back to his face.All that war crap? All that crap about being at war right now. I think, I don't understand what you mean. Do you really think the United States of America is at war with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan? I do think my voice is getting smaller and smaller. He stood up with his weight on his good leg and the other leg resting lightly on the floor in front of him.Don't be a fool, he watched me calmly and poisedly, without any war. I know why you say that, I said, trying to follow his train of thought.now I understand.You are still under the influence of a drug. No, that's you.That's all of them.He twisted his body so he was facing me directly.That's the whole war story.A dose of medicine.Listen, have you heard of the boiling twenties?I nodded very slowly and carefully.Back then when people were all drinking gin and every young man did what he wanted? Yes. Ah, they don't like it, the clergymen and old women and all those pretentious people don't like it.So then they tried Prohibition, and everyone got drunker, and then they took the risk and launched the Great Depression.This made young people in the 1930s dare not deviate.But they couldn't play this game forever, so for us young people in the 1940s, they made up this fake war. Who are they? Those fat old men who didn't want us to take our jobs, they made it all up.For example, there aren't any real food shortages.Now these guys have all the best steaks delivered to their clubs.Have you noticed that they've been getting fatter lately? He sounded absolutely certain that I must have noticed.For a moment, I almost believed it.Then my eyes fell on the white bandages and white plaster stretched out towards me, which, as usual, took me out of the world Finny had made up, back into reality, back into reality, as I woke up this morning. In fact. Phineas, all this you say is very interesting, but I hope you don't play the game yourself too much.Whether you believe it or not, I have to reserve a bed for you in the mental hospital anyway. In a sense, his eyes never wavered from mine when he was engaged in an argument, and the whole world was in a mental hospital right now, but only fat old men knew the joke. and you. Yes, and me. What makes you so special?Why do you understand it while the rest of us don't? The momentum of the debate suddenly broke out of his control.His face froze.Because I suffer.he yelled. We both recoiled from the question in astonishment.In the silence, all the frenzy of the morning between the two of us was over.He sat down and turned his flushed face away from me.I sat beside him motionless, as long as my throbbing nerves could bear, then I got up and walked slowly forward, aimlessly toward anything, and it turned out that the horizontal bar.I leapt up, grabbed the bar, and, in an awkward, perhaps comical attempt to court Phineas, I pulled up.I don't think about anything else, right words, right posture, I do what I can think of. Make thirty.he muttered impatiently. I've never made ten before.When I had reached twelve I found he had been counting silently, for now he had begun to count aloud in an indeterminate, faintly audible sound.At eighteen there was a certain amplification in his voice, and at twenty-three the last trace of impatience was gone; he stood up, and the urgency with which he counted a number was like a An invisible boost, pulling my body at arm's length, until he suddenly yelled thirty with joy! That moment passed.I know that Phineas was more shocked than I was at discovering his cynicism.Neither of us ever mentioned it again, and neither of us forgot it existed. He sat down and looked at his clasped hands.Did I tell you, he began in a husky voice, that I was aiming for the Olympics?He wouldn't have mentioned it if he hadn't just said something very personal, something deep in his heart that he had to say.Doing something different, telling a joke, would have been a hypocrite denial of what had happened, but Phineas couldn't do that. I am still hanging from the pole; I feel as if my hands cannot be separated from it.No, you didn't tell me this.I murmured into my arm. Ah, that used to be my ambition.Now I can't be sure, I can't be 100% sure, whether I will be fully recovered by 1944.So I'm going to train you to do it for me. But there will be no Olympic Games in 2044.Only two years.war Stop talking about your dreamy life.We're training you for the 1944 Olympics, buddy. Although I didn't believe his words, and I didn't forget that armies all over the world were shuttling in the battlefield, I followed any new invention of Finny as I always did.It doesn't hurt to have a goal, even if it's a dream. But since we are so far from the line of fire, the main maintenance of any sense of war is mental.We don't see any truth in it; all our impressions of war come from the two-dimensional false media of photographs in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and posters or artificial voices fed to us on the radio, or from the Banner headlines.I found that the only way I could resist Finney's pacifist aggressiveness was by continuing to use my imagination. Now, as we eat chicken livers for dinner, I can't help but picture President Roosevelt, my father, Feeney's father, and many other fat old men sitting in some elegant but hidden Porterhouse steak in the men's club room.When letters from home tell me that trips to visit relatives have been canceled because of gasoline ratios, I can easily picture my father smiling silently, with a knowing look in his eyes. Nar [Note: The Battle of Guadalcanal was a battle fought by Confederate forces in and around Guadalcanal between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943, in the Pacific Theater of World War II. battles on the islands. ] as easy as the jungle in the place where, as Phineas said, where is that place? Day after day, in chapel, where we are told to save money and work hard in the name of war, it is impossible not to see that the teachers are using this pretext to drive us, as they have always tried to drive us. Like us, there is no war or peace at all. What a joke it would be if Feeney was right! But of course I don't trust Feeney.I was too resistant to the great fear of living in an all-boys school, the great fear of listening to gossip.With the exception of a few outright fools like Leppers, I join with everyone else in resisting anything that suspects even the slightest possibility of war.So of course I don't trust Feeney.One day, though, when our pastor, Mr. Carhart, was so moved by the sermon he gave on God in the foxholes in the chapel, I thought as I left the church that if Feeney's views on the war were untrue, Mr. Carhart's view, then, is at least as untrue.But of course, I don't trust Feeney. Anyway, I'm too busy to think about it.In addition to paying close attention to my homework, I have to divide the rest of my time between making up lessons for Feeney and letting him teach me physical education.Since learning anything depends so much on the atmosphere of learning, Finny and I, to our double surprise, began to make rapid progress in areas where we had previously been weak. We both get up at six o'clock in the morning for a run.I was wearing a gym sweatshirt with a towel tied around my neck, and Feeney was wearing baggy pajama bottoms, ski boots, and his sheepskin-lined coat. One morning shortly before the Christmas break, I finally got my payback.I was running the exercise that Feeney had given me, four laps of an oval around the principal's mansion, a big white house with a sprawl in the early thirteen-state style. doubtful.There was an old elm next to the house, and Feeney leaned against the trunk of it, yelling at me as I ran long laps. In the morning, the snow field shone powdery white, the sun shone coldly somewhere on the horizon, too low to be seen directly, but its clean light cast a blue-white gleam all around us .The northern sunlight seemed to pick up the fuzzy white particles floating in the air, and put a powdery tint on the lustrous blue sky.Everything was silent.The bare arching branches of the elms seemed to be implanted in this motionless sky.As I ran, the sound of my feet fell so briefly in the vast, dead dawn, as if there was no place left for any sound to intrude in the midst of so many shining vistas.Phineas' figure was reflected against the trunk of the big tree; he shouted from time to time, but these voices were quickly absorbed and dissipated. He didn't have to do any instruction this morning.After running two laps, all my strength was exhausted as before. When I drove myself to continue running, the pain all over my body gathered on my side as usual, turning into a huge pain.My lungs, too, as usual, are utterly weary of the work, and from now on it can only endure the exercise in agony.My knee was boneless again, ready to tuck my calf into my thigh any minute.In my head, it felt like different parts of my skull were rubbing against each other. Then, out of nowhere, I felt sublime.It was as if my body had been sluggish up until this point, as if the pain and exhaustion were all imagined, created out of nothing to prevent me from truly reaching my potential.Now it seems like my body is finally going to say: Ah, if you must do it, yes!Power began to flow through my body.I picked myself up, forgot my usual self-pity when I was exhausted, I left myself behind, my oppressed mind along with my aching body; all confusion disappeared, and I was free. trip. After the fourth lap, I stopped in front of Phineas and it was like sitting in a chair. You're not even out of breath.He said. I know. You found your rhythm, right, third lap.Just when you come into that straight over there. Yes, there it is. You've been so lazy, haven't you? Yes, I think I've been too lazy. You don't even know anything about yourself. I think so, in a sense. Ah, he folded the sheepskin collar around his throat, now you know.Stop talking like a poor white kid from Georgia I think so!Even though it was a sneer, what he said didn't take me personally.This morning, he seemed to have grown a few years all of a sudden. He was wrapped in his overcoat, leaning quietly against the big tree, and his figure seemed to have shrunk.Or maybe it's that I, in this same body, feel myself growing suddenly bigger. We walked back to the dormitory.As we climbed the steps of the dormitory we met Mr. Lutzbury on his way out. I've been watching you two from the window, he said in his hooting voice, with a rare hint of personal interest in his words.What are you going to do, Forester, to train to be a Ranger?While there is no school policy expressly against exercising at such hours, it is discouraged; so normally Mr Lutzbury would have blamed it.Yet the war changed even his standards, and all forms of physical exercise became routine in extraordinary times. I muttered an embarrassing answer, but it was Phineas who responded clearly. He was practicing to be a real athlete, and he said matter-of-factly, we want to compete in the Olympics in four or four years. Mr. Lutzbury let out a dry laugh deep in his throat, and then his face turned brick red for an instant, and he adopted his usual aphorism.Proper sports are good, he said, I don't want to talk about the sportsmanship of Eton College, but of course all the exercises today are for marching to Waterloo.You must aim for this at all times. 菲尼的臉色變得異常堅決，臉上的神情是那種我剛剛察覺出的年長了幾歲的神情。No.He said. 我不相信以前曾有哪個學生對盧茨伯里先生斷然說過不。這話使他不可控制地慌亂起來。他的臉又變成了磚紅色，有那麼一會兒，我以為他要跑開。然後他說了一句極快，極沙啞，極短促的話語，我們倆都沒聽懂，他迅速轉過身，大踏步走過方院子。 他真的很實誠，他認為現在在打仗，菲尼純然驚訝地說，為什麼他就不明白呢？我們望著盧茨伯里先生的背影逐漸遠去，即使裹著冬天的行頭，這背影仍然那麼細高，這時菲尼默想著的是盧茨伯里先生是被排除在了胖老頭們的陰謀之外的。隨後他恍然大悟了。啊，當然了！他喊道，他太瘦了。Of course! 我站在那裡為盧茨伯里先生致命的羸瘦而遺憾，想到，人畢竟總有輕信的一面。