"No. The House of Commons is no longer what it was."
"Surely it is what men like you choose to make it, sir. If you would go home, stand at a bye-election, and return to the House, what an immense influence a man with your record might wield! Do you know what I would do in your place, sir? You do not mind my speaking out?"
"Not a bit. I am deeply interested."
"Well, sir, I would badger the Foreign Secretary; I would move the country until England moved the world."
"Go on the stump like Gladstone?"
"Why not, sir? Isn't the cause of the negroes every bit as good as the cause of the Bulgarians or Macedonians or Armenians? Nay, ten times better, because they're more helpless and suffer under a Christian King! And you would succeed, sir."
"I haven't Gladstone's power of moving the masses."
"What does that matter? The facts don't need any eloquence to back them, sir. I don't mean that you are not eloquent," he added with a smile. "I haven't heard you speak, but I have read your speeches; and if you tell what you have seen here, the country must listen, and something will surely be done. Why, if you go to my old school and speak to the fellows in the schoolhouse, I'll back there's not a boy there but will want to rush off here by the first train, to lend a hand!"
"Upon my word, Mr. Challoner, I think you'd better come back with us and do the stumping yourself."
"No, no," said Jack, his face flushing. "I cannot leave these people. My place is here, and here I'll stick until I'm driven out, or until Leopold is brought to book."