It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other.  The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend.  All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought.  She would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had any message for her.  Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the taking of an instantaneous photograph.  When she took up the first book on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist sponge absorbs water.  “What can I do with such a creature as this?” he said to himself.  “There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm:  give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own cocoon.  Give her the books, and she will spin her own web of knowledge.”

“Do you really think of studying medicine?” said Dr. Butts to her.

“I have n’t made up my mind about that,” she answered, “but I want to know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we are all tangled in.  I know something about it, but not enough.  I find some very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be able to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims and fancies.  Besides, I want to know everything.”

“They tell me you do, already,” said Dr. Butts.

“I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!” exclaimed The Terror.

The doctor smiled.  He knew what it meant.  She had reached that stage of education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable expanse before the eyes of the student.  We never know the extent of darkness until it is partially illuminated.

“You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most ignorant young lady that ever graduated there,” said the doctor.  “They tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the school was founded.”

“What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in 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.