"You don't think they would compel him to resign?"
"No; but they'll compel him to go, which amounts to the same. Balfour says they mean to move an address to the Queen, praying her Majesty to superannuate him."
"It would kill him,--he 'd not survive it."
"So it is generally believed,--all the more because it is a course he has ever declared to be impossible,--I mean constitutionally impossible."
"He might escape it by dying first, mother; and really, under the circumstances, it would be more dignified."
"Your morals were not, at any time, to boast of, but your manners used to be those of a gentleman," said she, in a voice thick with passion.
"I am afraid, mother, that both morals and manners, like this hat of mine, are a little the worse for wear; but, as in the case of the hat too, use has made them pleasanter to me than spick-and-span new ones, with all the gloss on. At all events, I never dreamed of offending when I suggested the possibility of your being a widow. Indeed, I fancied it was feminine for widower, which I imagined to be no such bad thing."
"If the Chief Baron should be compelled to leave the Bench, will it affect your tenure of the Registrarship?"
"That is what nobody seems to know. Some opine one way, some another; and though all ask me what does the Chief himself say on the matter, I have never had the courage to ask the question."
"You are quite right It would be most indiscreet to do so."
"Indeed, if I were rash enough to risk the step, it would redound to nothing, since I am quite persuaded that he believes that whenever he retires from public life or quits this world altogether, a general chaos will ensue, and that all sorts of ignorant and incompetent people will jostle the clever fellows out of the way, just because the one great directing mind of the age has left the scene and departed."
"All his favors to you have certainly not bought your gratitude, Dudley."
"I don't suspect it is a quality I ever laid up a large stock of, mother,--not to say that I have always deemed it a somewhat unworthy thing to swallow the bad qualities of a man simply because he was civil to you personally."
"His kindness might at least secure your silence."
"Then it would be a very craven silence. But I 'll join issue with you on the other counts. What is this great kindness for which I am not to speak my mind about him? He has housed and fed me: very good things in their way, but benefits which never cost him anything but his money. Now, what have I repaid him with? My society, my time, my temper, I might say my health, for he has worried me to that degree some days that I have been actually on the verge of a fever. And if his overbearing insolence was hard to endure, still harder was it to stand his inordinate vanity without laughter. I ask you frankly, isn't he the vainest man, not that you ever met, but that you ever heard of?"