She spoke now and then of visiting Japan and America and South Africa, somewhat to her mother's consternation; but no irresistible force drove her thither.
She found contentment in procrastination.
It had also been a mild amusement to settle Septimus Dix, after his recovery, in a little house facing the common.

He had to inhabit some portion of this planet, and as he had no choice of spot save Hackney Downs, which Wiggleswick suggested, Zora waved her hand to the tenantless house and told him to take it.

As there was an outhouse at the end of the garden which he could use as a workshop, his principal desideratum in a residence, he obeyed her readily.

She then bought his furniture, plate, and linen, and a complicated kitchen battery over whose uses Wiggleswick scratched a bewildered head.
"A saucepan I know, and a frying-pan I know, but what you're to put in those things with holes in them fairly licks me." "Perhaps we might grow geraniums in them," said Septimus brightly, alter a fit of musing.
"If you do," said Zora, "I'll put a female cook in charge of you both, and wash my hands of you." Whereupon she explained the uses of a cullender, and gave Wiggleswick to understand that she was a woman of her word, and that an undrained cabbage would be the signal for the execution of her threat.

From the first she had assumed despotic power over Wiggleswick, of whose influence with his master she had been absurdly jealous.