The Average Woman is not affectionate but she is solicitous, and there was the consideration of my original situation and my tiresome health. Then she perceived that I had a garden and that it was a pretty garden. I said, indifferently, that people thought so; I knew it was a subject she would not pursue unless she were very much encouraged, and there was no reason at all why she should pursue it; she would always be a visitor in such a place, whereas there were many matters which she could treat with familiar intelligence. I was quite right; she wandered at once into tins of white enamel, where it seemed she had already spent several industrious hours. We sympathized deeply over the extent to which domestic India was necessarily enamelled, though I saw a look of criticism cross her face when I announced that I hoped one day to be rich enough not to possess a single article painted in that way--not a chair, not a table. I think she considered my declaration too impassioned, but she did not dissent from it. That is a circumstance one notes about the Average Woman: she never dissents from anything. She never will be drawn into an argument. One could make the most wild and whirling statement to her, if one felt inclined, and it is as likely as not that she would say “Yes indeed,” or “I think so too,” and after a little pause of politeness go on to talk about something else. I can’t imagine why one never does feel inclined. We continued to discuss interior decoration, and I learned that she was preparing a hearth seat for her drawing-room, one of those low square arrangements projecting into the room before the fire, upon which two ladies may sit before dinner and imagine they look picturesque, while the rest of the assembled guests, from whom they quite cut off the cheerful blaze, wonder whether they do. The Average Woman declared that she could no longer live without one. “As time goes on one notices that fewer and fewer average women can,” I observed absently, and hastily added, “I mean, you know, that of course very portly ladies--” “Oh, I _see_,” said she. “No, of course not.” “So long,” I went on, pursuing the same train of thought, “as one can sit down readily upon a hearth seat, and especially so long as one can clasp one’s knees upon it, one is not even middle-aged. To clasp one’s knees is really to hug one’s youth.” “I had _such_ a pretty one in Calcutta,” said the Average Woman. “So cosy it looked. Everybody admired it.” “But in Calcutta,” I exclaimed with astonishment, “it is always so hot--and there are no fireplaces.” “Oh, that didn’t matter,” replied she triumphantly, “I draped the mantelpiece. It looked just as well.” And yet there are people who say that the Average Woman has no imagination.