n our small
aquarium, to be sure!" answered The Terror. "He was six inches long, the
monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did
you hand me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything
about the human body?"

"You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try you
with an easy book, by way of introduction."

The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.

"I meant what I said, and I mean what I say. When I talk about my
ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor. I don't
measure myself with my teachers, either. You must talk to me as if I
were a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything. Where is your
hat, doctor? Let me try it on."

The doctor handed her his wide-awake. The Terror's hair was not
naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather short.
Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard. She tried to put
the hat on.

"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?" sai