“The least funny, the most serious lesson you could teach me! You are a book God has begun, and he has sent me to help him go on with it; so I must learn what he has written already before I try to do anything.”
“But you know what a boy is, sir! Why should you want to learn me?”
“You might as well say, that because I have read one or two books, I must know every book. To understand one boy helps to understand another, but every boy is a new boy, different from every other boy, and every one has to be understood.”
“Yes—for sometimes Arkie won’t hear me out, and I feel so cross with her I should like to give her a good box on the ear. What king was it, sir, that made the law that no lady, however disagreeable, was to have her ears boxed? Do you think it a good law, sir?”
“It is good for you and me anyhow.”
“And when Percy says, ‘Oh, go away! don’t bother,’ I feel as if I could hit him hard! Yet, if I happen to hurt him, I am so sorry! and why then should I want to hurt him?”
“There’s something in this little fellow!” said Donal to himself. “Ah, why indeed?” he answered. “You see you don’t understand yourself yet!”
“No indeed!”
“Then how could you think I should understand you all at once?—and a boy must be understood, else what’s to become of him! Fancy a poor boy living all day, and sleeping all night, and nobody understanding him!”
“That would be dreadful! But you will understand me?”