"You'd better let the boy come to me every day."
It was an impulse. I don't know to this hour why I said it, because at that time I wasn't altogether sure that I was conducting the little girl's education on the best possible basis. Moreover, it seemed to me even then that my own time was rather well filled. Neither his father nor mother enthused, and I heard no more from the subject for many days. Meeting The Abbot finally, I asked him what of school.
"It's bad. I'm not doing anything. I hate it."
"Did your father think I didn't mean what I said—about you coming to me for a time?"
"I don't think he quite thought you meant it. And then he doesn't know what it would cost."
I told him it wouldn't cost anything. There was a chance to talk with his father again, but nothing came of that, and The Abbot was still suffering weeks afterward. Finally his father and uncle came over to the Study. It seemed impossible for them to open the subject. I had to do it after an hour's conversation about immediate and interesting matters of weather and country.
"I would like to try him," I said. "He can come an hour after dinner each day. He is different. They can't bring him out, when they have to deal with so many."
"He's a dreamer," they said, as if confessing a curse.
It appears that there had been a dreamer in this family, a well-read man whose acres and interests had got away from him, long ago.
"That's why I want him," said I.