"Is it absolutely necessary for you to live in Camden Town?" he said.
She sat up very straight and stared steadily in front of her, as if she faced, unafraid, the invincible necessity.
"It is. Absolutely." She explained that Baxter, her landlord, had been an old servant of Papa's, and that the important thing was to be with people who would be nice to him and not mind, she said, his little ways.
He sighed.
"Do you know what I should do with you if I could have my way? I should turn you into a green garden and keep you there from nine in the morning till nine at night. I should make you walk a mile with me twice a day—not too fast. All the rest of the time you should lie on a couch on a lawn, with a great rose-bush at your head and a bed of violets at your feet. I should bring you something nice to eat every two hours."
"And how much work do you suppose I should get through?"
"Work? You wouldn't do any work for a year at least—if I had my way."
"It's a beautiful dream," said she. She closed her eyes, but whether to shut the dream out or to keep it in he could not say.
"I don't want," she said presently, "to lie on a couch in a garden with roses at my head and violets at my feet, as if I were dead. You don't know how tre—mend—ously alive I am."
"I know," he said, "how tremendously alive you'd be if I had my way—if you were happy."