'Yes; I saw what you were tending to. I hate it.'

'Hate it, Jack?' (Much bewildered.)

'I hate it. The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by
the grain. How does our service sound to you?'

'Beautiful! Quite celestial!'

'It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am so weary of it. The
echoes of my own voice among the arches seem to mock me with my
daily drudging round. No wretched monk who droned his life away in
that gloomy place, before me, can have been more tired of it than I
am. He could take for relief (and did take) to carving demons out
of the stalls and seats and desks. What shall I do? Must I take
to carving them out of my heart?'

'I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack,'
Edwin Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to
lay a sympathetic hand on Jasper's knee, and looking at him with an
anxious face.

'I know you thought so. They all think so.'

'Well, I suppose they do,' says Edwin, meditating aloud. 'Pussy
thinks so.'

'When did she tell you that?'