"It's getting monotonous," I ended.
While I talked she had been watching it, now a bustling ferry crossing, now a tug with a string of barges working up against the tide.
"How do you know it's so bad for you to be brought back from Paris?" she asked me, without looking around.
"Have you ever been in Paris?"
"Yes—and I want to go again. But I don't believe it will ever feel as real to me as this place does. And I shouldn't think it would to you. Because you were born here, weren't you—and you've been so close to it most of the time that you're all mixed into it, aren't you? I mean you've got your roots here. Why don't you write about them for a while?"
"What?"
"Your roots."
She turned and again her eyes met mine, and again for some reason or other we smiled.
"All right," I assented gravely, "I'll buy a hoe and start right in."
"That's it, hoe yourself all up. Get as far down as you can remember. Dig up Belle and Sam, and Sue and your mother and father. Then take a hoe to Paris and find out why you loved it so, and why you hate the harbor. Be sure you get all the hate there is, it makes such interesting reading. Besides, it may be just what you need—it may take the hate all out of your system."