"
"What does he say?"
"He doesn't say anything. I can't make out whether he believes me or
not."
"Very well, then; you've done your duty, at any rate." Mrs. Sewell
could not forbear saying also, "If you'd done it at first, David,
there wouldn't have been any of this trouble."
"That's true," owned her husband, so very humbly that her heart
smote her.
"Well, go down and tell him he must stay to dinner, and then try to
get rid of him the best way you can. Your time is really too
precious, David, to be wasted in this way. You _must_ get rid
of him, somehow."
Sewell went back to his guest in the reception-room, who seemed to
have remained as immovably in his chair as if he had been a sitting
statue of himself. He did not move when Sewell entered.
"On second thoughts," said the minister, "I believe I will not ask
you to go to a publisher with me, as I had intended; it would expose
you to unnecessary mortification, and it would be, from my point of
view, an unjustifiable intrusion upon very busy people. I must ask
you to take my word for it that no publisher would bring out your
poem, and it never would pay you a cent if he did." The boy remained
silent as before, and Sewell had no means of knowing whether it was
from silent conviction or from mulish obstinacy. "Mrs. Sewell will
be down presently. She wished me to ask you to stay to dinner.
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