She felt the little sharp pang which Neville's name on Jim's lips had always given her. His very pronunciation of it hurt her—"Nivvle," he said it, as if he had been an Irishman. It brought all the past back; those two dear ones talking together, studying together, going off together, bound by a hundred common interests, telling each other things they never told her.
"Yes. It's this ridiculous work of hers. It's so absurd: a married woman of her age making her head ache working for examinations."
In old days Jim and Neville had worked together. Jim had been proud of Neville's success; she had been quicker than he. Mrs. Hilary, who had welcomed Neville's marriage as ending all that, foresaw a renewal of the hurtful business.
But Jim looked grave and disapproving over it.
"It is absurd," he agreed, and her heart rose. "And of course she can't do it, can't make up all that leeway. Besides, her brain has lost its grip. She's not kept it sharpened; she's spent her life on people. You can't have it both ways—a woman can't, I mean. Her work's been different. She doesn't seem to realise that what she's trying to learn up again now, in the spare moments of an already full life, demands a whole lifetime of hard work. She can't get back those twenty years; no one could. And she can't get back the clear, gripping brain she had before she had children. She's given some of it to them. That's nature's way, unfortunately. Hard luck, no doubt, but there it is; you can't get round it. Nature's a hybrid of fool and devil."
He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to his mother by the tears which, he suddenly perceived, were distorting her face.
"And so," she whispered, her voice choked, "we women get left...."
He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She cried so easily and so superfluously, and he knew that these tears were more for herself than for Neville. And she didn't really come into what he had been saying at all; he had been talking about brains.
"It's all right as far as most women are concerned," he said. "Most women have no brains to be spoilt. Neville had. Most women could do nothing at all with life if they didn't produce children; it's their only possible job. They've no call to feel ill-used."
"Of course," she said, unsteadily, struggling to clear her voice of tears, "I know you children all think I'm a fool. But there was a time when I read difficult books with your father ... he, a man with a first-class mind, cared to read with me and discuss with me...."