oked askance, I thought, at the figure on the
window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask if I was ready for
my supper.

"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.

"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.

"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the Wonder, but he shook his
head, got up and walked out of the room. I watched him cross the
farmyard and make his way over the Common.

"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy was out of sight, "that
child is what in America they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."

My landlady put her lips together, shook her head, and shivered
slightly. "He gives me the shudders," she said.

V

I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot to go out for a walk at
sunset. I sat and pondered until it was time for bed, and then I
pondered myself to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant
dreams.

The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs. Stott come over the Common
to fetch her milk from the farm. I waited until her business was done,
and then I went out and walked back with her.

"I want to understand about your son," I said by way of making an
opening.

She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly ever speaks to me, sir,"
she said.

I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand him?" I said.

"In some ways, sir," was her answer.

I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah! we none of us
understand him in all ways," I said, with a touch of patronage.

"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently agreed to that statement
without qualification.

"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When he grows up, I mean?"

"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."

I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the
previous day. "He never speaks of his future?" I said feebly.

"No, sir."

There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of
hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go
back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had
something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.

"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked vaguely.

Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.

"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said, "but there is a way you
could 'elp if you would. 'E 'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but
I've been opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast, sir, if you
know what I mean, and _'e_" (she differentiated her pronoun