‘On her recovery from the torpor she appeared to have forgotten nearly all her previous knowledge: everything seemed new to her, and she did not recognise a single individual, not even her nearest relatives. In her behaviour she was restless and inattentive, but very lively and cheerful: she was delighted with everything she saw and heard, and altogether resembled a child more than a grown person. At first it was scarcely possible to engage her in conversation: in place of answering a question she repeated it aloud in the same words in which it was put. At first she had very few words. She often made one word answer for all others which were in any way allied to it: thus, in place of tea she would ask for juice. She once or twice had dreams, which she afterwards related to her friends, and she seemed quite aware of the difference betwixt a dream and a reality.’
‘Now mark this,’ continued the surgeon, looking at me over his glasses; and he then read:—
‘After a time Mrs. H—— was able to return to her home in England, where she passed the rest of her life happily with her husband. She was in the habit of corresponding by letter with her friends at a distance, and lived on the most agreeable terms with her immediate neighbours, by whom she was held in much regard on account of her kindly nature and charitable work.’
‘So you see,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘that the poor thing got quite well.’
‘Is that a good book?’ said I, looking at it.
‘It is a first-rate book,’ he answered.
‘But the woman’s memory was not utterly gone, as mine is.’
‘She was far worse than you,’ said he. ‘Be of good cheer. Think of your brain as a theatre. The curtain has come down with a run, and the gentleman whose business it is to wind it up is drunk, or absent through illness. We’ll rout him out by-and-by, and the curtain will rise again. And now sit up, if you please, that I may look at your head.’
He was abrupt and off-hand in his speech, with something of the wag in him, but already was I sensible that there was an abundance of good-nature and of kindly feeling underlying his manner. He carefully renewed the plaister and examined the injured brow, then dressed it with some salve and bandaged it with a tender hand. I asked him if I was disfigured.