human
At least, said Valeria,
gpt
No, my mother is not happy. My work is negative. I just manage to prevent her dying of grief. One must not be too ambitious in this stern world. One can't make people happy merely by reducing oneself, morally, to a jelly. Sometimes, by that means, one can dodge battle and murder and sudden death.
human
It is terrible!
gpt
But meanwhile one lays the seed of future calamities, to avoid which some other future woman will have to become jelly. The process always reminds me of the old practice of the Anglo-Saxon kings, who used to buy off the Danes when they threatened invasion, and so pampered the enemy whom their successors would afterwards have to buy off at a still more ruinous cost. I am buying off the Danes, Valeria.
human
Do you know it is a year to-day, since we came to this cottage? exclaimed Mrs. Fullerton.
gpt
How the time flies!
human
You are looking very much better than you did a month after your illness, Mrs. Fullerton,