But this conversation with Jerry had warned me that the time was approaching when the boy would want to think for himself.  Already in our nature-talks some of his questions had embarrassed me.  He had seen birds hatched from their eggs and had marveled at it.  The mammals and their young had mystified him and he had not been able to understand it.  I had reverted to the process of development of the embryo of the seed into a perfect plant.  I had waxed scientific, he had grown bewildered.  We had reached our impasse.  In the end we had compromised.  Unable to comprehend, Jerry had ascribed the propagation of the species to a miracle of God.  And since that was the precise truth I had been content to let the matter rest there.

But there was another problem that our conversation had suggested:  the choice of a vocation.  The proposition of the misguided Flynn had made me aware of the fact that I was already letting my charge drift toward the maws of the great unknown which began just beyond the Wall without a plan of life save that he should be a “gentleman.”  It occurred to me with alarming suddenness that the term “gentleman” was that frequently applied to persons who had no occupation or visible means of support.  Nowhere in John Benham’s instructions was there mention of any plan for a vocation.  Obviously if the old man had intended Jerry for a business career he would have said so, and the omission of any exact instructions convinced me that such an idea was furthest from John Benham’s thoughts.  It remained for me to decide the matter in the best way that I could, for determined I was that Jerry, merely because of the possession of much worldly goods, should not be that bane of humanity and of nations, an idler.

At about this period Mr. Ballard the elder came down to Horsham Manor on one of his visits of inspection and inquiry.  He brought up the subject of his own accord.

“What do you think, Canby, what have you planned about Jerry’s future?”

I told him that my only ambition, so far, had been to make of Jerry a gentleman and a scholar.

“Yes, of course,” he nodded.  “That’s what you are here for.  But beyond that?”

“Nothing,” I replied.  “I am following my instructions from Mr. Benham.  They go no further than that.”

He frowned into the fire.

“That’s all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Jerry is now eighteen.  Do you realize that in three years he comes into possession of five million dollars, an income of over two hundred thousand a year; and that in seven years, at twenty-five, the executors must relinquish the entire estate?”

I had not thought of the imminence of this disaster.

“I was not aware, Mr. Ballard,” I said.  “At the present moment Jerry doesn’t know a dollar from a nickel.”

He opened his eyes wide and examined me as though he feared he had not heard correctly or as though it were blasphemy, heresy that I was uttering.