"I should rather think so! I tell every railway porter!"
This distressed him. I told him that he was evidently ashamed of my love for him, but that I was proud of it.
JOWETT (after a long silence): "Would you like to have your life written, Margaret?"
MARGOT: "Not much, unless it told the whole truth about me and every one and was indiscreet. If I could have a biographer like Froude or Lord Hervey, it would be divine, as no one would be bored by reading it. Who will you choose to write your life, Master?"
JOWETT: "No one will be in a position to write my life, Margaret." (For some time he called me Margaret; he thought it sounded less familiar than Margot.)
MARGOT: "What nonsense! How can you possibly prevent it? If you are not very good to me, I may even write it myself!"
JOWETT (smiling): "If I could have been sure of that, I need not have burnt all my correspondence! But you are an idle young lady and would certainly never have concentrated on so dull a subject."
MARGOT (indignantly): "Do you mean to say you have burnt all George Eliot's letters, Matthew Arnold's, Swinburne's, Temple's and Tennyson's?"
JOWETT: "I have kept one or two of George Eliot's and Florence
Nightingale's; but great men do not write good letters."
MARGOT: "Do you know Florence Nightingale? I wish I did."