Lucia felt the simile, in so far as it was concerned only with going on and on, to be admirably applicable.
"Ah, we all want new things—new things," she said. "When we know a thing we cease to care for it. 'The glory of going on!' Who says that? St. Paul, I should think. But you seem to find such rapture in the satisfaction of standing still. Oh yes, darling, you are a cow; I think we settled that long ago. Do give me the recipe. How to be a cow! I wish I knew. Maud, I could shake you sometimes with pure irritation at your content. If you only were a fool, I shouldn't mind, for I should say that you were contented because you were a fool. Oh, talk and tell me."
Maud raised herself a little on her elbow.
"But how could I not be content?" she said. "I can't wish for more than I have got. Perhaps I have no imagination. Very likely that is so. But God seems to me to have a wonderful imagination. I think He has imagined His very best for me."
Lucia again felt slightly impatient.
"Oh, I don't dispute it," said she; "but that isn't enough. One has to have something in oneself in order to appreciate one's happiness. In the courts of heaven that may be all done for one, but in the meantime we are here in a punt on a lake in the county of Hampshire. Try to be less celestial. Tell me why I, who have so much more than you—I have really, darling; I am much cleverer and richer and more répandue—tell me why I want, while you have got. Talk about things by their names."
Maud sat up.
"Well, Charlie is my husband," she said, "and he has given me, or I have given him, a child. I have friends, and a friend who is sitting by me."
Lucia tapped the side of the punt with a tattoo of fingers.
"But what then?" she said. "What next? More children, I suppose, and more friends. Oh, it is repetition! I know what friends mean, I know what a child means. Is that all? My God! is that all?"
Then, with her quick instinct, she divined that Maud was hurt.
"I have a friend sitting by me, too," she said, "but I don't want another. That is sufficient. For nobody will ever be to me what you have been and are. Oh, Maud, you are good; I expect that's it. If you lived in a cottage on fifteen shillings a week and Charlie tied bootlaces below his knee and went out to dig potatoes, and called you his 'missus,' I believe you would be
