“And, whatever he did, he’d be disobeying some Law!” cried Bruno. “So he’d always be punished!”
Lady Muriel was passing at the moment, and caught the last word. “Nobody’s going to be punished here!” she said, taking Bruno in her arms. “This is Liberty-Hall! Would you lend me the children for a minute?”
“The children desert us, you see,” I said to Mein Herr, as she carried them off: “so we old folk must keep each other company!”
The old man sighed. “Ah, well! We’re old folk now; and yet I was a child myself, once—at least I fancy so.”
It did seem a rather unlikely fancy, I could not help owning to myself—looking at the shaggy white hair, and the long beard—that he could ever have been a child. “You are fond of young people?” I said.
“Young men,” he replied. “Not of children exactly. I used to teach young men—many a year ago—in my dear old University!”
“I didn’t quite catch its name?” I hinted.
“I did not name it,” the old man replied mildly. “Nor would you know the name if I did. Strange tales I could tell you of all the changes I have witnessed there! But it would weary you, I fear.”
“No, indeed!” I said. “Pray go on. What kind of changes?”
But the old man seemed to be more in a humour for questions than for answers. “Tell me,” he said, laying his hand impressively on my arm, “tell me something. For I am a stranger in your land, and I know little of your modes of education: yet something tells me we are further on than you in the eternal cycle of change—and that many a theory we have tried and found to fail, you also will try, with a wilder enthusiasm: you also will find to fail, with a bitterer despair!”