“You think she spoils him?”
“No,” said Ford, in a reasonable voice. “No. In the vulgar sense of over-indulgence, she does not spoil him. But her ideas are quite horribly crude, and she is, as you must have perceived, a—an uneducated—how shall I put it? Let us say that hers is a third-rate mind. Look,” cried Ford with a slight shudder, “at her taste in literature.”
“Tout les goûts sont respectables. What is her taste in literature?”
“What, indeed!”
Lucian waited, a flippant desire crossing his mind to inquire whether Ford Aviolet was feeling sick.
“She weeps over the early death of a mawkish infant in a work of fiction that I believe is called ‘Misunderstood.’”
“I’ve read the book.”
The tone of the doctor’s reply implied, as indeed he meant it to imply, that he considered “Misunderstood” to be a highly respectable subject for emotion.
“Then I will say no more.”
“What are you going to do if Mrs. Aviolet still refuses to let the boy go to school?”