"You know," she continued, "you used to make me angry sometimes. When you said that you didn't object to girls smoking I was wild with you. And I remember how shocked I was when you said that swearing navvies were no worse than we were. When you said that the text 'Children, obey your parents' gave bad advice I nearly got up and left the room."
"I expect that I was a sort of bombshell," I laughed.
"You made me think about things that I had never thought about before."
"That was what I was paid for, Margaret; I was educating you."
"What is education?" she asked.
"Education is thinking, Margaret. Most people take things for granted; they won't face truth. You don't like your sister Edith; she is catty and jealous. But you won't confess to yourself that you dislike Edith. All your training tells you that brotherly love is the accepted thing, and if you confessed to yourself that you are fonder of Jean Mackay than you are of Edith, you would think yourself a sinner of the worst type. If you want to be educated you must be ready to question everything; you must doubt everything. You must be very chary of making up your mind. Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked suddenly.
"Of course not!" she said with a smile. "Do you?"
"I don't know," I answered. "Lots of people claim to have seen them, and for that reason I leave the question open. There may not be ghosts, but I don't know enough about the subject to deny that they exist. I am quite ready to believe you if you tell me that you saw a ghost in the granary. I asked the question just to use it as an illustration. Popular opinion laughs at the idea of a ghost, but the thinking person won't accept the conventional view. Keep an open mind, Margaret, and believe when you are convinced.
"Education never stops; we are being educated every day of our lives. Why, only yesterday, I was up in the top field, and I heard a great squealing. I hurried to the place and was just in time to rescue a tiny rabbit from a weasel. I had seen a weasel kill a rabbit many a time before that, and I had never thought anything about it. But yesterday a sudden thought came to me. I remembered the words 'God is good,' and I began to think about them. Then I suddenly said to myself that the words were not true. The world is full of pain and terror; the great law of nature is: Eat or be eaten. I realised for the first time that every hedgerow is a horrid den of suffering and fear. Cruelty is Nature's name, Margaret."
"But," she cried in perplexity, "isn't there much good in the world too?"