“I don't know that you have to do anything. You have one thing not to do, that is—tell anybody what you have seen.”
“I was forced to tell you because I did not know what to do. It makes me so sorry!”
“It was no fault of yours. You acted to the best of your knowledge, and could not help what came of it. Perhaps nothing more will come. Leave the thing alone, and if he say anything tell him how it happened.”
“But, Andrew, I don't think you see what it is that troubles me. I am afraid my master is a miser. The mistress and he take their meals, like poor people, in the kitchen. That must be the dining-room of the house!—and though my eyes were tethered to the flashing cup, I could not help seeing it was full of strange and beautiful things. Among them, I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!”
“Suppose him a miser,” said Andrew, “what could you do? How are you to help it?”
“That's what I want to know. I love my master, and there must be a way to help it. It was terrible to see him, in the middle of the night, gazing at that cup as if he had found the most precious thing that can ever have existed on the earth.”
“What was that?” asked Andrew.
He delighted in Dawtie's talk. It was like an angel's, he said, both in its ignorance and its wisdom.
“You can't have forgotten, Andrew. It's impossible!” she answered. “I heard you say yourself!”
Andrew smiled.