Mrs. Grubb sank down in the rocking-chair in despair. ‘Don’t I need some consideration as well as that little imbecile? Am I, with my ambitions and aspirations, to be for ever hampered by these three nightmares of children? Oh, if I could once get an astral body, I would stay in it, you may be sure!’
‘You do not absolutely need Lisa yourself,’ argued Mary. ‘It is the twins to whom she has been indispensable. Provide for them in some way, and she is freed from a responsibility for which she is not, and never was, fit. It is a miracle that some tragedy has not come out of this daily companionship of three such passionate, irresponsible creatures.’
‘Some tragedy will come out of it yet,’ said Mrs. Grubb gloomily, ‘if I am not freed from the shackles that keep me in daily slavery. The twins are as likely to go to the gallows as anywhere; and as for Lisa, she would be a good deal better off dead than alive, as Mrs. Sylvester says.’
‘That isn’t for us to decide,’ said Mistress Mary soberly. ‘I might have been careless and impertinent enough to say it a year ago, but not now. Lisa has all along been the victim of cruel circumstances. Wherever she has been sinned against through ignorance, it is possible, barely possible, that the fault may be atoned for; but any neglect of duty now would be a criminal offence. It does not behove us to be too scornful when we remember that the taint (fortunately a slight one) transmitted to poor little Lisa existed in greater or less degree in Handel and Molière, Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Petrarch, and Mohammed. The world is a good deal richer for them, certainly.’
Mrs. Grubb elevated her head, the light of interest dawned in her eye, and she whipped her notebook out of her pocket.
‘Is that a fact?’ she asked excitedly.
‘It is a fact.’
‘Is it generally known?’
‘It must be known by all who have any interest in the education of defective persons, since it touches one of the bug-bears which they have to fight.’
‘Is there any society in this city devoted to the study of such problems?’