wondering
if it was "fissy oil" that had made this big man so very big. If he,
Ted, were to take a great, great lot of fissy oil, would _he_ grow as
big and strong? Would he be able to cut the grass like David perhaps, to
run faster than Percy--to--to I don't know what--for at this moment Mr.
Brand's voice brought him back from his fancies.

"What an absent-minded little fellow he is," Mr. Brand was saying, for
he had been speaking to Ted two or three times without the child's
paying any attention.

"Not generally," said Ted's mother. "He is usually very wide-awake to
all that is going on. What are you thinking of, Ted, dear?"

"Yes," said Mr. Brand. "Tell us what you've got in your head. Are you
thinking that I'm a very tiny little man--the tiniest little man you
ever saw?"

"No," said Ted solemnly, without the least smile, at which his mother
was rather surprised. For, young though he was, Ted was usually very
quick at seeing a joke. But he just said "No," and stared again at Mr.
Brand, without another word.

"Then what were you thinking--that I'm the very _biggest_ man you ever
did see?"

"Ses," said Ted, gravely still, but with a certain light in his eyes
which encouraged Mr. Brand to continue his questions.

"And what more? Were you wishing you were as big as I am?"

Ted hesitated.

"I'd _rather_ fly," he said. "But Percy says nobody can fly. I'd like
to be big if I could get up very high."

"How high?" said Mr. Brand. "Up to the top of the mountain out there?"

"Is the mountain as high as the clouds?" asked Ted.

"Yes," said Mr. Brand; "when you're up at the very top, you can look
down on the clouds."

Ted looked rather puzzled.

"I'll tell you what," the gentleman went on, amused by the expression of
the child's face, "I'll tell you what--as I'm so big, supposing I take
you to the top of the mountain--we'll go this very afternoon. I'll take
a jug of cold water and a loaf of bread, and leave it with you there so
that you'll have something to eat, and then you can stay there quite
comfortable by yourself and find out all you want to know. You'd like
that, wouldn't you? to be all by yourself on the top of the mountain?"

He looked at Ted in a rather queer way as he said it. The truth was that
Mr. Brand, who though so big was not very old, was carried away by the
fun (to _him_) of watching the puzzled look on the child's face, and
forgot that what to him was a mere passing joke might be very differ