all, but you are like the people outside. I knew
that as soon as I saw you, and I saw that they were going to let you
eat their food. I almost wish I had let you do it now--no, I don't
wish so, either. It would be mean to let you, and I don't want you to,
anyway. You did come from outside, didn't you? Well, then, you must
not eat or drink the least bit of anything while you are here, except
what I bring you. All that I bring you is from outside. If you eat a
crumb or drink a drop of anything that they have here, you can never
get out again."

"But they all get out," said Kathleen. "They were all outside when I
saw them first."

"Oh, yes," Terence answered, "they are different. They can go out and
come in whenever they like; but if anybody from outside eats anything
here, he can never go out again. It is that way with me, too, for I am
different from the Good People, though I don't know whether I came
from outside or not."

"You don't know whether you came from outside or not?"

"No. I came here when I was a little baby. I have often asked them how
I came here, but they never would tell me. I have lived here ever
since I can remember. Have you a father and a mother?"

"My mother is dead," Kathleen answered; "I have a father."

"Yes," said Terence, as if he were trying to work out a puzzle.
"Nearly all the people outside seem to have fathers and mothers. I
never had either. I have always lived here, but nobody here is my
father or my mother, and I don't know how I came here. I have been
here so long, and yet it seems so strange to me. This is my only home,
and yet I never feel at home in it. I always feel as if I belonged
somewhere else. I see the people outside and I feel as if I belonged
with them more than here, yet I have never been outside this place one
single night."

"You go out often in the daytime, then?" Kathleen asked.

"Oh, yes; I go out every day, almost, and I go to school. Have you
been to school?"

"Why, of course," Kathleen answered; "doesn't everybody have to go to
school?"

"These people here never go to school," Terence said. "I am the only
one who goes, and then I have to try to teach them what I have
learned. Do you go home from school and try to teach your father what
you have learned?"

"Why, no, indeed," said Kathleen; "what a funny idea!"

"Sometimes it seems funny to me too," Terence said, "but you see I
can't tell whether it is funny or not, because I know so little about
the