"Girls like that," he answered, "aren't very nice. They haven't much modesty. It's rather indecent, because sex is a personal thing and something you ought to keep for the one you're very fond of. You'll understand that better when you're older. But what I was going to tell you is this. When you were little more than a mass of plasm inside your mother, I put a medicine in her blood that I had discovered. I did it with a hypodermic needle. That medicine changed you. It altered the structure of your bones and muscles and nerves and your blood. It made you into a different tissue from the weak fibre of ordinary people. Then--when you were born--you were strong. Did you ever watch an ant carry many times its weight? Or see a grasshopper jump fifty times its length? The insects have better muscles and nerves than we have. And I improved your body till it was relatively that strong. Can you understand that?"
"Sure. I'm like a man made out of iron instead of meat."
"That's it, Hugo. And, as you grow up, you've got to remember that. You're not an ordinary human being. When people find that out, they'll--they'll--"
"Because they fear you. So you see, you've got to be good and kind and considerate--to justify all that strength. Some day you'll find a use for it--a big, noble use--and then you can make it work and be proud of it. Until that day, you have to be humble like all the rest of us. You mustn't show off or do cheap tricks. Then you'd just be a clown. Wait your time, son, and you'll be glad of it. And--another thing--train your temper. You must never lose it. You can see what would happen if you did? Understand?"
"I guess I do. It's hard work--doin' all that."
"The stronger, the greater, you are, the harder life is for you. And you're the strongest of them all, Hugo."
The heart of the ten-year-old boy burned and vibrated. "And what about God?" he asked.
Danner looked into the darkened sky. "I don't know much about Him," he sighed.
Such was the soundest counsel that Hugo was given during his youth. Because it came to him accompanied by unadulterated truths that he was able to recognize, it exerted a profound effect on him. It is surprising that his father was the one to give it. Nevertheless, Professor Danner was the only person in all of Indian Creek who had sufficient imagination to perceive his son's problems and to reckon with them in any practical sense.