She is a very interesting and delightful girl, Howard; and
she is not quite happy at home. Living with Cousin Frank is like
living under a waterfall; and Jack is beginning to have his own
plans, and doesn't want anyone to share them. Well, you amaze me! I
suppose you get a good deal of practice in these things, and become
a kind of amateur father-confessor. I think of you at Cambridge as
setting the lives of young men spinning like little tops--small
human teetotums. It's very useful, but it is a little dangerous! I
don't think you have suffered as yet. That's what I like in you,
Howard, the mixture of practical and unpractical. You seem to me to
be very busy, and yet to know where to stop. Of course we can't
make other people a present of experience; they have to spin their
own webs; but I think one can do a certain amount in seeing that
they have experience. It would not suit me; my strength is to sit
still, as the Bible says. But in a place like this with Frank
whipping his tops--he whips them, while you just twirl them--
someone is wanted who will listen to people, and see that they are
left alone. To leave people alone at the right minute is a very
great necessity. Don't you know those gardens that look as if they
were always being fussed and slashed and cut about? There's no
sense of life in them. One has to slash sometimes, and then leave
it. I believe in growth even more than in organisation. Still, I
don't doubt that you have helped Maud, and I am very glad of it.
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