The day of the medical examination came, and Dr. Maudsley presented himself at the house. As usual Charlie was not there to wele the visitor. Hester had informed him of the doctor』s visit in her usual way (a letter left outside his rooms on a tray), and having heard no more about it, assumed quite correctly that he took no i iter.
The patient was in one of her sullen but uing moods. She al-owed herself to be led into the room where the examination took place, and submitted to being poked and prodded. Io open her mouth and stick out her tongue, she would not, but at least when the doctor tuck his fingers in her mouth and physically separated upper from lower jaw to peer in, she did not bite him. Her eyes slid away from him and his instruments; she seemed scarcely aware of him and his examination. She could not be io speak a single word.
Dr. Maudsley found his patient to be underweight and to have lice; otherwise she hysically healthy in every respect. Her psychological state, however, was more difficult to determine. Was the child, as John-he-dig implied, mentally defit? Or was the girl』s behavior caused by parental and lack of disciplihis was the view of the Missus, who, publicly at least, was ined always to absolve the twins.
These were not the only opinions the doctor had in mind when he examihe wild twin. The previous night in his own house, pipe in mouth, hand on fireplace, he had been musing aloud about the case (he enjoyed having his wife listen to him; it inspired him to greater eloquence), eing the instanisbehavior he had heard of. There had beehieving from villagers』 cottages, the destru of the tarden, the violence wrought upon Emmelihe fasation with matches. He had been p the possible explanations when the soft voice of his wife broke in. 「You don』t think she is simply wicked?」
For a moment he was too surprised at being interrupted to answer.
『It』s only a suggestion,「 she said with a wave of her hand, as if to dist her words. She had spoken mildly, but that hardly mattered. The fact that she had spoken at all was enough to give her words an edge.
And then there was Hester.
『What you must bear in mind,「 she had told him, 」is that in the absence of any strong parental attat, and with n guidance from any other quarter, the child』s development to date has been wholly shaped by the experience of twinness. Her sister is the one fixed and perma point in her sciousness; therefore her entire worldview will have been formed through the prism of their relationship.「
She was quite right, of course. He had no idea what book she had got it out of, but she must have read it closely, for she elaborated on the idea very sensibly. As he listened, he had been rather struck by her queer little voice. Despite its distinctively femich it had more than a little mase authority about it. She was articulate. She had an amusing habit of expressing views of her own with the same measured and as when she was explaining a theory by some authority she had read. And when she paused for breath at the end of a sentence, she would give him a quick look—he had found it discerting the first time, though now he thought it rather droll—to let him know whether he was allowed to speak or whether she inteo go on speaking herself.
『I must do some more research,「 he told Hester when they met to discuss the patient after the examination. 」And I shall certainly look very closely at the significe of her being a twi