and a surgeon sees me. He is a friend of my uncle''s and has heard me read. He fingers the soft flesh beneath my jaw, puts his thumbs to my cheeks, draws down my eye-lids. ''Are you troubled,'' he says, ''with uncommon thoughts? Well, we must expect that. You are an uncommon girl.'' He strokes my hand and prescribes me a medicine—a single drop to be taken in a cup of water—''for restlessness''. Barbara puts out the mixture, while Mrs Stiles looks on.
Then Barbara leaves me, to be married, and I am given another maid. Her name is Agnes. She is small, and slight as a bird—one of those little, little birds that men bring down with nets. She has red hair and white skin marked with freckles, like paper foxed with damp. She is fifteen, innocent as butter. She thinks my uncle kind. She thinks me kind, at first. She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it. When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behind her tears, keeps still its look of mine. I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.
So my life passes. You might suppose I would not know enough of ordinary things, to know it queer. But I read other books besides my uncle''s; and overhear the talk of servants, and catch their looks, and so, by that—by the curious and pitying glances of parlourmaids and grooms!—I see well enough the oddity I have become.