"I do think Mrs. Butterworth is rather tiresome, if you mean that."
"Cecil has told you to think so. You were devoted to her as a little girl, and nothing will describe her goodness to you through the typhoid fever. No--it is just the same thing everywhere."
"Let me just put your bonnet away, may I?"
"Surely he could answer her civilly for one half-hour?"
"Cecil has a very high standard for people," faltered Lucy, seeing trouble ahead. "It's part of his ideals--it is really that that makes him sometimes seem--"
"Oh, rubbish! If high ideals make a young man rude, the sooner he gets rid of them the better," said Mrs. Honeychurch, handing her the bonnet.
"Now, mother! I've seen you cross with Mrs. Butterworth yourself!"
"Not in that way. At times I could wring her neck. But not in that way. No. It is the same with Cecil all over."
"By-the-by--I never told you. I had a letter from Charlotte while I was away in London."
This attempt to divert the conversation was too puerile, and Mrs. Honeychurch resented it.
"Since Cecil came back from London, nothing appears to please him. Whenever I speak he winces;--I see him, Lucy; it is useless to contradict me. No doubt I am neither artistic nor literary nor intellectual nor musical, but I cannot help the drawing-room furniture; your father bought it and we must put up with it, will Cecil kindly remember."
"I--I see what you mean, and certainly Cecil oughtn't to. But he does not mean to be uncivil--he once explained--it is the things that upset him--he is easily upset by ugly things--he is not uncivil to PEOPLE."
"Is it a thing or a person when Freddy sings?"
"You can't expect a really musical person to enjoy comic songs as we do."
"Then why didn't he leave the room? Why sit wriggling and sneering and spoiling everyone's pleasure?"
"We mustn't be unjust to people," faltered Lucy. Something had enfeebled her, and the case for Cecil, which she had mastered so perfectly in London, would not come forth in an effective form. The two civilizations had clashed--Cecil hinted that they might--and she was dazzled and bewildered, as though the radiance that lies behind all civilization had blinded her eyes. Good taste and bad taste were only catchwords, garments of diverse cut; and music itself dissolved to a whisper through pine-trees, where the song is not distinguishable from the comic song.