“Holy mercy!” cried Mrs. Tugwell, “what a way to put things, Dan! All I desire is for your good only, and so leading on to the comfort of the rest. For the whole place goes wrong, and the cat sits in the corner, when you go on with politics as your dear father grunts at. No doubt it may all be very fine and just, and worth a man giving his life for, if he don't care about it, nor nobody else--but even if it was to keep the French out, and yourn goeth nearer to letting them in, what difference of a button would it make to us, Dan, compared to our sticking together, and feeding with a knowledge and a yielding to the fancies of each other?” “I am sure it's no fault of mine,” said Daniel, moved from his high ropes by this last appeal; “to me it never matters twopence what I have for dinner, and you saw me give Tim all the brown of the baked potatoes the very last time I had my dinner here. But what comes above all those little bothers is the necessity for insisting upon freedom of opinion. I don't pretend to be so old as my father, nor to know so much as he knows about the world in general. But I have read a great deal more than he has, of course, because he takes a long time to get a book with the right end to him; and I have thought, without knowing it, about what I have read, and I have heard very clever men (who could have no desire to go wrong, but quite the other way) carrying on about these high subjects, beyond me, but full of plain language. And I won't be forced out of a word of it by fear.” “But for love of your mother you might keep it under, and think it all inside you, without bringing of it out, in the presence of your elders. You know what your father is--a man as never yet laid his tongue to a thing without doing of it--right or wrong, right or wrong; and this time he hath right, and the law, and the Lord, and the King himself, to the side of him. And a rope's-end in his pocket, Dan, as I tried to steal away, but he were too wide-awake. Such a big hard one you never did see!” “A rope's end for me, well turned twenty years of age!” cried Daniel, with a laugh, but not a merry one; “two can play at that game, mother. I'll not be ropes ended by nobody.”