Most patient indeed is Madam How.

She does not mind the least seeing her own work destroyed; she knows that it must be destroyed.

There is a spell upon her, and a fate, that everything she makes she must unmake again: and yet, good and wise woman as she is, she never frets, nor tires, nor fudges her work, as we say at school.

She takes just as much pains to make an acorn as to make a peach.

She takes just as much pains about the acorn which the pig eats, as about the acorn which will grow into a tall oak, and help to build a great ship.