Gently Amory tried to show him how ungrateful he was.
"Oh, Cosimo, how can you speak so of the country that gave the world 'The Shropshire Lad'! I should always have beautiful thoughts of you--as my Shropshire Lad--and it isn't as if there wasn't a noble work to do in the country too. There's the Housing Problem, and an iniquitous Land System, and sanitary dwellings for the agricultural labourer----"
She went on, but Cosimo refused to see it. It was as if her "Barrage" would be carried in triumph through the streets of Rome as Cimabue's "Madonna" was carried through those of Florence, while he would be tapping the barometer each morning, and then taking a walk with no other company than that of his dog, and returning to his solitary lunch, and going to sleep in the afternoon, and wishing to goodness he'd never seen his beastly estate. And so strongly did he now feel how little he had to offer Amory that he did not offer it, but sighed instead, and said that he supposed he'd be driven to marry some wench from the nearest dairy in order not to die of sheer weariness within six months. Amory mused.
"About that, Cosimo," she said slowly at last. "You know what I've always wanted for you. I've always wanted you to marry some nice girl I could make a friend of. At one time I thought Dorothy might have done, but I see now that I was wrong. But you'd be better not marrying at all than marrying somebody who wouldn't enter into your ideas. Can't you live for duty alone, Cosimo, as I can?"
"You've more to sustain you," he replied dully.
"All duties are alike precious," said Amory firmly. "Yours is a more even temperament. I grant I rise a little sometimes, but for every rise there's a despair, Cosimo, and I often think almost anybody is happier than I. Besides, you'd have the richest of my thought in my letters. You remember that fine passage in Ruskin--I think it's in the _Crown of Wild Olive_--about the spoken word often being hasty and inaccurate, but the written one being choice and considered; I forget exactly how it goes. But you'd have that, Cosimo."
His eyes had rested on the grey huddle on the bench twenty yards away. The huddle had moved, and a dim face had appeared. It was the face of Mrs. 'Ill's daughter, Jellies, and Amory had seen it too. It seemed to brighten her. She gave a gay little laugh.