Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/97

 But George, Laura protested, we can't do that. She'd grow up a barbarian. She expresses the strangest, most mature ideas on every conceivable subject, subjects that I wouldn't dare allow my mind to dwell on, even yet. Why, when I was a girl. ..

I know, I know. George was becoming a trifle impatient. Times have changed, Laura. It's the younger generation.

I've read a good deal about this younger generation and these young intellectuals, but I've always understood that they were over ten.

We should be proud that we have raised a prodigy.

Laura perpended this statement. I think, she put forward, after a pause, that we should send her away to school.

George laughed again. Why, they wouldn't stand for that child in any school, he exclaimed. She'd corrupt the minds of all the other pupils. Besides, she'd never learn anything. She already knows more than any Yale graduate I ever met.

Then, what are we to do?

I think we'll just have to wait and see what happens, George counselled. Let's be patient. Leave the girl alone. Let her think, let her talk. You'll see: the family will be as stable as Britannia in the end. Don't make the Romanoff mistake of sending free-thinkers to Siberia. It never works.

You may be right, George, Laura assented, but her tone did not carry the ring of assurance.