Mary used to say that it meant a ten-mile walk of a morning.

The train of her white morning-dress lopped the daisies in their places; the incessant passage of her feet made a track in the grass.

Sometimes she would pass out of her secretary's hearing and have to be recalled by Mary's laughing voice of remonstrance.
"Am I afflicting you, Mary ?" she asked on one of these occasions.

"Am I overwhelming you?
It's a horrible flood, isn't it ?" "You are very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper.

"I daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed.