"There is a norm——" he began in a voice not quite his own.
"Ah," I cried, interrupting him, and throwing up my hands, "there is indeed. But why, I ask myself, so vast a number of examples of it!"
It was as if a voice within were prompting me. Perhaps the excitement of Fanny's homecoming was partly to blame. "I sit at my window here and watch the passers-by. Norms, in mere size, Dr Phelps, every one of them, if you allow for the few little defects in the—the moulding, you know. And just think what London must be like. Why, nobody can be noticeable, there."
"But surely," Dr Phelps smiled indulgently, though his eyelashes seemed to be in the way, "surely variety is possible, without—er—excess. Indeed there must be variety in order to arrive at our norm, mustn't there?"
"You'd be astonished," I assured him, "how slight the differences really are. A few inches or ounces; red or black or fawn; and age, and sex, of course; that's all. Now, isn't it true, Dr Phelps, that almost any twenty women—unselected, you know—would weigh about a ton? And surely there's no particular reason why just human shells should weigh as much as that. We are not lobsters. And yet, do you know, I have watched, and they really seem to enjoy being the same as one another. One would think they tried to be—manners and habits, knowledge and victuals, hats and boots, everything. And if on the outside, I suppose on the inside, too. What a mysterious thing it seems. All of them thinking pretty much the same: Norm-Thoughts, you know; just five-foot-fivers. After all, one wouldn't so much mind the monotonous packages, if the contents were different. 'Forty feeding like one'—who said that? Now, truly, Dr Phelps, don't you feel?—— It would, of course, be very serious at first for their mothers and fathers if all the little human babies here came midgets, but it would be amusing, too, wouldn't it?... And it isn't quite my own idea, either."
Dr Phelps cleared his throat, and looked at his watch. "But surely," he said, with a peculiar emphasis which I have noticed men are apt to make when my sex asks intelligent or unintelligent questions: "Surely you and I are understanding one another. I try to make myself clear to you. So extremes can meet; at least I hope so." He gave me a charming little awkward bow. "Tell me, then, what is this peculiar difference you are so anxious about? You wouldn't like a pygmy England, a pygmy Universe, now, would you, Miss M.?"
It was a great pity. A pygmy England—the thought dazzled me. In a few minutes Dr Phelps would perhaps have set all my doubts at rest. But at that moment Miss Bowater came in with the tea, and the talk took quite another turn. She just made it Fanny's size. Even Dr Phelps looked a great deal handsomer in her company. More sociable. Nor were we to remain "three's none." She had finished but one slice of toast over my fire, and inflamed but one cheek, when a more protracted but far less vigorous knock than Dr Phelps's on the door summoned her out of the room again. And a minute or two afterwards our tea-party became one of four, and its sexes (in number, at any rate) equally matched.
By a happy coincidence, just as Good King Wenceslas had looked out on the Feast of Stephen, so Mr Crimble, the curate-in-charge at St Peter's, had looked in. By his "Ah, Phelps!" it was evident that our guests were well acquainted with one another; and Fanny and I were soon enjoying a tea enriched by the cream of local society. Mr Crimble had mild dark eyes, gold spectacles, rather full red lips, and a voice that reminded me of raspberries. I think he had heard of me, for he was very attentive, and handled my small cup and saucer with remarkable, if rather conspicuous, ingenuity.
Candles were lit. The talk soon became animated. From the weather of this Christmas we passed to the weather of last, to Dr Phelps's prospects of skating, and thence to the good old times, to Mr Pickwick, to our respective childish beliefs in Santa Claus, stockings, and to credulous parents. Fanny repeated some of the naïve remarks made by her pupils, and Mr Crimble capped them with a collection of biblical bons mots culled in his Sunday School. I couldn't glance fast enough from one to the other. Dr Phelps steadily munched and watched Mr Crimble. He in turn told us of a patient of his, a Mrs Hall, who, poor old creature, was 101, and enjoyed nothing better than playing at "Old Soldier" with a small grandson.