“Why can’t I be like other boys?” he once asked of Mr. Huntress, with a perplexed look on his fine face, and the gentleman kindly explained that, when he had been very young, some one or something must have struck him a blow on the head which had injured his brain, so that for years it had been the same as if sound asleep, and had only just waked up again; that his body had grown, but his mind had not. “Oh, I know,” Geoffrey returned, with a startled look, a new light coming into his eyes. “Jack threw a great stick of wood at me.” “What made him do that?” Mr. Huntress asked, eagerly. The boy bent his head, and seemed trying to recall the events of that dim past. “He came into the kitchen with a dreadful red face,” he said, “and he was very ugly to Margery—I can’t think about what. He put his hands around her neck, and she screamed. I ran up and struck him, and told him I’d tell my papa, and—that’s all I know,” he concluded, with a sigh. Mr. Huntress could imagine that the man was intoxicated, and being in a frenzy, he had perhaps seized a stick of wood from the hearth, thrown it at the child, and knocked him senseless. “What was Jack’s other name?” he asked. “Jack—Jack—” Geoffrey began, then shook his head hopelessly. “I can’t tell,” he concluded; and Mr. Huntress felt that it only annoyed him, and it would be useless to try to find out anything definite from him, so he let the matter drop. One day, after Geoffrey had been with the family some three months, he came in from the street looking flushed and angry. Seeking Gladys he besought her most piteously to teach him to read. Upon inquiring what prompted the request, she found that Geoffrey had been attracted by a glaring placard that had been pasted up somewhere on a building, and had asked some boys what it was. This had at once betrayed his woeful ignorance, for if he had even known his letters, he could at least have made out something of the nature of the bill, and they had tormented him unmercifully for being a simpleton. Gladys at once procured a primer and set herself at work to teach him. He proved to be a most diligent pupil, with great perseverance and a wonderful power for memorizing, for in a month he had mastered the whole of its contents. Mr. Huntress was astonished at his progress, and wanted to put him at once into school. But Geoffrey, who was developing rapidly in every way, shrank from the proposal, and begged his Uncle August, as he had been taught to call Mr. Huntress, to allow him to study at home. “They will laugh at me at school, for I shall have to go into classes with little boys only five or six years old,” he pleaded, with a crimson face. “But you must go to school some time, and you will have to begin with boys younger than yourself,” Mr. Huntress replied. “Won’t you keep on teaching me, Gladys?” Geoffrey asked, appealingly. “I will study hard and never trouble you by not having my lessons, and perhaps I can catch up with big boys by and by.”