"Well, I've certainly no right to be uneducated," she said, "and I can't say I'm ever called so, except by my children.... Do you remember the discussions father and I used to have, half through the night?"
Jim and Neville did remember and thought "Poor father," and were silent.
"I should think," said Mrs. Hilary, "there was very little we didn't discuss. Politics, books, trades unions, class divisions, moral questions, votes for women, divorce ... we thrashed everything out. We both thoroughly enjoyed it."
Neville said "I remember." Familiar echoes came back to her out of the agitated past.
"Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of money for doing no work."
"I like the poor well enough in their places, but I cannot abide them when they try to step into ours."
"Let women mind their proper business and leave men's alone."
"I'm certainly not going to be on calling terms with my grocer's wife."
"I hate these affected, posing, would-be clever books. Why can't people write in good plain English?"...
Richard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, with varying degrees of success, the temptation to undeceive her.