t lead to anything, you know,« said Mr. Brooke,
seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again. »It's all of a piece with
Casaubon's oddity. This paper, now, Synoptical Tabulation and so on, for the use
of Mrs. Casaubon, it was locked up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant
Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone
into his studies uncommonly.«
    »My dear sir,« said Sir James, impatiently, »that is neither here nor there.
The question is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of sending young
Ladislaw away?«
    »Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps, it may come
round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say
what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for,« said Mr.
Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes.
»I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point - take away the Pioneer from
him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country if he
didn't choose to go - didn't choose, you know.«
    Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature
of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual amenity, was an
exasperating form of obstinacy.
    »Good God!« said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, »let us
get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some
Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him - and I could write to Fulke about
it.«
    »But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow;
Ladislaw has his ideas. It's my opinion that if he were to part from me
to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country. With his talent for
speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as
an agitator - an agitator, you know.«
    »Agitator!« said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables
of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of its hatefulness.
    »But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As
