She never
lost her temper, and one of the most terrible things about her was her
absolute calm. She was utterly fearless, went to the dentist without a
tremor, and, at the age of six, fell downstairs, broke her leg, and so
lay until help arrived without a cry. She bullied and hurt anything or
anybody that came her way, but carried out her plans always with the
same deliberate abstraction as though she were obeying somebody's
orders. She never nourished revenge or resentment, and it seemed to be
her sense of humour (rather than any fierce or hostile feeling) that was
tickled when she hurt any one.
She was a child, apparently without imagination, but displayed, at a
very early period, a strangely sharpened perception of what her nurse
called "the uncanny." She frightened even her mother by the expression
that her face often wore of attention to something or somebody outside
her companion's perception.
"A broomstick is what she'll be flying away on one of these nights, you
mark my word," a nurse declared. "Little devil, she is, neither more nor
less. It isn't decent the way she sits on the floor looking right
through the wall into the next room, as you might say.
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