Why should he not serve his King before he lives?
My wife will say the like." There was a depth of quiet feeling in his words which Wogan would never have expected from Misset; and the words themselves were words which he felt no man, no king, however much beloved, however generous to his servants, had any right to expect.

They took Wogan's breath away, and not Wogan's only, but Gaydon's and O'Toole's, too.

A longer silence than before followed upon them.

The very simplicity with which they had been uttered was startling, and made those three men doubt at the first whether they had heard aright.
O'Toole was the first to break the silence.
"It is a strange thing that there never was a father since Adam who was not absolutely sure in his heart that his first-born must be a boy.

When you come to think philosophically about it, you'll see that if fathers had their way the world would be peopled with sons with never a bit of a lass in any corner to marry them." O'Toole's reflection, if not a reason for laughter, made a pretext for it, at which all--even Misset, who was a trifle ashamed of his display of feeling--eagerly caught.