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Private Message to Rodolphus Lestrange
Jan. 4th, 2012 03:10 pmRod, I'm sorry. I've bad news to report. I've been away with Wright since Sunday, and I've just arrived home to find that Orion sacked two of our three domestics Monday morning. Sent them back to the service and demanded replacements.
He claims one of them had got herself pregnant, which is news to me, though she was indolent. (O says 'lethargic' and claims she was sicking up this weekend for no reason and complaining of being sensitive to commonplace odours, so he might be right.) The other one was allergic to something; he'd started coming out in hives every afternoon, which was making him basically useless, and I suppose Orion had simply had enough.
Honestly, if he was going to send some of them back, I don't know why he didn't send the whole lot. The one he kept has always been a clumsy bint, but that's no excuse for the half dozen glasses and four holiday platters she's chipped, dropped, or shattered in the past fortnight. (Not to mention that, while dusting, the chit smashed Orion's Merwyn Finwick figurine beyond repair. I kept that from him for fear he'd do something rash--like sack her and ruin the experiment, but I suppose the greater mistake was not telling him anything at all about it.)
This scrubs the whole trial, doesn't it? I'm so sorry. Really and truly.
And to think it was showing results, but with only two weeks, I don't know how much you can draw from it.
I do have notes for the days I was here to observe--took down everything that might have been symptomatic. I tried to be comprehensive, but in some cases it was impossible to tell whether something was merely incidental--or simply inherent to the defects of character or constitution of the cogs. The list includes dizziness, nose bleeds, trembling, forgetfulness, and irritability. I used a temperature charm in the sleeping quarters and observed other physical signs (pupil dilation, skin blotching, tics and twitches, etc.) as they were apparent to me. I could bring you the log tonight, if you've time. I apologise if some of it is irrelevant, but I still think it made sense for you not skew my perceptions with information about which phenomena you were expecting to elicit from the subjects.
We could start again with the new cogs. If you're not simply disgusted with the way I've wasted your time already.
He claims one of them had got herself pregnant, which is news to me, though she was indolent. (O says 'lethargic' and claims she was sicking up this weekend for no reason and complaining of being sensitive to commonplace odours, so he might be right.) The other one was allergic to something; he'd started coming out in hives every afternoon, which was making him basically useless, and I suppose Orion had simply had enough.
Honestly, if he was going to send some of them back, I don't know why he didn't send the whole lot. The one he kept has always been a clumsy bint, but that's no excuse for the half dozen glasses and four holiday platters she's chipped, dropped, or shattered in the past fortnight. (Not to mention that, while dusting, the chit smashed Orion's Merwyn Finwick figurine beyond repair. I kept that from him for fear he'd do something rash--like sack her and ruin the experiment, but I suppose the greater mistake was not telling him anything at all about it.)
This scrubs the whole trial, doesn't it? I'm so sorry. Really and truly.
And to think it was showing results, but with only two weeks, I don't know how much you can draw from it.
I do have notes for the days I was here to observe--took down everything that might have been symptomatic. I tried to be comprehensive, but in some cases it was impossible to tell whether something was merely incidental--or simply inherent to the defects of character or constitution of the cogs. The list includes dizziness, nose bleeds, trembling, forgetfulness, and irritability. I used a temperature charm in the sleeping quarters and observed other physical signs (pupil dilation, skin blotching, tics and twitches, etc.) as they were apparent to me. I could bring you the log tonight, if you've time. I apologise if some of it is irrelevant, but I still think it made sense for you not skew my perceptions with information about which phenomena you were expecting to elicit from the subjects.
We could start again with the new cogs. If you're not simply disgusted with the way I've wasted your time already.
