At length, however, Davie himself opened up the matter.
"Mr.Grant," he said one day, "I wish you could hear the grand fairy-stories my papa tells!" "I wish I might!" answered Donal.
"I will ask him to let you come and hear.

I have told him you can make fairy-tales too; only he has quite another way of doing it;--and I must confess," added Davie a little pompously, "I do not follow him so easily as you .-- Besides," he added, "I never can find anything in what you call the cupboard behind the curtain of the story.

I wonder sometimes if his stories have any cupboard!--I will ask him to-day to let you come." "I think that would hardly do," said Donal.

"Your father likes to tell his boy fairy-tales, but he might not care to tell them to a man.

You must remember, too, that though I have been in the house what you think a long time, your father has seen very little of me, and might feel me in the way: invalids do not generally enjoy the company of strangers.
You had better not ask him." "But I have often told him how good you are, Mr.Grant, and how you can't bear anything that is not right, and I am sure he must like you--I don't mean so well as I do, because you haven't to teach him anything, and nobody can love anybody so well as the one he teaches to be good." "Still I think you had better leave it alone lest he should not like your asking him.