“But you must,” urged Roger eagerly; “think of the pigs.”
Thus encouraged, Gabriel got up and walked across the room. He thought he could ask better if he did not face his father, so he stopped just at the back of the chair and said timidly:
“Father.”
The vicar looked round in a sort of dream and saw the little knickerbockered figure standing there, with a wide-mouthed, nervous smile on its face.
“Well,” he said in an absent way.
“O please, father,” said Gabriel, “may Roger and I have the cart and horse to-morrow?”
“Eh, my boy? Cart and horse—what for?”
“Why,” continued Gabriel hurriedly, “to-morrow’s Donnington market, and we can’t sell our pigs here, and he thought—I thought—we thought, that we might sell them there.”
He gazed breathless at his father’s face, and knew by its abstracted expression that the vicar’s thoughts were very far away from any question of pigs—as indeed they were, for they were busy with the subject of the pamphlet he had been reading.
“Foolish boys, foolish boys,” he said, “do as you like.”