"The long and the short of it is that you want to get my child away, you find that he is between us, you are jealous of your son, you want to tyrannize over me at your ease, and you sacrifice your boy! Oh, I am smart enough to see through you!"
"You make me out like Abraham with his knife! One would think there were no such things as schools! So the schools are empty; nobody sends their children to school!"
"You are trying to make me appear ridiculous," she retorts. "I know that there are schools well enough, but people don't send boys of six there, and Charles shall not start now."
"Don't get angry, my dear."
"As if I ever get angry! I am a woman and know how to suffer in silence."
"Come, let us reason together."
"You have talked nonsense enough."
"It is time that Charles should learn to read and write; later in life, he will find difficulties sufficient to disgust him."
Here, you talk for ten minutes without interruption, and you close with an appealing "Well?" armed with an intonation which suggests an interrogation point of the most crooked kind.
"Well!" she replies, "it is not yet time for Charles to go to school."