"I wish you could catch him in your trap. You wouldn't let him go," said Boodles, with a little smile.
Weevil was kneeling at the table, his comic head jerking from side to side, while his fingers tried to make a paper-boat out of the "dearest Boy" sheet of note-paper.
"I want to talk to you, my little maid," he said. "I want to remind you that we cannot get away from the Brute. I came to this lonely cottage to hide from him, because he was making my life miserable. I could not go out without meeting him. But it was no good. Boodles. Doors and bolts won't keep him out. Do you know why? It is because he is a part of ourselves."
"Such nonsense," said she. "Silly old man to call yourself cruel."
"The Brute is only ourself after all. I cannot put my foot to the ground without crushing some insect. I cannot see the use of it—this prolific creation of things, this waste of life. It drives me nearly mad, tortures me, makes me a brute to myself."
"But you're such a—what do you call it?—such a whole-hogger," said the child. "Try and not worry, daddy. You only make yourself wretched, and you make me wretched too, and then you're being cruel to me—and that's how things get cold and foggy," said she. "May I laugh now?"
"No, Boodles," he said, quite sternly. "I was cruel when I picked you up that night and brought you in."
The girl winced a little. She wanted to forget all about that.
"Nature preserves only that she may destroy," he rambled on. "Take the plants—"
"I've taken them," broke in Boodles merrily.