, might be added from the
happy fields.
Upon this occasion the dragon was a monster one. With a little help
from Shargar, he had laid the skeleton of a six-foot specimen, and
had carried the body to a satisfactory completion.
The tail was still growing, having as yet only sixteen joints, when
Mr. Lammie called with an invitation for the boys to spend their
holidays with him. It was fortunate for Robert that he was in the
room when Mr. Lammie presented his petition, otherwise he would
never have heard of it till the day of departure arrived, and would
thus have lost all the delights of anticipation. In frantic effort
to control his ecstasy, he sped to the garret, and with trembling
hands tied the second joint of the day to the tail of the
dragon--the first time he had ever broken the law of its accretion.
Once broken, that law was henceforth an object of scorn, and the
tail grew with frightful rapidity. It was indeed a great dragon.
And none of the paltry fields about Rothieden should be honoured
with its first flight, but from Bodyfauld should the majestic child
of earth ascend into the regions of upper air.
My reader may here be tempted to remind me that Robert had been only
too glad to return to Rothieden from his former visit. But I must
in my turn remind him that the circumstances were changed. In the
first place, the fiddle was substituted for grannie; and in the
second, the dragon for the school.
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