It is one thing to desire a conversation to be changed, and another to change it. After some little silence my father said, “And may I ask what name your mother gave you?”
“My name,” he answered, laughing, “is George, and I wish it were some other, for it is the first name of that arch-impostor Higgs. I hate it as I hate the man who owned it.”
My father said nothing, but he hid his face in his hands.
“Sir,” said the other, “I fear you are in some distress.”
“You remind me,” replied my father, “of a son who was stolen from me when he was a child. I searched for him, during many years, and at last fell in with him by accident, to find him all the heart of father could wish. But alas! he did not take kindly to me as I to him, and after two days he left me; nor shall I ever again see him.”
“Then, sir, had I not better leave you?”
“No, stay with me till your road takes you elsewhere; for though I cannot see my son, you are so like him that I could almost fancy he is with me. And now—for I shall show no more weakness—you say your mother knew the Sunchild, as I am used to call him. Tell me what kind of a man she found him.”
“She liked him well enough in spite of his being a little silly. She does not believe he ever called himself child of the sun. He used to say he had a father in heaven to whom he prayed, and who could hear him; but he said that all of us, my mother as much as he, have this unseen father. My mother does not believe he meant doing us any harm, but only that he wanted to get himself and Mrs. Nosnibor’s younger daughter out of the country. As for there having been anything supernatural about the balloon, she will have none of it; she says that it was some machine which he knew how to make, but which we have lost the art of making, as we have of many another.
“This is what she says amongst ourselves, but in public she confirms all that the Musical Bank Managers say about him. She is afraid of them. You know, perhaps, that Professor Hanky, whose name I see on your permit, tried to burn her alive?”
“Thank heaven!” thought my father, “that I am Panky;” but aloud he said, “Oh, horrible! horrible! I cannot believe this even of Hanky.”