“It’s a very nice, warm, kind world just now,” she added; “but oh, Violet, will it last? Man is a creature of moods, especially woman!”
“Especially you, you mean. I never had a mood in my life.”
“But what would you do supposing something went wrong, supposing something happened to you like what happened to me?”
“I should send for you to come and stay with me at Aunt Julia’s,” said Violet, “and I should throw pebbles at that loathsome dog, and I should hit it too.”
Violet’s towel flapped through the air and descended on Flo’s head.
Maud laughed as the dog got up, shook herself free of the towel, and then lay down pathetically on the top of it.
“But seriously,” she went on, “if you wanted something very badly and couldn’t get it, what would you do?”
Violet rescued the towel and resumed her seat.
“I haven’t got many wants, you know,” she said, “so I can’t tell. But I hope I should be reasonable. I hope I should make a real effort to cease to want it. And then, you know, one gets over things; it takes time, no doubt, but everything worth doing takes time.”
“Ah, but that’s so terrible,” said Maud. “It just shows how limited we are. If we were only stronger we should never get used to being without the things we want. It is because we are weak and feeble that we begin to forget. I want to know how we are to be strong and yet to forget.”