Hannah has other ideas.

No one can say that she is not a good woman, or that she fails in her duty to me.
All people do not see life from the same point of view.

She is just as conscientious, in her way, as you are in yours.

She reads her Bible and draws her own conclusions from it, just as you do; and as she is the mother of the child, and as I know she will do her best for it, I shall not interfere with her way of doing it." And so Hannah won at last, and although, according to modern ideas, the boy's training would have been considered strict in the extreme, it differed very widely from that which his father had had before him.
Sounds of laughter, such as never had been heard within the walls of the house, since Zephaniah laid stone upon stone, sometimes issued from the room where Hannah and the child were together alone, and Zephaniah was out with Jabez about the farm; and Hannah herself benefited, as much as did the child, by her rebellion against the authorities.

Jabez, too, was conscious that home was brighter and pleasanter than it had been, and when Zephaniah burst into a torrent of indignation, when he discovered that the child had absolutely heard some fairy stories from its mother, Jabez said quietly: "Father, I wish no dispute.