"Oh, I want you to pass on a discovery of mine; something I've got out in the garage."
"A pup?" Minga was politely interrogative.
Sard bent to shift gears; she smiled cryptically. "No, no, not a dog; but I picked it up and brought it home the way one would a badly used dog. It's partly Aunt Reely's pet, too," added Sard gravely; "she gives him advice, but I found him."
"A turtle," guessed Minga idly; "one doesn't give a turtle advice, though, does one? Oh," she turned an accusing face on her friend, "I'll bet it is just that horrid old man, a plain, dirty tramp." Immediately the little figure in scarlet lost interest, and as the car glided softly along the river road and up toward the little valley village of Morris, Sard frowned thoughtfully. "Just the same, I want you to pass on him," said the older girl; "he's rather a strange specimen, Minga." Asked her friend abruptly, "Have you ever seen a case of amnesia?"
Minga, wrinkling her brows, remembered that there was a girl who studied too hard at college and she had amnesia and couldn't remember to put her clothes on properly. "That," said Minga, with emphasis, "made me decide right then that I would never study too hard. But I never saw any amnesia," added Minga. "Is it anything like asthma?"
"It's like the light going out of your head, I guess," said Sard, "and the paths of your mind don't lead home; don't lead to the You that knows you; and it will make all the yous suddenly run into each other, and you are suddenly lost. For instance, I could have amnesia so that I could see you, but there wouldn't be any me. You know, the recognition part of me would be all thin air, and objects stuck in it like houses and men and women that meant nothing. I've been reading it up," explained Sard.
Minga shivered. "Don't describe such awful things," she begged.
"But it's interesting." There was a reflective light in the other's eyes. "I was born to be a psychologist, I guess, because such things interest me. Think, for instance, of not knowing who one is, or one's own people! Or perhaps standing right in front of one's home and not recognizing it! Such things happen. Like doors closing on the room where the mind used to live, and turning the mind out into a cold new world where it can't take hold, where it has words and intelligence, but no recognitions."
"Wow!" Minga twisted an unwilling shoulder. "Stop talking about it. Shut up!"