was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in
due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings,
after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either
party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called
"the real good, don't you know?" of the child. The only thing done,
however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she
fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the
awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or
from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in.

The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents,
corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete
vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was
literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her
nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms
and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened
her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy
rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of
concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious
spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult,
and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so.
Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed
no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and
when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she
began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen.
When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before
her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real
contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she
practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much.
It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion