“I’m quite sure for all concerned that it’s much better for Gaston to be left to himself,” Fay ruled; “he adds neither to his own nor to others’ happiness by playing with them.”
“No, Hubert’s face testifies to that,” said Di.
And so even before the injured eye had gone through the various stages of discolouration, Gaston had drifted so far away from his fellow knights that, as Andrew said loftily, “there was no need to degrade him formally as he had had the good sense to retire practically.”
“Nonsense,” cried Phoena, who was in no such hurry to consign Gaston to the rank of a hopeless miscreant, “so long as none of you can show cause why he should be turned out, and I suppose none of you can?”
“Oh! rather not!” cried Jack, “poor beggar, why should he be turned out?”
“Very well, then, so long as we don’t turn him out, he remains a knight of course, and perhaps some day he will do something grand, that will surprise us all.”
“It’s very certain to be a surprise, whenever it does come,” said Di. Marygold however stole away to the orchard, making for the deep, dry ditch, whence Gaston had emerged on the first occasion of their meeting. It had become once more his favourite refuge, only Marygold always found him now, with his old lesson books open on his knee, trying hard to learn those tasks which, at the eleventh hour, he remembered that “Maman” had told him must be learnt, if he meant to grow up a wise man.
“Gaston,” said Marygold, creeping down to sit beside him in the ditch, “they’ve all been talking about you in the wood, and they say that you are a knight still, just the same as ever you were. And Phoena says, she believes that you will do something ever so grand and brave some day, that will astonish us all.”
But Gaston shook his head.
“Ah! no, that will never be,” he said, “because, because, there is, I know not what—but no one here can understand,” he added, helplessly.