“I don’t know why I said that-they don’t think so now. My aunt offered to take us in, and Jenny has got on so wonderfully here. She can walk a little now, and they say she is going to be perfectly all right, only she must have a quiet, regular life, and she has got to be kept happy. If she is worried or upset she slips back again, so she mustn’t be worried or upset. And the chief thing that keeps her happy is her writing. You see, it’s dull for her. There aren’t any other children, and if there were, she wouldn’t really be up to playing with them, but when she writes it’s like going into another life. She can make her own companions, and she can do all the things which she hasn’t been able to do since the accident. You don’t know how thankful I’ve been-” She broke off and looked at him, her colour risen, her eyes dark and bright with tears. “You won’t laugh at her, will you, or say anything to discourage her?”
He said, “No, no, of course not. But I am afraid-”
“I didn’t mean anything about publishing what she sent you. Of course you can’t do that-she’s much too young. But if there is anything you could say-”
He laughed.
“Oh, there’s quite a lot! Of course at present she’s copying most of the time-picking the plums out of other people’s pies. But every now and then there’s an original turn. If she was to start observing for herself and putting it down in words of her own-” he sketched a gesture-“well, I don’t know, but she might get somewhere. This whole business of the infant phenomenon is as tricky as you please. I’ve seen quite extraordinary verse produced by a child of five or six-a couple of fragments, and never another line. It generally happens when they are emerging from the nursery and before the deadening influence of education gets going on them. Practically every child of that age can act, and quite a lot of them can produce some kind of highly original work, but the minute they get to school it’s all over. The herd instinct asserts itself, and from then on the most frightful thing in the world is not to be exactly like everyone else. Jenny is past the usual age, but she has been segregated from the herd, so if she really has any originality it may survive.”