“Not always, I dare say, being young and thin-skinned; but the less you annoy yourself that way, the better. So you think I am better off than you?”
“O yes, with this nice quiet room. You may smile, Mrs. Cheerlove, but really it’s no joke, when a fellow wants to do a bit of writing, to have a parcel of children swarming about him, making all sorts of noises. It has such an effect sometimes on me, I know, that I am ready to declare the supreme good to be, a quiet room and leisure to use it.”
“To write poetry in it—hey, Harry?”
“Well—perhaps—yes.”
“Meanwhile, the high stool in the office—”
“May better be filled by some one else, ma’am.”
“While you—
“‘Invoke the Muses, and improve your vein.’
Do you admire Coleridge?”