“Well?” asked Challis, “what do you make of him?”
“Is he reading or pretending to read?” parried Lewes. “Do you think it possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does not refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the many unknown words which must occur in every definition.”
“I know. I had noticed that.”
“Then you think he is humbugging—pretending to read?”
“No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for one thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child is not yet five years old.”
“What is your explanation, then?”
“I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant.”
Lewes did not grasp Challis’s intention. “Even so ...” he began.
“And,” continued Challis, “I am wondering whether, if that is the case, he is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and, so to speak, collate its contents later, in his mind.”
“Oh! Sir!” Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken seriously. “Surely, you can’t mean that.” There was something in Lewes’s tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.