"What's it look like?" asked his father quickly.
"Oh, sort of trinangles and things with lines and corners," was the reply, making a gesture as though he caught it and popped it back into the red drooping blossoms. "There you are! Now you're alive again. Thank you very much, please"—this last remark to the invisible playmate who was superintending.
"A sort of geometrical figure, was it?" inquired the father next day, when, to his surprise, he found the geranium blooming in full health and beauty once again. "That's what you saw, eh?"
"It was its spirit, and it was shiny red, like fire," the child replied. "It's heat. Without these things there'd be no flowers at all."
"Who makes everything grow?" he asked suddenly, a moment later.
"You mean what makes them grow."
"Who," he repeated with emphasis. "Who builds the bodies up and looks after them?"
"Ah! the structure, you mean, the form?"
Edward nodded. His father had the feeling he was not being asked for information, but was being cross-examined. A faint pressure, as of uneasiness, touched him.
"They develop automatically—that means naturally, under the laws of nature," he replied.