"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said. I had intended to question him further, to urge him to explain, but it came to me that it would be quite hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning questions of a child? Here I was the child, though a child of slightly advanced development. I could appreciate that it was useless to persist in a futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only be given in terms that I could not comprehend. Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then with that obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-perfection and refuses to relinquish it, I said: "I wish you could explain yourself; not on this particular point of philosophy, but your life----" I stopped, because I did not know how to phrase my demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to learn? "That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There are no data." I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation in a much wider sense than I had intended, and I took him up on this. "But haven't you any hypothesis?" "I cannot work on the system of trial and error," replied the Wonder. Our conversation went no further this afternoon, for Mrs. Berridge came in to lay the cloth. She looked 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."