单选题 Simpkins" period of office as a local politician was nearly over. He felt reluctant to go through all the bother of standing for re-election. His tentative voicing of this feeling shocked Baden.
"You"re never going to give up after all this time?"
"That"s the point about it, Baden. Perhaps I"ve gone on too long. I feel tired, somehow."
"Tired! Look at me. I"m tired and I can give you ten years. How long have you been on the council now?"
"Eighteen years."
Baden snorted. It was nothing beside his thirty-five years of unbroken service, during which he"s been three times major. Simpkins winked at Baden"s wife, Maude, and she, looking up for her embroidery, gave him back a small smile. Simpkins sometimes felt that it was not a mere ten years which separated Baden and himself, but two world wars. The years of his boyhood before the first war were the golden age that Baden looked back to. "It all ended after that," he had said more than once. "We never saw its like again." It was no use arguing that the quality of life was better for more people now, because Baden wouldn"t have it. "There were men working for my father who had six, seven and eight children. They brought them up all right though they hadn"t much money. Now it"s all grab. They want money, ears, drink and holidays abroad. And nobody"s happy."
"Were they ever?" Simpkins wondered. "Was an obsession with keeping body and soul together a necessary condition of human happiness?"
They were talking in the new bungalow Baden had built where Maude could find amusement watching the traffic go by.
"A drink, anyway, Tom?"
"I"d not say no to a drop of whisky, Baden."
The floorboards trembled as Baden crossed the room.
"How much do you weigh?" Simpkins asked.
"Too much," Maude chipped in.
"Oh, I don"t know," Baden said sharply. "Fifteen and a half stone."
"Add a bit to that," Simpkins thought.
"You must have iron legs. I"m bigger than you and I don"t weigh that much."
"You don"t have my belly, though, Tom." Baden placed his two hands on the swell of his waistcoat. "It is good solid stuff, not just as a bag of wind."
Maude tut-tutted, "Really, Baden", while Simpkins laughed.
"There"s nothing the matter with me, in spite of Maude always going on about it."
"It"s no use me saying anything," Maude said. "He stopped listening to me years ago."
Simpkins sensed some bitterness behind the mild comment. Always headstrong, and domineering where he met resistance, Baden instinctively treated women as people to be kept in their place.

单选题 For how long have Simpkins and Baden been politicians together?

单选题 When the two men discuss the past ______.

单选题 How does Maude react to her husband?

单选题 What is Baden"s attitude towards his wife?

单选题 What is Simpkins" attitude towards Baden?