So this is how the fourth section of the readalong begins: Lucy gets back from vacay and has an extended conversation with Reason. That is not a person. She has an imaginary conversation with her own personified faculty of Reason, who has blue lips and is kind of a dick.
“But I have talked to Graham and you did not chide,” I pleaded.
“No,” said she, “I needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp your language.”
Hey, Lucy, I’m on your side right now, but: People might like you more if you talked to yourself less.
Anyway, the people who do like Lucy thus far are Ginevra Fanshawe and, despite his completely insane-person behavior, M. Paul. Ginevra trades her coffee for Lucy’s rolls every morning at breakfast (that’s adorable), and M. Paul minds about it when Lucy sits crying, and gets upset when he thinks she has a boyfriend. But Ginevra is a flirty shallow jerk, and M. Paul beats up stoves when he’s in a bad mood and sneaks into Lucy’s room and reads her letters to see if she and Dr. John have a Thing.
I’m pretty close to done with M. Paul. My early positive impression of him has not been borne out by subsequent events. He’s going to have to be really really awesome throughout the next few sections to make up for what a d-bag he’s been on the majority of occasions we’ve had to hang out with him. Remember that first time they met? And he was hilarious and the best thing in the whole book? I want that guy back!
Meanwhile, Dr. John’s just looking like a champ in this section, damn his boring face, but it’s okay, because Polly shows back up finally, and I am pretty sure they are destined to be together. Dr. John asks Lucy out to the theater, which is somehow not a date, and while they’re there, the theater burns down. Dr. John heroically rescues a girl, and lo and behold, the girl is Polly!
Polly’s father is now a count (or was he already one? I dunno), and she’s Ginevra’s cousin, because of course there couldn’t be two blonde twits in one book without them turning out to be related. Polly asks Lucy if Dr. John is into Ginevra, and in keeping with her policy of not doing the super obvious thing that would put people at ease straightaway, Lucy does not say “Oh, he used to have a thing for her, but she disrespected his mother and he was OUT.” Instead, she’s like this:
What is Lucy’s plan? Yeah, we’ll have to wait until next time to find out. Knowing Lucy, it will make absolutely no sense and infuriate everyone involved.
The other thing that happens in this section is that Lucy starts seeing ghosts. Well, one ghost. A nun.
Oh, and Dr. John tells Lucy she’s only seeing visions because she’s so depressing all the time, and if she’d try to be happier, she wouldn’t have visions; and she bitch-slaps him with the following truth bomb: “Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”
GREAT POINT.