“Only a little: I’m not wise enough to understand any boy.”
“Then—but isn’t that what you said you came for?—I thought—”
“Yes,” answered Donal, “that is what I came for; but if I fancied I quite understood any boy, that would be a sure sign I did not understand him.—There is one who understands every boy as well as if there were no other boy in the whole world.”
“Then why doesn’t every boy go to him when he can’t get fair play?”
“Ah, why? That is just what I want you to do. He can do better than give you fair play even: he can make you give other people fair play, and delight in it.”
“Tell me where he is.”
“That is what I have to teach you: mere telling is not much use. Telling is what makes people think they know when they do not, and makes them foolish.”
“What is his name?”
“I will not tell you that just yet; for then you would think you knew him, when you knew next to nothing about him. Look here; look at this book,” he went on, pulling a copy of Boethius from his pocket; “look at the name on the back of it: it is the name of the man that wrote the book.”
Davie spelled it out.