"The job has to be done," said Hugh.

The pause lengthened.

"You'll be getting up early to-morrow," said Mr. Britling....

Section 8

When Mr. Britling was alone in his own room all the thoughts and
feelings that had been held up downstairs began to run more and more
rapidly and abundantly through his mind.

He had a feeling--every now and again in the last few years he had had
the same feeling--as though he was only just beginning to discover Hugh.
This perpetual rediscovery of one's children is the experience of every
observant parent. He had always considered Hugh as a youth, and now a
man stood over him and talked, as one man to another. And this man, this
very new man, mint new and clean and clear, filled Mr. Britling with
surprise and admiration.

It was as if he perceived the beauty of youth for the first time in
Hugh's slender, well balanced, khaki-clad body. There was infinite
delicacy in his clear complexion, his clear eyes; the delicately
pencilled eyebrow that was so exactly like his mother's. And this thing
of brightness and bravery talked as gravely and as wisely as any
weather-worn, shop-soiled, old fellow....

The boy was wise.

Hugh thought for himself; he thought round and through his position, not
egotistically but with a quality of responsibility. He wasn't just
hero-worshipping and imitating, just spinning some self-centred romance.
If he was a fair sample of his generation then it was a better
generation than Mr. Britling's had been....

At that Mr. Britling's mind went off at a tangent to the grievance of
the rejected volunteer. It was acutely shameful to him that all these
fine lads should be going off to death and wounds while the men of forty
and over lay snug at home. How stupid it was to fix things like that!
Here were the fathers, who had done their work, shot their bolts,
returned some value for the costs of their education, unable to get
training, unable to be of any service, shamefully safe, doing April fool
work as special constables; while their young innocents, untried, all
their gathering possibilities of service unbroached, went down into the
deadly trenches.... The war would leave the world a world of cripples
and old men and children....

He felt himself as a cowardly brute, fat, wheezy, out of training,
sheltering behind this dear one branch of Mary's life.

He writhed with impotent humiliation....

How stupidly the world is managed.

He began to fret and ra