“He may be all you say, but I’m not going to trust him to your Gods and devils.”
“It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before.”
“That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You’d better go, Grish Chunder.”
He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my only chance of looking into the future.
This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me do that. But I recognized Grish Chunder’s point of view and sympathized with it.
“What a big black brute that was!” said Charlie, when I returned to him. “Well, look here, I’ve just done a poem; did it instead of playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?”
“Let me read it to myself.”
“Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong.
“Read it aloud, then. You’re like the rest of ‘em.”
Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of his verses. He had been reading his book faithfully, but he was not pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with Charlie.