"Two besides me."
"Besides you? Why, Will!"
"Oh, I didn't say that I recommended him to an asylum. Not at all. If he had fought it, I could have found reasons on the other side."
"Like a corporation lawyer!"
"Oh, well...."
He began rolling cigarettes; they were his one weakness.
"The question is," he said slowly, "what is insanity? Medical insanity's one job, legal insanity's another.... Suppose your butler was convinced of the fact that he was Napoleon: would you care a continental, provided he buttlered as per contract? So long as he didn't shout, 'Tête d'armée!' as he passed the salad, what would you care? It's quite possible that he has some such delusion, for all you know."
"Of course, I see that."
"There was that old nurse of ours—Esther, you know? To the day of her death she swore that the druggist on the corner of Hartwell Street was Charley Ross—the child that was abducted long ago. You couldn't argue her out of it nor laugh her out of it—she said she had a feeling. She brought us up in it, you know, and for years I believed that he was Charley Ross and regarded him with veneration. She was a perfectly good nurse, just the same. But that idiotic fancy was part of her life—strengthened with every year of her life. It was an idée fixe."
"Well?"