ther room.

"Well?" asked Challis, "what do you make of him?"

"Is he reading or pretending to read?" parried Lewes. "Do you think it
possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has
admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does
not refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the
many unknown words which must occur even in the introduction."

"I know. I had noticed that."

"Then you think he _is_ humbugging--pretending to read?"

"No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for
one thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child
is not yet five years old."

"What is your explanation, then?"

"I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the
memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant."

Lewes did not grasp Challis's intention. "Even so ..." he began.

"And," continued Challis, "I am wondering whether, if that is the case,
he is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and,
so to speak, collate its contents later, in his mind."

"Oh! Sir!" Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken
seriously. "Surely, you can't mean that." There was something in Lewes's
tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.

Challis was pacing up and down the library, his hands clasped behind
him. "Yes, I mean it," he said, without looking up. "I put it forward as
a serious theory, worthy of full consideration."

Lewes sneered. "Oh, surely not, sir," he said.

Challis stopped and faced him. "Why not, Lewes; why not?" he asked, with
a kindly smile. "Think of the gap which separates your intellectual
powers from those of a Polynesian savage. Why, after all, should it be
impossible that this child's powers should equally transcend our own? A
freak, if you will, an abnormality, a curious effect of nature's, like
the giant puff-ball--but still----"

"Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a
theoretical point of view," argued Lewes, "but I think you are
theorising on altogether insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit
that such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not yet found
the indications of such a power in the child."

Challis resumed his pacing. "Quite, quite," he assented; "your method
is perfectly correct--perfectly correct. We must wait."

At twelve o'clock Challis brought a glass of milk and some biscuits,