Father rose from the table. His eyebrows nearly met in their overhanging shagginess, and his eyes were small and brilliant.
"I don't think I understand you, Hoad," said he. "We seem to be at cross-purposes. Do you mean to say that this young man wants to get into Parliament?"
"Oh, no plans, no plans whatever, I should say," said Hoad. "He merely asked me who was going to contest the Tory seat; and when I asked him if he was a Radical, he aired a few sentiments which, as I tell you, are quite in your line. But I should think we might easily persuade him—he seemed so very eager. If you would back our man, Maliphant, we should be safe whoever he was, I do believe," added the solicitor, emphatically. "He has a really wonderful influence with the working-classes, that husband of yours, ma'am," he finished up, turning to mother.
"Yes," said she, proudly; "Laban's a fine orator. When I heard him speak at the meeting the other day he fairly took my breath away, that he did."
Mother looked up at father with a pleased smile, for she loved to hear him praised, but for my own part I knew very well that he was in no mood for pleasant speeches.
"I have always told you, Hoad, that it's no part of my scheme to go in for politics," said he, in a low voice, but very decisively. "I see no reason to change my mind."
"Well, my dear fellow, but that's absurd," answered Mr. Hoad, still in that provokingly friendly fashion. "However do you expect to get what you want?"
"Not through Parliament, anyhow," said father, laconically. "I never heard of any Act of Parliament that gave bread to the poor out of the waste of the rich. I'll wait to support Parliament till I see one of the law-makers there lift up a finger to right the poor miserable children who swarm and starve in the London streets, and whose little faces grow mean and sharp with the learning to cheat those who cheat them of their daily bread."
I can see him now, his lip trembling, his eye bright, his hands clinched. It was the cry with which he ended every discourse; this tender pity for the many children who must needs hunger while others waste, who must needs learn sin while others are shielded from even knowing that there is such a thing; those innocent sinners, outcasts from good, patient because hopeless, yet often enough incurably happy even in the very centre of evil—they were always in his heart. It was his most cherished hope in some way to succor them, by some means to bring the horror of their helplessness home to the hearts of those who had happy children of their own.
I held my face down that no one should see my tears, and I knew that father took out his big colored pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose very hard. Mr. Hoad, however, was not so easily affected.