them up to town,"
Lady Agatha said, "they would see more of me, to be sure, but then they
would always be losing me, for, of course, I couldn't take them out in
town. And they always know I'll come back--they're so wise. The parting
is dreadful, but they know I'll come back."

Mary sometimes wondered how her Ladyship had found time to think out her
novel. For it seemed all ready and prepared in her mind. She would sweep
up and down the grass while she dictated. Mary used to say that it meant
a ten-mile walk of a morning. The train of her white morning-dress
lopped the daisies in their places; the incessant passage of her feet
made a track in the grass. Sometimes she would pass out of her
secretary's hearing and have to be recalled by Mary's laughing voice of
remonstrance.

"Am I afflicting you, Mary?" she asked on one of these occasions. "Am I
overwhelming you? It's a horrible flood, isn't it?"

"You are very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little
dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before
it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is
irresistible--like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through
all the veins of spring."

"Ah, you feel it?--you feel it like that, Mary? I feel it so myself; I
riot in it."

"It will have no sense of effort--it is vital. I hope we shall be able
to keep it up."

"Why not, O Cassandra?"

She stood with one hand on the back of Mary's chair, and looked up into
the tree.

"The book should have been written in spring," she went on. "I feel the
spring in my blood. Why should I, Mary, now when it is full summer, and
the trees are dark?"

"I don't know, unless that you were so busy in spring that you had not
time to enjoy it. Come, let us get on; perhaps presently you will flag.
We must get the book done before anyone comes to interrupt us."

"Never was there such a willing co-worker. You mustn't overdo it, Mary.
How many words did I dictate to you yesterday?"

"Six thousand."

"And you gave them to me typewritten this morning."

"I wanted to see how they looked in type. It is all right, Agatha. Even
you cannot go on for long, dictating six thousand words a day. We must
take the tide at the flow."

"Afterwards I shall do a play--after I have given you a rest."

"More kingdoms to conquer," Mary laughed. "There is only one person like
you--the Kaiser."

"I have an immense admiration for him."

Mrs.