He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstrated kindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentally gave him a rebate on the rent.
When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him at Challis Court.
I consented, but stipulated that I must be back at Pym by three o’clock to accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.
Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.
We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill—the habit of silence had grown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.
On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farm again after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I was strangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I should give up my walks with the Wonder, go away.... I smiled and said “Impossible,” as though that ended the matter.
Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone to listen to him. I remember his saying: “That problem is not for you or me or any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to add knowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence.”
The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said “There are no data,” when in the early days I had asked him whether he could say definitely if there was any future existence possible for us?
Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that every little item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man has accumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest step any man could possibly make.
“But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, from Victor Stott?”