Free The Wonder by J. D. Beresford Page B

whom this question was addressed. “I don’t care to make an exhibition of ’im.”
    “Quite right, quite right,” went on Challis, “but it is very necessary that the child should have air. I consider it very necessary, a matter of the first importance that the child should have air,” he repeated. His gaze had shifted back to the cradle again. The child lay with open eyes, staring up at the ceiling.
    “Now, there is an excellent cottage at Pym which I will have put in repair for you at once,” continued Challis. “It is one of two together, but next door there are only old Metcalfe and his wife and daughter, who will give you no trouble. And really, Mrs. Stott,” he tore his regard from the cradle for a moment, “there is no reason in the world why you should fear the attention of your neighbours. Here, in Stoke, I admit, they have been under a complete misapprehension, but I fancy that there were special reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours, and you need not, I’m sure, fear their criticism.”
    “They got one idiot there, already,” Stott remarked somewhat sulkily.
    “You surely do not regard your own child as likely to develop into an idiot, Stott!” Challis’s tone was one of rebuke.
    Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered uncertainly in the direction of the cradle. “Dr. O’Connell says ’twill,” he said.
    “When did he see the child last?” asked Challis.
    “Not since ’twere a week old, sir,” replied Ellen.
    “In that case his authority goes for nothing, and, then, by the way, I suppose the child has not been vaccinated?”
    “Not yet, sir.”
    “Better have that done. Get Walters. I’ll make myself responsible. I’ll get him to come.”
    Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts should move to Pym in February.
    When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott looked wistfully at her husband.
    “You ain’t fair to the child, George,” she said. “There’s more than you or any one sees, more than Mr. Challis, even.”
    Stott stared moodily into the fire.
    “And it won’t be so out of the way far for you, at Pym, with your bike,” she continued; “and we can’t stop ’ere.”
    “We might ’a took a place in Ailesworth,” said Stott.
    “But it’ll be so much ’ealthier for ’im up at Pym,” protested Ellen. “It’ll be fine air up there for ’im.”
    “Oh! ’ im . Yes, all right for ’ im ,” said Stott, and spat into the fire. Then he took his cap and went out. He kept his eyes away from the cradle.
IV
    Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms were in Harley Street, and he did not practise in his own neighbourhood; nevertheless he vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.
    “Well?” asked Challis a few days later, “what do you make of him, Walters? No clichés, now, and no professional jargon.”
    “Candidly, I don’t know,” replied Walters, after a thoughtful interval.
    “How many times have you seen him?”
    “Four, altogether.”
    “Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of thing?”
    “Splendid.”
    “Did he look you in the eyes?”
    “Once, only once, the first time I visited the house.”
    Challis nodded. “My own experience, exactly. And did you return that look of his?”
    “Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant experience.”
    “Ah!”
    Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the interrogatory.
    “Challis!”
    “Yes?”
    “Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do you feel that you have no wish to see it again?”
    “Is it that exactly?” parried Challis.
    “If not, what is it?” asked Walters.
    “In my own case,” said Challis, “I can find an analogy only in my attitude towards my ‘head’ at school. In his presence I was always intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see something of the same