“And where is he?�
“Well, he’s not on the face of the earth,� said Joan Hardy.
“You don’t mean he’s—dead?� asked the other in an unnatural voice.
“I mean he’s up in the air,� said Joan, “or, what is often much the same thing, he is with my husband. Hilary rescued him when they were just going to nab him, and carried him off in an aeroplane. He says they’d better hide in the clouds for a bit. You know the way he talks; of course, they do come down every now and then when it’s safe.�
“Escaped! Nabbed him! Safe!� ejaculated the other young woman with round eyes. “What in the world does it all mean?�
“Well,� replied her friend, “he seems to have said the same sort of things that he said to you to a whole roomful of scientific men at Bath. And, of course, the scientific men all said he was mad; I suppose that’s what scientific men are for. So they were just going to take him away to an asylum, when Hilary——�
The farmer’s daughter rose in a glory of rage that might have seemed to lift the roof, as the great sunrise had seemed to lift the sky.
“Take him away!� she cried. “How dare they talk about such things? How dare they say he is mad? It’s they who must be mad to say such stuff! Why, he’s got more brains in his boots than they have in all their silly old bald heads knocked together—and I’d like to knock ’em together! Why, they’d all smash like egg-shells, and he’s got a head like cast-iron. Don’t you know he’s beaten all the old duffers at their own business, of stars and things? I expect they’re all jealous; it’s just what I should have expected of them.�
The fact that she was entirely unacquainted with the names, and possibly the existence, of these natural philosophers did not arrest the vigorous word-painting with which she completed their portraits. “Nasty spiteful old men with whiskers,� she said, “all bunched together like so many spiders and weaving dirty cobwebs to catch their betters; of course, it’s all a conspiracy. Just because they’re all mad and hate anybody who’s quite sane.�
“So you think he’s quite sane?� asked her hostess gravely.