Page 551 - sons-and-lovers

what they could get, and what they could not attain they
ignored.
‘I consider you treated Baxter rottenly,’ he said another
time.
He half-expected Clara to answer him, as his mother
would: ‘You consider your own affairs, and don’t know so
much about other people’s.’ But she took him seriously, al-
most to his own surprise.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘I suppose you thought he was a lily of the valley, and
so you put him in an appropriate pot, and tended him ac-
cording. You made up your mind he was a lily of the valley
and it was no good his being a cow-parsnip. You wouldn’t
have it.’
‘I certainly never imagined him a lily of the valley.’
‘You imagined him something he wasn’t. That’s just what
a woman is. She thinks she knows what’s good for a man,
and she’s going to see he gets it; and no matter if he’s starv-
ing, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while she’s got
him, and is giving him what’s good for him.’
‘And what are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’m thinking what tune I shall whistle,’ he laughed.
And instead of boxing his ears, she considered him in
earnest.
‘You think I want to give you what’s good for you?’ she
asked.
‘I hope so; but love should give a sense of freedom, not
of prison. Miriam made me feel tied up like a donkey to a
stake. I must feed on her patch, and nowhere else. It’s sick-

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