If it were necessary to invent
a story to fit the case, he would be as other men, or even better in
the eyes of the child, until there came a time when he must learn the
truth.
Perhaps the time would never come. If he could by any manner of means
keep up the delusion until the Wise Men came out of the East and built
the Magic City, he would be a failure no longer. He would be an
instantaneous success.
Also, though he fully pardoned Celia for her desertion of himself, he
had never quite come to understand or fully forgive her desertion of
the boy, her staying away as she had done month after month, year
after year, missing all the beauty of his babyhood.
He therefore found it impossible to tell the boy that his mother had
heartlessly deserted him, as impossible as to tell him that his father
was a failure.
Yet the child, like every other, insisted upon knowing something of
his origin. To satisfy him, Seth evolved a story, adding to it from
time to time. He told it sitting in the firelight, the boy in his
arms.
It was the story of the Flying Peccary.
"Tell me how I came in the cyclone," Charlie would insist, nestling
into the comfortable curve of his arm.
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