"It is all here, mother," Evadne remonstrated, tapping her books. "Do look at them." Mrs. Frayling turned over a few pages with dainty fingers: "Tracing from without inward, the various coverings of the brain are," she read in one. "The superior extremity consists of the shoulder, the arm, the forearm, and the hand," she saw in another. "Dr. Harley also confirms the opinion of M. Chaveau that the sugar is not destroyed in any appreciable quantity, during its passage through the tissues," she learned from the third. "Oh, how nasty!" she ejaculated, alluding to the dust on the cover. "And what a state you are in yourself! You seem to have a perfect mania for grubbing up old books. What do you want with them? You cannot possibly understand them. Why, _I_ can't! It is all vanity, you know. Here, take them away." "But, mother, I want to keep them. They can't do me any harm if I don't understand them." "You really _are_ tiresome, Evadne," her mother rejoined. "It is quite bad taste to be so persistent." "I am sorry, mother; I apologize. But I can read them, I suppose, as you don't see anything objectionable in them." "Don't _you_ see, dear child, that I am trying to write a letter? How do you suppose I can do so while you stand chattering there at my elbow! You won't understand the books, but you are too obstinate for anything, and you had better take them and try. I don't expect to hear anything more about them," she added complacently, as she resumed her letter. Nor did she, but she felt the effect of them strongly in after years. When Evadne went out for a ride with three of her sisters that afternoon her mind was full to overflowing of her morning studies, and she would liked to have shared such interesting information with them, but they discouraged her. "Isn't it curious," she began, "our skulls are not all in one piece when we're born--" "I call it simply _nasty_" said Julia. She was the one who screamed at a mouse. "You'll be a bore if you don't mind," cried Evelyn, who monopolized the conversation, as a rule. Barbara politely requested her to "Shurrup!" a word of the boys which she permitted herself to borrow in the exuberance of her spirits and the sanctity of private life whenever Evadne threatened, as on the present occasion, to be "_too_ kind." Evadne turned back then and left them, not because they vexed her, but because she wanted to have her head to the wind and her thick brown hair blown back out of her eyes, and full leisure to reflect upon her last acquisition as she cantered home happily. CHAPTER V.