Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would
stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as
though life were too full of joy for her to finish anything.
"I went into grandfather's room yesterday, and stayed while he was
dictating to the little model. I do think grandfather's so splendid.
Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says,
can't afford to dabble in ideas or dreams. He calls grandfather's idea
paleolithic. I hate him to be laughed at. Martin's so cocksure. I don't
think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in the Serpentine all the
year round, and do his own room, cook his own food, and live on about
ninety pounds a year out of his pension of three hundred, and give all
the rest away. Martin says that's unsound, and the 'Book of Universal
Brotherhood' rot. I don't care if it is; it's fine to go on writing it
as he does all day. Martin admits that. That's the worst of him: he's so
cool, you can't score him off; he seems to be always criticising you; it
makes me wild.... That little model is a hopeless duffer. I could have
taken it all down in half the time. She kept stopping and looking up
with that mouth of hers half open, as if she had all day before her.
Grandfather's so absorbed he doesn't notice; he likes to read the thing
over and over, to hear how the words sound.
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