"Mr. Gael," said Joan standing before him at the breakfast-table, "I'm
a-goin' to work."
She was pale, gaunt, and imperturbable. He gave her a quick look, one
that turned to amusement, for Joan was really as appealing to his
humor as a child. She had such immense gravity, such intensity over
her one-syllable statements of fact. She announced this decision and
sat down.
"Woman's work?" he asked her, smiling quizzically.
"No, sir," with her own rare smile; "I ain't rightly fitted for that."
"Certainly not in those clothes," he murmured crossly, for she was
dressed again in her own things.
"I'm a-goin' to do man's work. I'm a-goin' to shovel snow an' help
fetch wood an' kerry in water. You tell your Chinese man, please."
"And you're not going to read or study any more?"
"Yes, sir. I like that. If you still want to teach me, Mr. Gael. But
I'm a-goin'--I'm going--to get some action. I'll just die if I
don't. Why, I'm so poor I can't hardly lift a broom. I don't know why
I'm so miserably poor, Mr. Gael."
She twisted her brows anxiously.
"You've had a nervous breakdown."
"A what?"
"A nervous breakdown."
He lit his cigarette and watched her in his usual lazy, smoke-veiled
manner, but she might have noticed the shaken fabric of his
self-assurance.
"Say, now," said Joan, "what's that the name for?"
"There's a book about it over there--third volume on the top
shelf--look up your case."
With an air of profound alarm, she went over and took it out.
"There's books about everything, ain't there?--isn't there,--Mr. Gael?
Why, there's books about lovin' an' about sickness an' about cattle
an' what-not, an' about women an' children--" She was shirking the
knowledge of her "case," but at last she pressed her lips together and
opened the book. She fell to reading, growing anxiety possessed her
face, she sat down on the nearest chair, she turned page after page.
Suddenly she gave him a look of anger.
"I ain't none of this, Mr. Gael," she said, smote the page, rose with
dignity, and returned the book.
He laughed so long and heartily that she was at last forced to join
him. "You was--you were--jobbin' me, wasn't you?" she said, sighing
relief. "Did you know what that volume said? It said like this--I'll
read you about it--" She took the volume, found the place and read in a
low tone of horror, he helping her with the hard words: "'One of the
most frequent forms of phobia, common in cases of psychic neurasthenia,
is agrophobia in which patients the moment they come into an open space
are oppressed by an exaggerated feeling of anxiety. They may break into
a profuse perspiration and assert that they feel as if chained to the
ground....' And here, listen to this, 'batophobia, the fear that high
things will fall, atrophobia, fear of thunder and lightning,
pantophobia, the fear of every thing and every one'.... Well, now,
ain't that too awful? An' you mean folks really get that way?"