“Oh, father!” said Milly, breathlessly, when he stopped. “Is that all?”
But Olly sat quite still, without speaking, gazing at his father with wide open brown eyes, and a face as grave and terrified as if Grendel were actually beside him.
“That’s all for this time,” said Mr. Norton. “Why, Olly, where are your little wits gone to? Did it frighten you, old man?”
“Oh!” said Olly, drawing a long breath. “I did think he would never have comed up out of that bog!”
“It was splendid,” said Milly. “But, father, I don’t understand about that pool. Why didn’t Beowulf get drowned when he went down under the water?”
“The story doesn’t tell us anything about that,” said Mr. Norton. “But heroes in those days, Milly, must have had something magical about them so that they were able to do things that men and women can’t do now. Do you know, children, that this story that you have been listening to is more than a thousand years old? Can you fancy that?”
“No,” said Milly, shaking her head. “I can’t fancy it a bit, father. It’s too long. It makes me puzzled to think of so many years.”
“Years and years and years and years!” said Olly. “When father’s grandfather was a little boy.”
Mr. Norton laughed. “Can’t you think of anything farther back than that, Olly? It would take a great many grandfathers, and grandfathers’ grandfathers, to get back to the time when the story of Beowulf was made. And here am I telling it to you just in the same way as fathers used to tell it to their children a thousand years ago.”
“I suppose the children liked it so, they wouldn’t let their fathers forget it,” said Milly. “And then when they grew up they told it to their children. I shall tell it to my children when I grow up. I think I shall tell it to Katie to-morrow.”