"That's London," he said, as Tanqueray had said. "You should live out of it."
"Nothing comes to me in the country."
He pondered a long time upon that saying.
"You wouldn't call this country, would you?" he said at last.
"Oh dear me, no."
"Well—what would you think of Putney or Wimbledon as a compromise?"
"There can't be any compromise."
"Why not? It's what we all have to come to."
"Not I. I can only write if I'm boxed up in my funny little square, with the ash-trees weeping away in the middle."
"I don't wonder," said Brodrick, "that they weep."