`Oh yes!' said Birkin, calmly.
A vibration came into Brangwen's strong voice, as he replied:
`Though I shouldn't want her to be in too big a hurry, either. It's no good looking round afterwards, when it's too late.'
`Oh, it need never be too late,' said Birkin, `as far as that goes.'
`How do you mean?' asked the father.
`If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,' said Birkin.
`You think so?'
`Yes.'
`Ay, well that may be your way of looking at it.'
Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: `So it may. As for your way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.'
`I suppose,' said Brangwen, `you know what sort of people we are? What sort of a bringing-up she's had?'
` "She",' thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood's corrections, `is the cat's mother.'
`Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she's had?' he said aloud.
He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.
`Well,' he said, `she's had everything that's right for a girl to have -- as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.'
`I'm sure she has,' said Birkin, which caused a perilous full-stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally irritant to him in Birkin's mere presence.
`And I don't want to see her going back on it all,' he said, in a clanging voice.
`Why?' said Birkin.
This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen's brain like a shot.
`Why! I don't believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled ideas -- in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would never do for me.'
Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagnoism in the two men was rousing.
`Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?' asked Birkin.
`Are they?' Brangwen caught himself up. `I'm not speaking of you in particular,' he said. `What I mean is that my children have been brought up to think and do according to the religion I was brought up in myself, and I don't want to see them going away from that.'
There was a dangerous pause.
`And beyond that --?' asked Birkin.