“It's very pretty,—it 's very nice. I should like it larger, perhaps.”
“So would I; but, being my own gardener, I find it quite big enough.”
“Why doesn't the Chief give you a gardener?—he's rich enough, surely.”
“He never cared for gardening himself. Indeed, I think it is the wild confusion of foliage here that he likes. He said to me one day, 'In my old garden a man loses himself in thought. In this trimly kept place one is ever occupied by the melon-frame or the forcing-house.'”
“That's the dreadful thing about old people; they are ever for making the whims and crotchets of age the rules of life to others. I wonder you bear this so well.”
“I didn't know that I bore anything,” said she, with a smile.
“That's true slave doctrine, I must say; and when one does not feel bondage, there's no more to be said.”
“I suspect I have a great deal more freedom than most girls; my time is almost all my own, to dispose of as I will. I read, or play, or walk, or work, as I feel inclined. If I wish to occupy myself with household matters, I am the mistress here.”
“In other words, you are free to do everything that is not worth doing,—you lead the life of a nun in a convent, only that you have not even a sister nun to talk to.”
“And which are the things you say are worth doing?”