“Does that mean me?”
“You can take it to yourself if you like,” said Bertha, smiling, “or apply it to a whole class.... Do you mind if I go on reading?”
Bertha took up her book; but Edward was the more argumentatively inclined since he saw he had not so far got the better of the contest.
“Well, what I must say is, if you want to read, why can’t you read English books? Surely there are enough. I think English people ought to stick to their own country. I don’t pretend to have read any French books, but I’ve never heard anybody deny, that at all events the great majority are indecent, and not the sort of thing a woman should read.”
“It’s always incautious to judge from common report,” answered Bertha, without looking up.
“And now that the French are always behaving so badly to us, I should like to see every French book in the kingdom put into a huge bonfire. I’m sure it would be all the better for we English people. What we want now is purity and reconstitution of the national life. I’m in favour of English morals, and English homes, English mothers, and English habits.”
“What always astounds me, dear, is that though you invariably read the Standard you always talk like the Family Herald!”
Bertha paid no further attention to Edward, who thereupon began to talk with his dogs. Like most frivolous persons he found silence onerous, and Bertha thought it disconcerted him by rendering evident even to himself, the vacuity of his mind. He talked with every animate thing, with the servants, with his pets, with the cat and the birds; he could not read even a newspaper without making a running commentary upon it.
It was only a substantial meal that could induce even a passing taciturnity. Sometimes his unceasing chatter irritated Bertha so intensely that she was obliged to beg him, for heaven’s sake, to hold his tongue. Then he would look up, with a good-natured laugh.
“Was I making a row? Sorry; I didn’t know it.”