CHAPTER III
THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT
I
Stott maintained an obstinate silence as we walked together up to the Common, a stretch of comparatively open ground on the plateau of the hill. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as he had walked out from Ailesworth with me nearly three years before, but his mood was changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed, perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning with curiosity. Now that I was released from the thrall of the child's presence, I was eager to hear all there was to tell of its history.
Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of three that guarded a shallow, muddy pond skimmed with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a cigarette, but seemed disinclined to break the silence.
I found nothing better to say than a repetition of the old phrase. "That's a very remarkable baby of yours, Stott," I said.
"Ah!" he replied, his usual substitute for "yes," and he picked up a piece of dead wood and threw it into the little pond.
"How old is he?" I asked.
"Nearly two year."
"Can he ..." I paused; my imagination was reconstructing the scene of the railway carriage, and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the rubicund man when he had asked the same question. "Can he ... can he talk?" It seemed so absurd a question to ask, yet it was essentially a natural question in the circumstances.