beings."

"Doesn't frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs. East," said Mrs. Slater;
"not that I don't prefer the town, mind you."

It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain
dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open
carriage, with her black bonnet, her coachman, and her fine, straight
back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best--none of your
mushroom families come from Lord knows where--it was a position of
trust, and as such Mrs. Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her
son Henry with more than a mother's love; he was as unlike his poor
father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would
never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had
been, from his birth, a "little queer, bless his heart," and Mrs. Slater
attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth,
Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over
the head with a chair. "Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the
child coming, ''Enery,' I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as
well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought."

Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set
body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although
he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend
the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the
fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue
depths there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations,
strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been
known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass
slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come