Shhh! Scribbler at Work

Mind-reader

(prompt 'bump' 19/10/18)

"I hesitate to say the word, sweet child, but I fear your Algernon has an over-abundance of amativeness."

"Amma-what?" Rosemarie's pretty little brow furrowed deeply. This was not a word she'd ever heard before.

"Amativeness, cherub." Matilda tilted her fashionably coiffed red-gold curls to touch her daughter's golden ones. "It means a strong dose of fondness that all too easily leads to passion and - uhrr - I would prefer not to say, but must..." and Matilda shook herself and straightened her spine with determination, "uhrr...", and then the words came out all of a rush, "... sexual love, my dear." It was questionable whose face burned brighter. "I'm so sorry to offend your sweet ears with such a near-depraved word, but it had to be said."

"Ohh Mama... must you? Really?" Now Rosemarie's anxious words matched her small heart-shaped face as she held Matilda's hand for comfort.

With a sigh and a tear or two glistening on lower lashes, Matilda replied. "I absolutely MUST, dear one." She gently pulled her daughter down to sit close alongside her. " I must tell you a tragic story of Algernon's uncle Phineas. Now there was a most responsible man of the gentlest nature imaginable. You can ask your father. He knew Phineas well... or thought he did. Until the tragic accident." And Matilda paused to sniff and dab her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief. "Poor Phineas. Never the same again after an explosion forced an iron bar to penetrate his brain. Came right out the back of his head."

The pained expression on Rosemarie's face caused Matilda to hasten to say, "But it was alright... sort of. Phineas lived with his reasoning and language intact!"

"So what do you mean, Mama... 'sort of'?"

"Well. When he was healed and then ever after, he became the most argumentative and rude man, prone to cursing in such a vile fashion, women in particular, were warned to stay well away from him."

"But what does that have to do with my darling Algernon, Mama? I don't understand."

"I'm coming to that, my dear. You see, the top phrenologists—" Matilda interrupted herself at the bewildered expression Rosemarie now wore. "... a phrenologist is an expert at reading bumps in skulls and translating them into known areas of behaviour and emotion. Now where was I? Ahh yes - the injury to the ill-begotten soul, Phineas."

"Given his survival, it was finally agreed it was not necessarily damage to his pre-frontal cortex that was solely the cause of his new unpleasantness, but the possibility existed of an inherited deformity in the 'neighbourhood of Benevolence and the front part of Veneration'."

Matilda's voice took on a triumphant tone. "So you see, my darling child. A possibility exists - no matter how slim - that Algernon just MIGHT unknowingly conceal similar potential perversion beneath his handsome exterior." and she raised her hand to arrest the denial that she could see was about to spring from Rosemarie's sweet lips.

"All I'm saying is that skull bumps can be serious portents of the future and must be taken into full consideration before you give your final acquiescence."