Chapter 13 - Page 2

"I see," and
popped back, clapping shut the door behind her.

Dinner was eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room.

"Now," said Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He
put on his round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began
cautiously to turn over the pages of his loose and still
fragmentary book. He found his place at last. "Shall I begin?"
he asked, looking up.

"Do," said Priscilla, yawning.

In the midst of an attentive silence Mr. Wimbush gave a little
preliminary cough and started to read.

"The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the
name of Lapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small
baby, weighing not more than three pounds at birth, but from the
first he was sturdy and healthy. In honour of his maternal
grandfather, Sir Hercules Occam of Bishop's Occam, he was
christened Hercules. His mother, like many other mothers, kept a
notebook, in which his progress from month to month was recorded.
He walked at ten months, and before his second year was out he
had learnt to speak a number of words. At three years he weighed
but twenty-four pounds, and at six, though he could read and
write perfectly and showed a remarkable aptitude for music, he
was no larger and heavier than a well-grown child of two.
Meanwhile, his mother had borne two other children, a boy and a
girl, one of whom died of croup during infancy, while the other
was carried off by smallpox before it reached the age of five.
Hercules remained the only surviving child.

"On his twelfth birthday Hercules was still only three feet and
two inches in height. His head, which was very handsome and
nobly shaped, was too big for his body, but otherwise he was
exquisitely proportioned, and, for his size, of great strength
and agility. His parents, in the hope of making him grow,
consulted all the most eminent physicians of the time. Their
various prescriptions were followed to the letter, but in vain.
One ordered a very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; a third
constructed a little rack, modelled on those employed by the Holy
Inquisition, on which young Hercules was stretched, with
excruciating torments, for half an hour every morning and
evening. In the course of the next three years Hercules gained
perhaps two inches. After that his growth stopped completely,
and he remained for the rest of his life a pigmy of three feet
and four inches. His father, who had built the most extravagant
hopes upon his son, planning for him in his imagination a
military career equal to that of Marlborough, found himself a
disappointed man. 'I have brought an abortion into the world,'
he would say, and he took so violent a dislike to his son that
the