“You!” Meg exclaimed. “But you’re a man, and you know all about it, I dare say; and I only tell things I make up—fairy stories, and other things. A man wouldn’t care for them. He—he knows.”
“He knows too much, perhaps—that’s the trouble,” said the man. “A fairy or so might do me good. I’m not acquainted enough with them. And if I know things you don’t—perhaps that’s what I have to give to you.”
“Why,” said Meg, her eyes growing as she looked up at his odd, clever face, “do you want to go about with us?”
“TAKE ME WITH YOU.”
“Yes,” said the man, with a quick, decided nod, “I believe that’s just what I want to do. I’m lonelier than you two. At least, you are together. Come on, children,” but it was to Meg he held out his hand. “Take me with you.”
And, bewildered as she was, Meg found herself giving her hand to him and being led away, Robin and Ben close beside them.
XVI
It was such a strange thing—so unlike the things of every day, and so totally an unexpected thing, that for a little while they all three had a sense of scarcely knowing what to do with themselves. If Robin and Meg had not somehow rather liked the man, and vaguely felt him friendly, and if there had not been in their impressionable minds that fancy about his being far from as happy as the other people of the crowds looked, it is more than probable that they would not have liked their position, and would have felt that it might spoil their pleasure.
But they were sympathetic children, and they had been lonely and sad enough themselves to be moved by a sadness in others, even if it was an uncomprehended one.