He sometimes thought that almost everything was due to education.
In the ballroom, meanwhile, the dancers were being formed into squares for the lancers.

Arthur and Rachel, Susan and Hewet, Miss Allan and Hughling Elliot found themselves together.
Miss Allan looked at her watch.
"Half-past one," she stated.

"And I have to despatch Alexander Pope to-morrow." "Pope!" snorted Mr.Elliot.

"Who reads Pope, I should like to know?
And as for reading about him--No, no, Miss Allan; be persuaded you will benefit the world much more by dancing than by writing." It was one of Mr.Elliot's affectations that nothing in the world could compare with the delights of dancing--nothing in the world was so tedious as literature.

Thus he sought pathetically enough to ingratiate himself with the young, and to prove to them beyond a doubt that though married to a ninny of a wife, and rather pale and bent and careworn by his weight of learning, he was as much alive as the youngest of them all.
"It's a question of bread and butter," said Miss Allan calmly.