Lady Davenant replied with a cry like a sea-gull. "Oh! his lordship's labors, indeed! Yes, Mr. Goslett, pretty labors! Day after day goes on—I don't care, Timothy—I don't care who knows it—day after day goes on, and we get no farther. Four months and two weeks gone of the time, and the case not even written out yet."
"What time?" asked Harry.
"The time that nephew Nathaniel gave us to prove our claim. He found the money for our passage; he promised us six dollars a week for six months. In six months, he said, we should find whether our claim was allowed or not. There it was, and we were welcome for six months. Only six weeks left, and he goes to sleep!"
"But, Lady Davenant—only six weeks! It is impossible—you cannot send in a claim and get it acknowledged in six weeks. Why, such claims may drag on for years before a committee of the House of Lords."
"He wastes all the time; he has got no ambition: he goes to sleep when he ought to be waking. If we have to go home again, with nothing done, it will be because he is so lazy. Shame upon you, obstinate old man! Oh! lazy and sleepy old man!" She shook her finger at him in so terrifying a manner that he was fain to clutch at the arms of the chair, and his teeth chattered.
"Aurelia Tucker," her ladyship went on, warming to her work as she thought of her wrongs—"Aurelia Tucker always said that, lord or no lord, my husband was too lazy to stand up for his rights. Everybody in Canaan City knew that he was too lazy. She said that if she was me, and trying to get the family title, she wouldn't go across the water to ask for it, but she would make the American Minister in London tell the British Government that they would just have to grant it, whether they liked it or not, and that a plain American citizen was to take his place in their House of Lords. Otherwise, she said, let the Minister tell that Mr. Gladstone that Canada would be annexed. That's fine talkin', but as for me I want things done friendly, an' I don't want to see my husband walkin' into his proper place in Westminster with Stars and Stripes flyin' over his head and a volunteer fire brigade band playin' 'Hail, Columbia,' before him. No. I said that justice was to be got in the old country, and we only had to cross over and ask for it. Then nephew Nathaniel said that he didn't expect much more justice was to be expected in England than in New Hampshire. And that what you can't always get in a free country isn't always got where there's lords and bishops and a queen. But we might try if we liked for six months, and he would find the dollars for that time. Now there's only six weeks left, and we haven't even begun to ask for that justice."
"Clara Martha," said his lordship, "I've been thinking the matter over, and I've come to the conclusion that Aurelia Tucker is a sensible woman. Let us go home again, and send the case to the Minister. Let us frighten them."
"It does not seem bad advice," said Harry. "Hold a meeting in Canaan City, and promise the British Lion that he shall be whipped into a cocked hat unless you get your rights. Make a national thing of it."
"No!" She stamped her foot, and became really terrible. "We are here, and we will demand our rights on the spot. If the Minister likes to take up the case, he may; if not, we will fight our own battles. But oh! Mr. Goslett, it's a dreadful hard thing for a woman and a stranger to do all the fightin' while her husband goes to sleep."
"Can't you keep awake till you have stated your case?" asked Harry. "Come, old boy, you can take it out in slumber afterward; and if you go on sleeping till the case is decided, I expect you will have a good long refreshing rest."