"And the laws—who keeps them working properly?"
The father, with a mental gulp, replied that God did.
"A beetle's body, for instance, or a daisy's or an elephant's?" persisted the child undeceived by the theological evasion. "Or mine, or a mountain's——?"
John Fillery racked his brain for an answer, while Edward continued his list to include sea-anemones, frost-patterns, fire, wind, moon, sun and stars. All these forms to him were bodies apparently.
"I know!" he exclaimed suddenly with intense conviction, clapping his hands together and standing on his toes.
"Do you, indeed! Then you know more than the rest of us."
"They do, of course," came the positive announcement. "The other kind! It's their work. Yours, for instance"—he turned to his playmate, but so naturally and convincingly that a chill ran down his father's spine as he watched—"is fire, isn't it? You showed me once. And water stops you, but wind helps you ..." and he continued long after his father had left the room.
With advancing years, however, Edward either forgot his playmate or kept its activities to himself. He no longer referred to it, at any rate. His energies demanded a bigger field; he roamed the fields and woods, climbed the hills, stayed out all night to see the sunrise, made fires even when fires were not exactly needed, and hunted with Red Indians and with what he called "Windy-Fire people" everywhere. He was never in the house. He ran wild. Great open spaces, trees and flowers were what he liked. The sea, on the other hand, alarmed him. Only wind and fire comforted him and made him happy and full of life. He was a playmate of wind and fire. Water, in large quantities at any rate, was inimical.
With concealed approval, masking a deep love fulfilled yet incomplete, his father watched the growth of this fiercer strain that mere covert shooting could not satisfy, nor ordinary sporting holidays appease.
"England's too small for you, Edward, isn't it?" he asked once tentatively, when the boy was about fifteen.