You can start apologising for Farrell when I start
complaining he's inadequate."
Jack's eyes, during this speech, were for Jimmy, of course, and I had
used the opportunity to watch his face pretty narrowly. It was a
little more than ordinarily pale, but composed, as his tone was light
and his manner of speech almost flippant. I wondered. . . .
"Jimmy meant," said I, "that _you're_ too good to match yourself
against Farrell. The harm he's done you is atrocious--I can hardly
look you in the face, Jack, and speak about it. . . . All the same,
Jimmy talks sense: an outsider like Farrell isn't worthy of your
steel, as the writers say."
"We'll wait till he has felt it." Jack stood up, pushed his hands
into his trouser-pockets, took one turn around the room, returned,
and came to a halt on the hearth-rug. "There's another point," said
he. "You fellows can never get it out of your heads that your
thoroughbred is always, and necessarily, more sensitive than your
mongrel. _It must be so_--you don't trouble about evidence: it's
fixed in your minds _a priori_: which means that you're just as
unscientific and at least as far from the truth as I should be if I
posited the exact opposite .
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