"So you've just got to take it as it is."
"That seems to be the number. We may kick because it isn't perfect, but we don't know how to make it perfect, and that's all there is to say."
"It's easier for your kind to say than for ours."
"It's not as easy as it seems for any kind. I don't see anyone, rich or poor, who hasn't to spend most of his energy in bucking up. The poor think it's easier for the rich, because they have the money; and the rich think it's easier for the poor, because they haven't the responsibilities. So there you are. I begin to think that making yourself strong--_hard_--tough in your inner fiber--is about the biggest asset you can bring to life."
On another occasion, Teddy was in another mood.
"If I didn't get it now, I guess it would have come along later; so that it's just as well to have it over."
Bob's mind went back to Stenhouse's view of Teddy's character.
"Oh, just what I say. You can't see red like me without being a more dangerous cuss than you mean to be. I'd have got into trouble sometime, even if I hadn't done this." Before Bob could find a response Teddy went on: "I suppose you think that because I don't say anything about Flynn I haven't got him on my mind. Well, you're wrong."
"But what _can_ I say? I think and think and think, and then begin thinking again. So that," he jerked out, "that's a reason, too."
"I can't keep up that kind of thinking. I'll go crazy if I do. I'd rather be sent to where I can get another point of view. I don't care what kind of point of view it is, so long as it isn't this one. If I could come face to face with Flynn, I believe I could make him understand. Do you suppose there's any chance of that?"
It was inevitable that, in the long run, speculative questions should lead them farther still.
"What do you suppose God is?" Teddy said, unexpectedly, one day.
"Don't you believe in God? I should have thought that you'd be the kind of cuss who would."
"I don't know that you can call it believing. It's more like--like having a kind of instinct--helped out by a little thinking."
Teddy laughed sheepishly, as if he had ventured to peer into secrets which were none of his business.
"I'll tell you the way God seems to me--it's all come to me while I've been in there." He nodded toward the cells. "I don't seem to get him as a great big man, the way the chaplain says he is. He's all right, the chaplain, only he don't seem to know anything about God. He can gas away to beat the band about law, and society, and the good of the community, and hell to pay when you don't respect them; but when it comes to God--it's nix."