"Jolly good," said Gordon. "I do like seeing this younger generation up against the rotten conventions of the mid-Victorian era."
"Deal gently with them," murmured Betteridge. "Their horsehair arm-chairs have stood the test of time very well."
"Too well: but their Puritan ideas are in the melting-pot now. Their day is over."
"You know I am not sure that the Stoics is the right audience for a play like this," said Tester.
"Good heavens, man," protested Gordon, "you don't think it would corrupt their morals, do you?"
"Of course not, you ass! I don't think they would understand it: that's all. They will laugh at it, and think it funny. But they won't really see what Houghton is driving at. They won't understand that he is trying to cut away the shackles of mature thought that are impeding the limbs of youth. The lads in the Remove will be frightfully amused; they will think the father an awful old fool, and the son the devil of a rip. They won't see that both of them are real characters, and that a hundred families to-day are working out their own little tragedy just on these very lines."
"But surely there are really no fathers quite so absurd as old Kennion. Does not Houghton exaggerate the type, as Dickens exaggerates all his types?"
"Oh no, he's real enough; I expect there are a good many like him living in Fernhurst now."
The truth of the last remark was brought home three days later.
On the Friday before the debate Ferrers got a bad attack of influenza. There would be no one to take the chair. Moved by an instinct of courtesy, Ferrers wrote to Christy a little note, enclosing the book, and asking him to preside.