I still feel relatively awful, as if taking a shower equals doing a full day's work. But I am somewhat better than I was yesterday, when I passed many dull convalescent hours on the couch reading a Barbara Pym novel and at one point even watching football, which was a new low for me. Yet even in the midst of flu, reading synchronicity can strike. Here are a few lines from Pym's A Few Green Leaves:

The silence induced by the thought of libraries was broken into by Miss Lee and Magdalen Raven, obviously in a state of agitation.

"It's Miss Grundy--something rather upsetting--she's had a kind of turn. . . . " 

"It must be the heat," said Tom. "I was rather afraid something like this might happen. I blame myself," he added. It was so much easier to take the blame, almost expected of him. 

"Oh, it's not that," said Miss Lee impatiently, "not that kind of turn--more like an experience--she says she's seen something, some person from the past." 

"A ghost?" Emma suggested. "Or something like Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain at Versailles?"

Yes, this Miss Jourdain is the elder sister of Milly Jourdain the poet, decorative arts historian Margaret Jourdain (and companion of Ivy Compton-Burnett), and mathematician Philip Jourdain. And here's a retelling of the "incident at Versailles."