and having looked it up in the dictionary, she requested the doctor to be
so good as to teach her to make one. While doing so the doctor became
interested in his silent, intelligent pupil, and it ended in his teaching
her all that a young lady could learn of bandaging, of antidotes to
poisons, of what to do in case of many possible accidents, and also of
nursing, theoretically.

But this was not a solitary instance of the quiet power of the girl which
already compelled even elderly gentlemen much overworked and
self-absorbed, to sacrifice themselves in her service.




CHAPTER III.


It is a notable thing that in almost every instance it was her father's
influence which forced Evadne to draw conclusions in regard to life quite
unlike any of his own, and very distasteful to him. He was the most
conservative of men, and yet he was continually setting her mind off at a
tangent in search of premises upon which to found ultra-liberal
conclusions.

His primitive theories about women and "all that they are good for," for
one thing, which differed so materially from the facts as she observed
them every day, formed a constant mental stimulus to which her busy brain
was greatly indebted. "Women should confine their attention to
housekeeping," he remarked once when the talk about the higher education
of women first began to irritate elderly gentlemen. "It is all they are