Dodo considered this direct and simple question.
"Oh, it's an art," she said. "It's a competition to see who can give most pleasure to the greatest number of people. That sounds as if it were something to do with a fine moral quality, but I don't claim that for it. It's partly a competition in success too, and Grantie, the sour old angel, would say that it is a competition in imbecile expenditure, and just for two minutes I should agree with her."
Dodo gave a great sigh, and shifted the subject of the conversation a little.
"And it concerns burning candles at both ends and in the middle," she said, "and seeing how many candles you can keep alight. It's squeezing things in, and don't you know what a joy that always is, even when it concerns nothing more than packing a bag and squeezing in something extra which your maid says won't go in anyhow, my lady?"
"My maid never says that," remarked Edith. "I'm a plain ma'am."
"The principle is the same, darling, however plain you are. Life in London is like that. We are all trying to squeeze something else into it, and to extract the last drop of what life has to give. You are just the same, with your bull's-eyes and your beer and your golfing-boots and your cigarettes. You're making the most of it, too. What will our luggage look like when it comes to be unpacked at the other end?"
"I don't care what mine looks like," said Edith. "I only do things because I think it's right for me to do them."
"My dear, how noble! But isn't it faintly possible that you may be mistaken?" asked Dodo. "You seem to think it right to cover that chair with large flakes of mud from your boots, but I'm not sure that it is. Oh, my dear, don't move your feet; I only took that as the first instance that occurred to me. Naturally, we don't deliberately do what we believe to be wrong, but then that's because we none of us ever stop to consider whether it is. When we want a thing we go and take it, and only wonder afterwards whether we should have done so."
"If you wonder afterwards whether you should have done anything," said Edith austerely, "it means that you shouldn't."
"Oh, I don't agree. It probably means that you are not certain that you wouldn't have enjoyed yourself more wanting it, than getting it. Nothing is really as nice when you have got it—I'm talking of small things, of course—as you thought it was going to be. Acquisition always brings a certain disillusionment, or if not quite that, you very soon get used to what you have got."