From the station I made a phone call to the bookshop. My father could not hide his disappoi when I told him I would not be ing home. 「Your mother will be sorry,」 he said.
『Will she?「
『Of course she will.「
『I have to go back. I think I might have fouer.「
『Where?「
『They have found bo Angelfield.「
『Bones?「
『One of the builders discovered them when he was excavating the library today.「
『Gracious.「
『They are bound to get in touch with Miss Wio ask her about it. And her sister is dying. I 』t leave her on her own up there. She needs me.「
『I see.「 His voice was serious.
『Don』t tell Mother,「 I warned him, 」but Miss Winter and her sister ire twins.「
He was silent. Then he just said, 「You will take care, won』t you, Margaret?」
***A quarter of an hour later I had settled into my seat o the window and was takier』s diary out of my pocket.
I should like to uand a great deal more about optics. Sitting with Mrs. Dunne in the drawing room going over meal plans for the week, I caught sight of a sudden movement in the mirror. 「Emmeline!」 I exclaimed, irritated, for she was not supposed to be in the house at all, but outside, getting her daily exercise and fresh air. It was my own mistake, of course, for I had only to look out of the window to see that she was outside, and her sister, too, playing nicely for once. What I had seen, caught a misleading glimpse of, to be precise, must have been a flash of sunlight e in the window and reflected in the mirror. On refle (On refle! An unintended drollery!), it is the psychology of seeing that caused my misapprehension, as much as any strangeness in the ws of the optical world. For being used to seeing the twins wandering about the house in places I would not expect them to be, and at times when I would expect them to be elsewhere, I have fallen into the habit of interpreting every movement out of the er of my eye as evidence of their presence. Hence a flash of sunlight reflected in a mirror presents itself in a very ving mao the mind as a girl in a white dress. To guard against errors such as this, one would have to teaeself to view everything without preception, to abandon all habitual modes of thought. There is much to be said in favor of su attitude in principle. The freshness of mind! The virginal respoo the world! So much sce has at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be uood for turies. However, in ordinary life, one ot live by such principles. Imagihe time it would take if every aspect of experience had to be scrutinized afresh every minute of every day. No; in order to free ourselves from the mu is essential that we delegate much of our interpretation of the world to that lower area of the mind that deals with the presumed, the assumed, the probable. Even though it sometimes leads us astray and causes us to misinterpret a flash of sunlight as a girl in a white dress, whewo things are as unlike as two things be.
Mrs. Dunnes mind does wander sometimes. I fear she took in very little of our versation about meal plans, and we shall have to go over the whole thing again tomorrow.
I have a little plan regarding my activities here and the doctor.
I have told him at great length of my belief that Adeline demonstrates a type of mental disturbahat I have her entered nor read about before. I mentiohe papers I have been reading about twins and the associated developmental problems,