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wait it out. There was plenty of time.
    And with every passing day, it became easier, she had to admit that. As Buttercup acquired understanding and volition and even a limited ability to communicate, it became easier for Mouse to bear. Sheer tedium gave way to matters of at least transitory interest.
    Time passed. The milky unconsciousness turned into perception, into sounds and smells and sights, into the feel of hands on her skin. Single things, at first, and then sequences. And, finally, a full perception of something actually happening: the arrival with her wet nurse at the house of Mr Thrumm.
    It was her first clear memory. Before that she might have heard people in some other and previous location speculating as to whether it was yet safe for her to travel, and she did recall a thin and insinuating voice saying something about her safety – ‘The Van Hoost rogue’s safety!’ – being of no possible concern to anyone. She remembered very little of the journey. Perhaps it had been brief. Perhaps she had slept through it. Perhaps, and it was not impossible, she had been drugged. Much later, recollecting Nursey’s predeliction for saving trouble by any and every means at hand, she thought it not unlikely that Nursey had simply given her something to keep her quiet until they arrived. By that time, she had stopped distinguishing between herself, Mouse, and her other self, Buttercup. It was futile. One could only watch and listen and wait for the time when things would straighten themselves out again.
    Arrival at Mr Thrumm’s house, however, she perceived in all its details.
    ‘Here you are,’ burbled Mr Thrumm, peering at her through his thick glasses. ‘From the Palace of the Old Queen, as promised, one article. A sweet one, Nurse, yes she is. But I do see what they meant, indeed I do. She has the Van Hoost chin, doesn’t she?’
    ‘So they say, sir,’ boomed Nurse. ‘Though I can’t think why. It seems a very babylike chin to me. Not unlike most babies. And if it is a bit Van Hoosty, what of it?’
    ‘Well,’ he replied, opening the door and beckoning them in (part of her remembered the wheels of a carriage leaving just then, the grating sound of gravel underlying his voice). ‘Well, now, what of it? My dear Nurse, during the reign of one of the aunts of the current Queen – was it during Grislda’s time or Hermione’s? Or could it have been Euthasia? I can never recall – it was determined that the fall in the fortunes of the Royal House had come about because of the admixture of the tainted Van Hoost blood.’
    ‘Van Hoost was only a young rooster, for heaven’s sake,’ said Nursey. ‘And it was all of a long time ago.’
    ‘Be that as it may, Nurse. This charge of yours is only the latest in a long line of Van Hoost chins, elbows, and heels – the Van Hoost heel is unmistakable even at an early age – to be sent into banishment – that is, into the care of the Thrumms.’
    The three of them, Thrumm, Nursey, and infant went in, taking Mouse along perforce, unseen, unregarded, unsuspected. Buttercup, the infant, had no means of knowing that it was impossible for a child of her tender age to understand, much less remember this occasion. She, the infant, Buttercup, had no means of knowing that such perception was beyond one of her extreme youth and that she must, therefore, be possessed in some very strange way. The urgency and uniqueness of that arrival faded into memory as time went by. There had been only the one arrival, and Buttercup – or Mouse – remembered that distinctly, but subsequently there were many days and seasons of living in Thrumm House, all much alike. They tended to fade together into one endless montage, though the infant still retained very clear and detailed memories of her early months, phrasing these memories to herself in language. The infant had not, as yet, any understanding of language. She did not recognize language, much less speak it, but Mouse did, and Mouse