"Listen, Will," she said, laying a hand on his forehead. "We've got to get rid of this." Her tone was professional and calmly authoritative.

"I wish I knew how," he said between chattering teeth.

"How?" she repeated. "But in the usual way, of course. Tell me again about those snakes and how you fell down."

He shook his head. "I don't want to."

"Of course you don't want to," she said. "But you've got to. Listen to what the mynah's saying."

"Here and now, boys," the bird was still exhorting. "Here and now, boys."

"You can't be here and now," she went on, "until you've got rid of those snakes. Tell me."

"I don't want to, I don't want to." He was almost in tears.

"Then you'll never get rid of them. They'll be crawling about inside your head forever. And serve you right," Mary Sarojini added severely.

He tried to control the trembling; but his body had ceased to belong to him. Someone else was in charge, someone malevolently determined to humiliate him, to make him suffer.

"Remember what happened when you were a little boy," Mary Sarojini was saying. "What did your mother do when you hurt yourself?"

She had taken him in her arms, had said, "My poor baby, my poor little baby."

"She did that?" The child spoke in a tone of shocked amazement. "But that's awful! That's the way to rub it in. 'My poor baby,' " she repeated derisively, "it must have gone on hurting for hours. And you'd never forget it."

Will Farnaby made no comment, but lay there in silence, shaken by irrepressible shudderings.

"Well, if you won't do it yourself, I'll have to do it for you. Listen, Will: there was a snake, a big green snake, and you almost stepped on him. You almost stepped on him, and it gave you such a fright that you lost your balance, you fell. Now say it yourself-say it!"