The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth

He indicated the closed door.

"Cousin Jane? She simply knows nothing about it. Doesn't connect us with it and won't read the articles. 'Gigantic wasps!' she says, 'I haven't patience to read the papers.'"

"That's very fortunate," said Redwood.

"I suppose – Mrs. Redwood – ?"

"No," said Redwood, "just at present it happens – she's terribly worried about the child. You know, he keeps on."

"Growing?"

"Yes. Put on forty-one ounces in ten days. Weighs nearly four stone. And only six months old! Naturally rather alarming."

"Healthy?"

"Vigorous. His nurse is leaving because he kicks so forcibly. And everything, of course, shockingly outgrown. Everything, you know, has had to be made fresh, clothes and everything. Perambulator – light affair – broke one wheel, and the youngster had to be brought home on the milkman's hand-truck. Yes. Quite a crowd… And we've put Georgina Phyllis back into his cot and put him into the bed of Georgina Phyllis. His mother – naturally alarmed. Proud at first and inclined to praise Winkles. Not now. Feels the thing can't be wholesome. You know."

"I imagined you were going to put him on diminishing doses."

"I tried it."

"Didn't it work?"

"Howls. In the ordinary way the cry of a child is loud and distressing; it is for the good of the species that this should be so – but since he has been on the Herakleophorbia treatment – "

"Mm," said Bensington, regarding his fingers with more resignation than he had hitherto displayed.

"Practically the thing must come out. People will hear of this child, connect it up with our hens and things, and the whole thing will come round to my wife… How she will take it I haven't the remotest idea."

"It is difficult," said Mr. Bensington, "to form any plan – certainly."

He removed his glasses and wiped them carefully.

"It is another instance," he generalised, "of the thing that is continually happening. We – if indeed I may presume to the adjective —scientific men – we work of course always for a theoretical result – a purely theoretical result. But, incidentally, we do set forces in operation —new forces. We mustn't control them – and nobody else can. Practically, Redwood, the thing is out of our hands. We supply the material – "

"And they," said Redwood, turning to the window, "get the experience."

"So far as this trouble down in Kent goes I am not disposed to worry further."

"Unless they worry us."

"Exactly. And if they like to muddle about with solicitors and pettifoggers and legal obstructions and weighty considerations of the tomfool order, until they have got a number of new gigantic species of vermin well established – Things always have been in a muddle, Redwood."

Redwood traced a twisted, tangled line in the air.

"And our real interest lies at present with your boy."

Redwood turned about and came and stared at his collaborator.

"What do you think of him, Bensington? You can look at this business with a greater detachment than I can. What am I to do about him?"

"Go on feeding him."

"On Herakleophorbia?"

"On Herakleophorbia."

"And then he'll grow."

"He'll grow, as far as I can calculate from the hens and the wasps, to the height of about five-and-thirty feet – with everything in proportion – "

"And then what'll he do?"

"That," said Mr. Bensington, "is just what makes the whole thing so interesting."

"Confound it, man! Think of his clothes."

"And when he's grown up," said Redwood, "he'll only be one solitary Gulliver in a pigmy world."

Mr. Bensington's eye over his gold rim was pregnant.

"Why solitary?" he said, and repeated still more darkly, "Why solitary?"

"But you don't propose – ?"

"I said," said Mr. Bensington, with the self-complacency of a man who has produced a good significant saying, "Why solitary?"

"Meaning that one might bring up other children – ?"

"Meaning nothing beyond my inquiry."

Redwood began to walk about the room. "Of course," he said, "one might – But still! What are we coming to?"

Bensington evidently enjoyed his line of high intellectual detachment. "The thing that interests me most, Redwood, of all this, is to think that his brain at the top of him will also, so far as my reasoning goes, be five-and-thirty feet or so above our level… What's the matter?"

Redwood stood at the window and stared at a news placard on a paper-cart that rattled up the street.

"What's the matter?" repeated Bensington, rising.

Redwood exclaimed violently.

"What is it?" said Bensington.

"Get a paper," said Redwood, moving doorward.

"Why?"

"Get a paper. Something – I didn't quite catch – Gigantic rats – !"