“Epidemic!” said the Vicar. “You don’t mean it’s contagious?”
The doctor smiled gently and rubbed one hand against the other. “That I couldn’t say,” he said.
“But—-!” cried the Vicar, round-eyed. “If it’s catching—it—it affects us!”
He made a stride up the road and turned about.
“I’ve just been there,” he cried. “Hadn’t I better—-? I’ll go home at once and have a bath and fumigate my clothes.”
The doctor regarded his retreating back for a moment, and then turned about and went towards his own house....
But on the way he reflected that one case had been in the village a month without any one catching the disease, and after a pause of hesitation decided to be as brave as a doctor should be and take the risks like a man.
And indeed he was well advised by his second thoughts. Growth was the last thing that could ever happen to him again. He could have eaten—and the Vicar could have eaten—Herakleophorbia by the truckful. For growth had done with them. Growth had done with these two gentlemen for evermore.
VI.
It was a day or so after this conversation—a day or so, that is, after the burning of the Experimental Farm—that Winkles came to Redwood and showed him an insulting letter. It was an anonymous letter, and an author should respect his character’s secrets. “You are only taking credit for a natural phenomenon,” said the letter, “and trying to advertise yourself by your letter to the Times. You and your Boomfood! Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the most accidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact is there is an epidemic of Hypertrophy—Contagious Hypertrophy—which you have about as much claim to control as you have to control the solar system. The thing is as old as the hills. There was Hypertrophy in the family of Anak. Quite outside your range, at Cheasing Eyebright, at the present time there is a baby—”