Sewell made an impatient gesture.
“Don't sacrifice the consideration of a great principle,” cried Evans, “to the petty effect of a good story on an appreciative listener. I realise your predicament. But don't you see that in establishing and regulating a place like that the city of Boston has instinctively sanctioned my idea? You may say that it is aiding and abetting the tramp-nuisance by giving vagrants food and shelter, but other philosophers will contend that it is—blindly perhaps—fulfilling the destiny of the future State, which will at once employ and support all its citizens; that it is prophetically recognising my new principle of Complicity?”
“Your new principle!” cried Sewell. “You have merely given a new name to one of the oldest principles in the moral world.”
“And that is a good deal to do, I can tell you,” said Evans. “All the principles are pretty old now. But don't give way to an ignoble resentment of my interruption. Go on about Barker.”
After some feints that there was nothing more important to tell, Sewell went on to the end; and when he had come to it, Evans shook his head. “It looks pretty black for you, but it's a beautifully perfect case of Complicity. What do you propose to do, now you've rediscovered him?”
“Oh, I don't know! I hope no more mischief. If I could only get him back on his farm!”
“Yes, I suppose that would be the best thing. But I dare say he wouldn't go back!”
“That's been my experience with him.”
They talked this aspect of the case over more fully, and Evans said: “Well, I wouldn't go back to such a place myself after I'd once had a glimpse of Boston, but I suppose it's right to wish that Barker would. I hope his mother will come to visit him while he's in the hotel. I would give a good deal to see her. Fancy her coming down in her bloomers, and the poor fellow being ashamed of her? It would be a very good subject for a play. Does she wear a hat or a bonnet? What sort of head-gear goes with that 'sleek odalisque' style of dress? A turban, I suppose.”
“Mrs. Barker,” said the minister, unable to deny himself the fleeting comfort of the editor's humorous view of the situation, “is as far from a 'sleek odalisque' as any lady I've ever seen, in spite of her oriental costume. If I remember, her yashmak was not gathered at the ankles, but hung loose like occidental trousers; and the day we met she wore simply her own hair. There was not much of it on top, and she had it cut short in the neck. She was rather a terrible figure. Her having ever been married would have been inconceivable, except for her son.”