He nodded approvingly. "Then comes the question," he said, "what is to be done?"
Leaning against the bridge, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking into her face, as if he were really waiting for her to solve the problem for him.
"That is entirely beyond me," she said. "I know nothing; I could not even guess at what ought to be done."
"No? Now here is my idea. Why not plead my cause myself?"
"Plead your cause yourself? Can that be done?"
"Yes; myself—in Parliament."
Minola's mind at once formed and framed a picture of a stately assembly, like a Roman Senate, or like the group of King Agrippa, Festus, Bernice, and the rest, and Mr. Heron pleading his cause like Cicero or Paul. The thing seemed hardly congruous. It did not seem to her to fall in with modern conditions at all. Her face became blank; she did not well know what to answer.
"Are people allowed to do such things now, in England?" she asked—"to plead causes before Parliament?"
An odd idea came up in her mind, that perhaps by the time this strange performance came to be enacted, Mr. Augustus Sheppard might be in Parliament, and Mr. Heron's enthusiastic eloquence would have to be addressed to him. She did not like the idea.
"You don't understand," Heron said. "You really don't this time. What I mean is to get into Parliament—be elected for some place, and then stand up and make my own fight for myself."