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...."

"Oh yes, yes, mother, I know."

Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago difficult books. They
knew too about the clever friends who used to drop in and talk.... If
only Mrs. Hilary could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing
people who own that they never read and never want to. All this fuss