She overcame a refractory kink in her silk before speaking.
"It takes a long time, doesn't it, and do you like it ?" she asked.
"Well," said John, laughing a little, "a weaker word than 'fascinating' would describe the pursuit, but I hope with diligence to reach some of the interesting features in the course of ten or twelve years." "It is delightful," she remarked, scrutinizing the pattern of her work, "to encounter such enthusiasm." "Isn't it ?" said John, not in the least wounded by her sarcasm.
"Very much so," she replied, "but I have always understood that it is a mistake to be too sanguine." "Perhaps I'd better make it fifteen years, then," he said, laughing.

"I should have a choice of professions by that time at any rate.

You know the proverb that 'At forty every man is either a fool or a physician.'" She looked at him with a smile.

"Yes," he said, "I realize the alternative." She laughed a little, but did not reply.
"Seriously," he continued, "I know that in everything worth accomplishing there is a lot of drudgery to be gone through with at the first, and perhaps it seems the more irksome to me because I have been so long idly my own master.

However," he added, "I shall get down to it, or up to it, after a while, I dare say.