He only moaned. Certainly he was a very lethargic person.
"You are not the carpenter, your father. Nor even the wheelwright, your grandfather, who came down of his own accord. You would rise, you would soar—you have the spirit of your ancestors."
He feebly flapped with his elbows, as if he really would like to take a turn in the air, but made no verbal response.
"Cousin Nathaniel," she went on, "gave us six months at six dollars a week. That's none too generous of Nathaniel, seeing we have no children, and he will be the heir to the title. I guess Aurelia Tucker set him against the thing. Six months, and three of them gone already, and nothing done! What would Aurelia say if we went home again, beaten?"
The little woman gasped, and would have shrugged her shoulders, but they were such a long way down—shoulders so sloping could not be shrugged.
Her remonstrances moved the heavy man, who drew his chair to the table with great deliberation.
"We are here," she continued—always the exhorter and the strengthener of faith—"not to claim a title, but to assume it. We shall present our case to Parliament, or the Queen, or the House of Lords, or the Court of Chancery, or whosoever is the right person, and we shall say, 'I am Lord Davenant.' That is all."
"Clara Martha," said her husband, "I wish that were all we had to do. And, on the whole, I would as soon be back in Canaan City, New Hampshire, and the trouble over. The memoranda are all here," he said. "Can't we get some one else to draw up the case?"
"Certainly not. You must do it. Why, you used to think nothing of writing out a Fourth of July speech."
He shook his head.