Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/220

 turn which had come in the bent of Lonely's aggressive young mind.

"Tut! tut!" asseverated the old Doctor, easily. "Don't try to pick open the bud before it unfolds!"

"But his curiosity is unlimited, and his questions are astounding, simply astounding!"

"Then let him worry and chew over 'em for a while—it 'll do his spiritual teeth a world of good. Take my advice, Ezra, and don't pack the boy full of doctrine. It 'd seem too much like trying to teach a five-year-old girl the full duties of married life!"

"But this seems more than a mere ebullition of morbid fancy. My wife claims that he is far, very far, from being the vicious character he may seem, at first sight. And I must confess that in many respects he is an extraordinary boy, a very extraordinary boy."

"He 'll get over it, Ezra; he 'll get over it! He 'll fall in love, or turn pirate, or want to be a soldier, and then the two over-blown bubbles of fancy 'll somehow touch, and both of 'em will collapse."

Yet Lonely did not get over it quite so soon as the sage old practitioner prophesied.