[ He wants to protest that - that it's an idiom and nothing more and she wasn't thinking about the implications when she said it - that the point was that she wanted him to die, it wasn't really about how he died...But does Byerly know for sure? And what would it accomplish, to voice those protests? The only thing that would happen would be that he'd make Bastien feel embarrassed and uncertain of his perception of things. So he bites his tongue.

Instead: ]

People like - [ Her? No. More accurate to say: ] Us. Do end up having certain attitudes drilled into our heads, I suspect. It doesn't reflect what someone's character would have been - or beliefs would have been - if they hadn't been surrounded by that way of thinking.