afterward I saw that bright gold jewel afar in the
dark. We talked.... Presently I heard that he hated school, but this did
not come from him. The fact is, I heard little or nothing from him.

This generation behind us--at least, the few I have met and loved--is
not made up of explainers. They let you find out. They seem able to
wait. It is most convincing, to have events clean up a fact which you
misunderstood; to have your doubts moved aside, not by words, nor any
glibness, but leisurely afterward by the landmarks of solid matter. He
did not come to the Study unless called for. The little girl brought in
word from him from time to time, and the little girl's mother, and the
boy's father--a very worthy man. I heard again that he was not doing
well in school. I knew he was significant, very much so, having met the
real boy on star-matters. I knew that the trouble was they were making
him look down at school, when he wanted to look up. His parents came
over to dinner one day, and I said:

"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.