But after what he had seen and
heard, Donal was most anxious concerning his time with his father,
only he felt it a delicate thing to ask him about it. At length,
however, Davie himself opened up the matter.
"Mr. Grant," he said one day, "I wish you could hear the grand
fairy-stories my papa tells!"
"I wish I might!" answered Donal.
"I will ask him to let you come and hear. I have told him you can
make fairy-tales too; only he has quite another way of doing
it;--and I must confess," added Davie a little pompously, "I do not
follow him so easily as you.--Besides," he added, "I never can find
anything in what you call the cupboard behind the curtain of the
story. I wonder sometimes if his stories have any cupboard!--I will
ask him to-day to let you come."
"I think that would hardly do," said Donal. "Your father likes to
tell his boy fairy-tales, but he might not care to tell them to a
man. You must remember, too, that though I have been in the house
what you think a long time, your father has seen very little of me,
and might feel me in the way: invalids do not generally enjoy the
company of strangers. You had better not ask him."
"But I have often told him how good you are, Mr. Grant, and how you
can't bear anything that is not right, and I am sure he must like
you--I don't mean so well as I do, because you haven't to teach him
anything, and nobody can love anybody so well as the one he teaches
to be good.
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