"And you think it is our duty to submit quietly and uncomplainingly to whatever wrong or injustice is heaped upon us?"
"We must submit to the law, my boy, however hardly it presses upon us."
"But we ought to try, all the same, to get bad laws mended."
"You can't ladle the sea dry with a limpet-shell, Ralph, nor carry off a mountain in your pocket. No, no; let us not talk about the impossible, nor give up hope until we are forced to. Perhaps young Seccombe will recover."
"But if he should die, father. What would happen then?"
"I don't know, my boy, and I can't bear to think."
"But we'd better face the possibility," Ralph answered doggedly, "so that, if the worst should come to the worst, we may know just where we are."
"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'" David answered, with a far-away look in his eyes. And he got up from his seat and walked slowly out of the house.
Ralph sat looking out of the window for several minutes, and then he went off in search of his mother and Ruth.
"Do you know, mother," he said, as cheerily as he could, "that I have had no breakfast yet? And, in spite of the bad news, I am too hungry for words."