personal aspect of a thing. You can't concentrate your thoughts, and,
worst of all, you've no curiosity--about anything that really matters.
You take all the great facts of existence on trust--just as a hen
does--and I've no doubt you'll go on contentedly till the end of your
days, without ever knowing why the ocean has tides, and what causes the
seasons.--It makes me ashamed to belong to the same sex."

Inez's classmates tittered furiously, let the sarcasm glide over them,
unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the
governess's taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a
vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the
rest, could not forget the incident--words in any case had a way of
sticking to her memory--and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to
her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just as if
an invisible hand had opened the door to an inner chamber, a light
broke on her. Vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the
personal--every word struck home. Had Miss Hicks set out to describe
HER, in particular, she could not have done it more accurately. It was
but too true: until now, she, Laura, had been satisfied to know things
in a slipslop, razzle-dazzle way, to know them anyhow, as it best
suited herself. She had never set to work to master a subject, to make
it her own in every detail. Bits of it, picturesque scraps, striking
features--what Miss Hicks no doubt meant by the personal--were all that
had attracted her.--Oh, and she, too, had no intelligent curiosity. She
could not say that she had ever teased her brains with wondering why
the earth went round the sun and not the sun round the earth. Honestly
speaking, it made no difference to her that the globe was indented like
an orange, and not the perfect round you began by believing it to
be.--But if this were so, if she were forced to make these galling
admissions, then it was clear that her vaunted cleverness had never
existed, except in Mother's imagination. Or, at any rate, it had
crumbled to pieces like a lump of earth, under the hard, heavy hand of
Miss Hicks. Laura felt humiliated, and could not understand her
companions treating the matter so airily. She did not want to have a
woman's brain, thank you; not one of that sort; and she smarted for the
whole class.

Straightway she set to work to sharpen her wits, to follow the strait
road. At first with some stum