His reply was equally emphatic:
"Comrades," he said, firmly, "I shall do nothing of the kind. We are going to work out this experiment in human society without compromise. We have successfully cut communication with the outside world. The crew of our ship are no longer allowed to land and only picked men unload her cargo. We are not going to play the baby act and dump these girls back on the old civilization which we have denounced. They may be wayward but they are our sisters."
"They are not mine," shouted one of the committee. "The brazen creatures! And we do not propose to have our sons and daughters corrupted by association with them."
"Then we must find some other solution than that of transportation," Norman insisted.
"Send them to the penal colony, then," demanded the committee.
"And back in a circle we immediately travel to the crimes of civilization from which we fled. I prefer to send the boys who associate with them. They are the real offenders."
"I deny that assertion," firmly declared the leader of the committee. "My boy is one of the unfortunate victims of these brazen wretches. Before we came to this island he never gave me a word of impudence. From the night he met Blanche at our first ball he was beyond my advice or control. These girls are the enemies of society and this colony cannot exist if they remain within its life."
"I refuse to believe it," Norman cried, with scorn. "It is your duty to reform these girls and restore them to mental and physical sanity, and as the leader of this colony I direct you to take up this divine work."
"And I, for one," spoke, for the first time, the silent gray-haired member of the committee, "refuse to smirch my hands with the task."
Norman, looked into the calm face of this white-haired, motherly looking woman with amazement.