IV
Challis drew a deep breath and looked at Lewes.
“A difficult question, that, Lewes,” he said.
Lewes lifted his eyebrows and pulled at his fair moustache. “If you take the question literally,” he muttered.
“You might learn—the essential part ... of all the knowledge that has been ... discovered by mankind,” said Challis. He phrased his sentence carefully, as though he were afraid of being trapped.
“Should I learn what I am?” asked the Wonder.
Challis understood the question in its metaphysical acceptation. He had the sense of a powerful but undirected intelligence working from the simple premises of experience; of a cloistered mind that had functioned profoundly; a mind unbound by the tradition of all the speculations and discoveries of man, the essential conclusions of which were contained in that library at Challis Court.
“No!” said Challis, after a perceptible interval, “that you will not learn from any books in my possession, but you will find grounds for speculation.”
“Grounds for speculation?” questioned the Wonder. He repeated the words quite clearly.
“Material—matter from which you can—er—formulate theories of your own,” explained Challis.
The Wonder shook his head. It was evident that Challis’s sentence conveyed little or no meaning to him.
He got down from his chair and took up an old cricket cap of his father’s, a cap which his mother had let out by the addition of another gore of cloth that did not match the original material. He pulled this cap carefully over his bald head, and then made for the door.
At the threshold the strange child paused, and without looking at any one present said: “I’ll coom to your library,” and went out.
Challis joined Lewes at the window, and they watched the boy make his deliberate way along the garden path and up the lane towards the fields beyond.
“You let him go out by himself?” asked Challis.
“He likes to be in the air, sir,” replied Ellen Mary.
“I suppose you have to let him go his own way?”
“Oh! yes, sir.”
“I will send the governess cart up for him to-morrow morning,” said Challis, “at ten o’clock. That is, of course, if you have no objection to his coming.”
“’E said ’e’d coom, sir,” replied Ellen Mary. Her tone implied that there was no appeal possible against her son’s statement of his wishes.