“Do you see that?” she said.  “I could n’t wear it—­it would squeeze my eyes out of my head.  The books told me that women’s brains were smaller than men’s:  perhaps they are,—­most of them,—­I never measured a great many.  But when they try to settle what women are good for, by phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my head.  I don’t believe in their nonsense, for all that.  You might as well tell me that if one horse weighs more than another horse he is worth more,—­a cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred pounds better than Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand.  Give me a list of the best books you can think of, and turn me loose in your library.  I can find what I want, if you have it; and what I don’t find there I will get at the Public Library.  I shall want to ask you a question now and then.”

The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully, as if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her slight constitutional resource.

She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her statements about herself.

“I am not a fool, if I am ignorant.  Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide sea of ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows and some of its depths.  Your profession deals with the facts of life that interest me most just now, and I want to know something of it.  Perhaps I may find it a calling such as would suit me.”

“Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?” said the doctor.

“Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to know something more about it first.  Perhaps I sha’n’t believe in medicine enough to practise it.  Perhaps I sha’n’t like it well enough.  No matter about that.  I wish to study some of your best books on some of the subjects that most interest me.  I know about bones and muscles and all that, and about digestion and respiration and such things.  I want to study up the nervous system, and learn all about it.  I am of the nervous temperament myself, and perhaps that is the reason.  I want to read about insanity and all that relates to it.”

A curious expression flitted across the doctor’s features as The Terror said this.

“Nervous system.  Insanity.  She has headaches, I know,—­all those large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what has set her off about insanity and the nervous system?  I wonder if any of her more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder.  Bright people very often have crazy relations.  Perhaps some of her friends are in that way.  I wonder whether”—­the doctor did not speak any of these thoughts, and in fact hardly shaped his “whether,” for The Terror interrupted his train of reflection, or rather struck into it in a way which startled him.

“Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?” she asked, looking at its empty place on the shelf.