her head. She looked perfectly charming, thought Mabel; and she laid a hand delicately on her friend’s knee, as if to share in the satisfaction—to verify it by participation, so to speak.
“It doesn’t seem to have done you much harm,” she said.
“No, thank you; I’m extremely well and very content. I’ve looked through the door once, without in the least wishing to; and I don’t in the least want to look again. It’s not a nice view.”
“But about—er—religion,” said the younger girl rather awkwardly.
“Oh! religion’s all right,” said Maggie. “The Church gives me just as much of all that as is good for me; and, for the rest, just tells me to be quiet and not bother—above all, not to peep or pry. Listeners hear no good of themselves: and I suppose that’s true of the other senses too. At any rate, I’m going to do my best to mind nothing except my own business.”
“Isn’t that rather unenterprising?”
“Certainly it is; that’s why I like it. … Oh! Mabel, I do want to be so absolutely ordinary all the rest of my life. It’s so extremely rare and original, you know. Didn’t somebody say that there was nothing so uncommon as common sense? Well, that’s what I’m going to be. A genius! Don’t you understand?—the kind that is an infinite capacity for taking pains, not the other sort.”
“What is the other sort?”
“Why, an infinite capacity for doing without them. Like Wagner, you know. Well, I wish to be the Bach sort—the kind of thing that anyone ought to be able to do—only they can’t.”
Mabel smiled doubtfully.