"
"Still I think you had better leave it alone lest he should not like
your asking him. I should be sorry to have you disappointed."
"I do not mind that so much as I used. If you do not tell me I am
not to do it, I think I will venture."
Donal said no more. He did not feel at liberty, from his own feeling
merely, to check the boy. The thing was not wrong, and something
might be intended to come out of it! He shrank from the least ruling
of events, believing man's only call to action is duty. So he left
Davie to do as he pleased.
"Does your father often tell you a fairy-tale?" he asked.
"Not every day, sir."
"What time does he tell them?"
"Generally when I go to him after tea."
"Do you go any time you like?"
"Yes; but he does not always let me stay. Sometimes he talks about
mamma, I think; but only coming into the fairy-tale.--He has told me
one in the middle of the day! I think he would if I woke him up in
the night! But that would not do, for he has terrible headaches.
Perhaps that is what sometimes makes his stories so terrible I have
to beg him to stop!"
"And does he stop?"
"Well--no--I don't think he ever does.--When a story is once begun,
I suppose it ought to be finished!"
So the matter rested for the time. But about a week after, Donal
received one morning through the butler an invitation to dine with
the earl, and concluded it was due to Davie, whom he therefore
expected to find with his father.
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