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presence there destroyed the discipline of the other children. They were always popping up
and peering at him, and every time he spoke they laughed together. His voice was so odd! So
they let him stay away.
Nor did they persist in pressing him to come to church, for his vast proportions were of little
help to devotion. Yet there they might have had an easier task; there are good reasons for
guessing there were the germs of religious feeling somewhere in that big carcase. The music
perhaps drew him. He was often in the churchyard on a Sunday morning, picking his way softly
among the graves after the congregation had gone in, and he would sit the whole service out
beside the porch, listening as one listens outside a hive of bees.
At first he showed a certain want of tact; the people inside would hear his great feet crunch
restlessly round their place of worship, or become aware of his dim face peering in through the
stained glass, half curious, half envious, and at times some simple hymn would catch him
unawares, and he would howl lugubriously in a gigantic attempt at unison. Whereupon little
Sloppet, who was organ-blower and verger and beadle and sexton and bell-ringer on Sundays,
besides being postman and chimney-sweep all the week, would go out very briskly and
valiantly and send him mournfully away. Sloppet, I am glad to say, felt it in his more
thoughtful moments at any rate. It was like sending a dog home when you start out for a walk,
he told me.
But the intellectual and moral training of young Caddles, though fragmentary, was explicit.
From the first, Vicar, mother, and all the world, combined to make it clear to him that his giant
strength was not for use. It was a misfortune that he had to make the best of. He had to mind
what was told him, do what was set him, be careful never to break anything nor hurt anything.
Particularly he must not go treading on things or jostling against things or jumping about. He
had to salute the gentlefolks respectful and be grateful for the food and clothing they spared
him out of their riches. And he learnt all these things submissively, being by nature and habit a
teachable creature and only by food and accident gigantic.
For Lady Wondershoot, in these early days, he displayed the profoundest awe. She found she
could talk to him best when she was in short skirts and had her dog-whip, and she gesticulated
with that and was always a little contemptuous and shrill. But sometimes the Vicar played
master a minute, middle-aged, rather breathless David pelting a childish Goliath with
reproof and reproach and dictatorial command. The monster was now so big that it seems it
was impossible for any one to remember he was after all only a child of seven, with all a child s
desire for notice and amusement and fresh experience, with all a child s craving for response,
attention and affection, and all a child s capacity for dependence and unrestricted dulness and
misery.
The Vicar, walking down the village road some sunlit morning, would encounter an ungainly
eighteen feet of the Inexplicable, as fantastic and unpleasant to him as some new form of
Dissent, as it padded fitfully along with craning neck, seeking, always seeking the two primary
needs of childhood something to eat and something with which to play.
There would come a look of furtive respect into the creature s eyes and an attempt to touch the
matted forelock.
In a limited way the Vicar had an imagination at any rate, the remains of one and with
young Caddles it took the line of developing the huge possibilities of personal injury such vast
muscles must possess. Suppose a sudden madness ! Suppose a mere lapse into disrespect
! However, the truly brave man is not the man who does not feel fear but the man who
overcomes it. Every time and always the Vicar got his imagination under. And he used always
to address young Caddles stoutly in a good clear service tenor.
Being a good boy, Albert Edward?
And the young giant, edging closer to the wall and blushing deeply, would answer, Yessir
trying.
Mind you do, said the Vicar, and would go past him with at most a slight acceleration of his
breathing. And out of respect for his manhood he made it a rule, whatever he might fancy,
never to look back at the danger, when once it was passed.
In a fitful manner the Vicar would give young Caddles private tuition. He never taught the
monster to read it was not needed; but he taught him the more important points of the
Catechism his duty to his neighbour for example, and of that Deity who would punish
Caddles with extreme vindictiveness if ever he ventured to disobey the Vicar and Lady
Wondershoot. The lessons would go on in the Vicar s yard, and passers-by would hear that
great cranky childish voice droning out the essential teachings of the Established Church.
To onner n bey the King and allooer put nthority under im. To s bmit meself t all my gov ners,
teachers, spir shall pastors an masters. To order myself lowly n rev rently t all my betters
Presently it became evident that the effect of the growing giant on unaccustomed horses was
like that of a camel, and he was told to keep off the highroad, not only near the shrubbery
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