"It was a quotation. I'm sorry."
"It's a logical point of view. With us you pick and choose. In the marriage service it's becoming the fashion for a girl to say she'll 'love and honour' her husband. Now, the Prayer Book says, 'love, honour and obey.' If I were a parson, I'd refuse to go on with the service until she'd said 'obey.'"
"But if she doesn't mean to?" asked Barbara. "I think it's degrading."
"If it comes to a tussle, the woman has to give in; so why is she degraded by recognizing it and promising beforehand?"
"She doesn't have to. You couldn't make me—even with a dog-whip."
Though he affected a laugh, Jack had many times regretted the phrase. Barbara kept it in the forefront of her memory and persistently threw it down as a challenge to herself, when her natural independence flagged.
"You'd obey me without that. You can't have two captains on one ship. I don't suppose that any modern husband goes about saying, 'I order you to do this'; he tries to dovetail their two lives into one——"
"Then there wouldn't be much obedience, if I always got my own way."
"That you certainly wouldn't do!" he laughed.