"Eva," I said, "what is this that I hear of a public meeting in the streets?"
"Oh, Mr Neverbend," she said, taking me by the arm, "there are only a few boys who are talking about papa." Through all the noises and tumults of these times there was an evident determination to speak of Jack as a boy. Everything that he did and all that he said were merely the efflux of his high spirits as a schoolboy. Eva always spoke of him as a kind of younger brother. And yet I soon found that the one opponent whom I had most to fear in Britannula was my own son.
"But why," I asked, "should these foolish boys discuss the serious question respecting your dear father in the public street?"
"They don't want to have him—deposited," she said, almost sobbing as she spoke.
"But, my dear," I began, determined to teach her the whole theory of the Fixed Period with all its advantages from first to last.
But she interrupted me at once. "Oh, Mr Neverbend, I know what a good thing it is—to talk about. I have no doubt the world will be a great deal the better for it. And if all the papas had been deposited for the last five hundred years, I don't suppose that I should care so much about it. But to be the first that ever it happened to in all the world! Why should papa be the first? You ought to begin with some weak, crotchety, poor old cripple, who would be a great deal better out of the way. But papa is in excellent health, and has all his wits about him a great deal better than Mr Grundle. He manages everything at Little Christchurch, and manages it very well."
"But, my dear—" I was going to explain to her that in a question of such enormous public interest as this of the Fixed Period it was impossible to consider the merits of individual cases. But she interrupted me again before I could get out a word.
"Oh, Mr Neverbend, they'll never be able to do it, and I'm afraid that then you'll be vexed."
"My dear, if the law be—"
"Oh yes, the law is a very beautiful thing; but what's the good of laws if they cannot be carried out? There's Jack there;—of course he is only a boy, but he swears that all the executive, and all the Assembly, and all the volunteers in Britannula, shan't lead my papa into that beastly college."