All he wanted anyway was quiet and dull peace and a few women, preferably young and good looking and fair tennis players, with whom to indulge in harmless and lazy intrigue. So his mind was made up, and on the homeward boat he framed the words with which he would tell his father that he was going to be an Episcopal minister. But when he reached New York the wire waited him saying that Will Benbow was ill. . . His practice, what there was of it, consisted of polite interminable litigation that progressed decorously and pleasantly from conference to conference, the greater part of which were given to discussions of the world's mutations as exemplified by men or by printed words; conferences conducted as often as not across pleasant dinner tables or upon golf links or, if the conferee were active enough, upon tennis courts—conferences which wended their endless courses without threat of consummation or of advantage to or detriment to anyone involved (193-194).
Faulkner's deadpan line, "and on the homeward boat he framed the words with which he would tell his father that he was going to be an Episcopal minister" is just priceless! back to Horace, Young Bayard, or ahead to Conclusion