"We will hope not," said Mr. Yelverton.
"To think that the moon—miserable impostor that she is!—should be able to put them out," continued Patty, still gazing at the palely-shining stars. "The other Sunday we heard a clergyman liken her to something or other which on its appearance quenched the ineffectual fires of the lesser luminaries—"
"He said the sun," corrected Elizabeth.
"Well, it's all the same. What's the sun? The stars he hides are better suns than he is—not to speak of their being no end to them. It shows how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by mere superficial appearances."
"The sun and moon quench the stars for us, Patty."
"Pooh! That's a very petty parish-vestry sort of way to look at things. Just what you might expect in a little bit of a world like this. In Jupiter now"—she paused, and turned her bright eyes upon a deep-set pair that were watching her amusedly. "Mr. Yelverton, I hope you are not going to insist upon it that Jupiter is too hot to do anything but blaze and shine and keep life going on his little satellites—are you?"
"O dear no!" he replied. "I wouldn't dream of such a thing."
"Very well. We will assume, then, that Jupiter is a habitable world, as there is no reason why he shouldn't be that I can see—-just for the sake of enlarging Elizabeth's mind. And, having assumed that, the least we can suppose—seeing that a few billions of years are of no account in the chronology of the heavenly bodies—is that a world on such a superior scale was fully up to our little standard before we began. I mean our present standard. Don't you think we may reasonably suppose that, Mr. Yelverton?"
"In the absence of information to the contrary, I think we may," he said. "Though I would ask to be allowed to reserve my own opinion."
"Certainly. I don't ask for anybody's opinion. I am merely throwing out suggestions. I want to extend Elizabeth's vision in these matters beyond the range of the sun and moon. So I say that Jupiter—and if not Jupiter, one of the countless millions of cooler planets, perhaps ever so much bigger than he is, which lie out in the other sun-systems—was well on with his railways and telegraphs when we began to get a crust, and to condense vapours. You will allow me to say as much as that, for the sake of argument?"