Amazed but sympathetic to his condition, the professor gestured broadly. “Ladies, meet a persistent new friend. Your name, young sir…?”

“L-loyd,” the boy stammered, transfixed by the gymnastic calm of the other woman, who in his mind’s eye he had transposed into a conventional standing position and realized that she was the spitting image of Anastasia. So that was how the trick was done, Lloyd thought.

“Young Lloyd hails from Zanesville, where he made something of our acquaintance during one of our past peregrinations,” the showman explained, and took more notice of the boy’s fatigued clothing and unscrubbed state. Here was another child of misfortune trying to find his way. Rather like the son the professor had lost long ago, only more touched by the sun. Anastasia looked up from her sewing and smiled. The woman, whom Lloyd took to be her twin, or at least her sister, waved one of her feet.

“Hello,” Lloyd tried, but the two women just repeated these gestures as before.

“Ah,” the Professor said, shaking his head. “Don’t be offended. I’m saddened to say that both my lovely ladies have been deprived of speech, a diabolical punishment that was conferred upon them as children by a mad father.”

“Anastasia can’t talk?” Lloyd asked.

“Mrs. Mulrooney,” the professor corrected. “Or Lady Mulrooney, as I prefer to think of her. For Mulrooney is the surname I was born with. The other monikers and personae I use are but stage machinations to heighten and enhance the mystique necessary to build confidence and create an atmosphere of possibility, credibility, and awe.”

“And she… is your wife?” Lloyd asked, digging his right hand into the pocket of his dirty knee pants.

“Yes, son. In a word, we are matrimonially united, conjoined, and conspicuously complementary.”

“And who is the other woman?”