“You don't think they would compel him to resign?”
“No; but they'll compel him to go, which amounts to the same. Balfour says they mean to move an address to the Queen, praying her Majesty to superannuate him.”
“It would kill him,—he 'd not survive it.”
“So it is generally believed,—all the more because it is a course he has ever declared to be impossible,—I mean constitutionally impossible.”
“I hope he may be spared this insult.”
“He might escape it by dying first, mother; and really, under the circumstances, it would be more dignified.”
“Your morals were not, at any time, to boast of, but your manners used to be those of a gentleman,” said she, in a voice thick with passion.
“I am afraid, mother, that both morals and manners, like this hat of mine, are a little the worse for wear; but, as in the case of the hat too, use has made them pleasanter to me than spick-and-span new ones, with all the gloss on. At all events, I never dreamed of offending when I suggested the possibility of your being a widow. Indeed, I fancied it was feminine for widower, which I imagined to be no such bad thing.”
“If the Chief Baron should be compelled to leave the Bench, will it affect your tenure of the Registrarship?”
“That is what nobody seems to know. Some opine one way, some another; and though all ask me what does the Chief himself say on the matter, I have never had the courage to ask the question.”