-headed, childish
and perverse.

Suddenly she broke out, losing her temper, as she often did when she
disagreed with people's politics, for she did not take a calm and
tolerant view of these things.

"I never heard such stuff in my life. I disagree with every word you've
all said."

She always disagreed in bulk, like that. It seemed simpler than arguing
separate points, and took less time and knowledge. She saw Neville
wrinkling her broad forehead, doubtfully, as if wondering how the subject
could most easily be changed, and that annoyed her.

Nan said, "You mean you disagree with the Report. Which clauses of it?"
and there was that soft viciousness in her voice which showed that she
knew Mrs. Hilary had not even read the Minority Report, or the Majority
Report either. Nan was spiteful; always trying to prove that her mother
didn't know what she was talking about; always trying to pin her down on
points of detail. Like the people with whom Mrs. Hilary had failed to get
on during her brief sojourn in London; they too had always shunned
general disputes about opinion and sentiment, such as were carried on
with profit in St. Mary's Bay, and pinned the discussion down to hard
facts, about which the Bay's information was inaccurate and incomplete.
As if you didn't know when you disagreed with a thing's whole drift,
whether you had read it or not.... Mrs. Hilary had never had any head for
facts.

"It's the whole idea," she said, hotly. "And I detest all these Labour
people. Vile creatures.... Of course I don't mean people like Rodney--the
University men. They're merely amateurs. But these dreadful Trades Union
men, with their walrus moustaches.... Why can't they shave, like other
people, if they want to be taken for gentlemen?"

Neville told her, chaffingly, that she was a mass of prejudice.

Grandmama, who had fallen asleep and dropped the London Mercury onto the
floor, diverted the conversation by waking up and remarking that it
seemed a less interesting number than usual on the whole, though some of
the pieces of poetry were pretty, and that Mrs. Hilary ought not to lie
under the open window.

Mrs. Hilary, who was getting worse, admitted that she had better be in
bed.

"I hope," said Grandmama, "that it will be a lesson to you, dear, not to
stay in the water so long again, even if you do want to show off before
your daughter-in-law." Grandmama, who disliked Rosalind, usually called
her to Mrs. Hilary "your daug