“Why so?”
“Because we can never draw any thing as handsome as it seems to us. You can go and see the pond with your own eyes, and then no picture will seem worth having.” He paused. “There is another reason, too, I suppose.”
“What is that?” asked Hope, looking at her companion.
“Well,” he answered, smiling, “because life in books is always so much better than real life!”
“Is it so?” said Hope, musingly.
“Yes, certainly. People are always brave, and beautiful, and good, in books. An author may make them do and say just what he and all the world want them to, and it all seems right. And then they do such splendidly impossible things!”
“How do they?”
“Why, now, if you and I were in a book at this moment, instead of standing on this lawn, I might be a knight slaying a great dragon that was just coming to destroy you, and you—”
“Hope, Hope!” rang the voice from the garden, nearer and more imperiously.
“And I—might be saved by another knight dashing in upon you, like that voice upon your sentence,” said Hope, smiling.