up, and saying 'Mum,'
did not render these performances any the less astounding. And when,
half a year later, the child could point to a letter and identify it
plainly and unmistakably--'O'--the parents' cup was full. The mother
admitted frankly that she had not expected this final proof of
understanding. Aunt Annie and father pretended not to be surprised, but
it was a pretence merely. Why, it seemed scarcely a month since the
miraculous child had not even sense enough to take milk out of a spoon!
And here he was identifying 'O' every time he tried, with the absolute
assurance of a philologist! True, he had once or twice shrieked 'O'
while putting a finger on 'Q,' but that was the fault of the printers,
who had printed the tail too small.

After that the miracles had followed one another so rapidly, each more
amazing than the last, that the watchers had unaffectedly abandoned
themselves to an attitude of permanent delighted astonishment. They
lived in a world of magic. And their entire existence was based on the
tacit assumption--tacit because the truth of it was so manifest--that
their boy was the most prodigious boy that ever was. He went into
knickerbockers. He learnt hymns. He went to school--and came back alive
at the end of the first day and said he had enjoyed it! Certainly, other
boys went to school. Yes, but there was something special, something
indefinable, something incredible, about Henry's going to school that
separated his case from all the other cases, and made it precious in its
wonder. And he began to study arithmetic, geometry, geography, history,
chemistry, drawing, Latin, French, mensuration, composition, physics,
Scripture, and fencing. His singular brain could grapple simultaneously
with these multifarious subjects. And all the time he was growing,
growing, growing. More than anything else it was his growth that
stupefied and confounded and enchanted his mother. His limbs were
enormous to her, and the breadth of his shoulders and the altitude of
his head. It puzzled her to imagine where the flesh came from. Already
he was as tail as she, and up to Aunt Annie's lips, and up to his
father's shoulder. She simply adored his colossal bigness. But somehow
the fact that a giant was attending the Bloomsbury Middle School never
leaked out.

'What's this?' Henry demanded, mystified, as he sat down to breakfast.
There was a silence.

'What's what?' said his father gruffly. 'Get your breakfast.'

'Oh m