"Who are you?" asked Lady Blakeney at last, for the old man after
looking at her with a kind of appealing wonder, seemed to be waiting for
her to speak.
"A priest of the good God, my dear child," replied the old man with a
deep sigh and a shake of his scanty locks, "who is not allowed to serve
his divine Master any longer. A poor old fellow, very harmless and very
helpless, who had been set here to watch over you.
"You must not look upon me as a jailer because of what I say, my child,"
he added with a quaint air of deference and apology. "I am very old and
very small, and only take up a very little room. I can make myself very
scarce; you shall hardly know that I am here. They forced me to it much
against my will. ... But they are strong and I am weak, how could I deny
them since they put me here. After all," he concluded naively, "perhaps it
is the will of le bon Dieu, and He knows best, my child, He knows best."
The shoes evidently refused to respond any further to the old man's
efforts at polishing them. He contemplated them now, with a whimsical
look of regret on his furrowed face, then set them down on the floor and
slipped his stockinged feet into them.
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