Pamela did not amuse herself much, unless she found recreation in the higher mathematics.
Her table—it was an eight-legged affair in old oak—groaned beneath the weight of the books on mathematics that were piled upon it. It was as much as the eight legs could do to support it.
Eric quite shivered when he saw those books and the problem papers that were scattered about; the ink was still wet on some of them. He couldn't have worked out one of those problems to have saved his life. Oh, Nature had made a great mistake! She ought to have made Pamela the man. What was the use of giving all that brain to a woman?
Perhaps Eric thought so; not for the first time, indeed; he may have got used to the thought as he moved uneasily about Pamela's books. There were shelves and shelves of books in this girl's room, and there were not a dozen in Eric's: a Bible and a few theological books, and some Church histories, and nothing more; no poetry, or travels, or philosophy, or fiction—oh no, no fiction!
There were books on Pamela's shelves that made his hair stand on end. He groaned as he read the titles, and he had cold shivers down his back.
To think they should be twins! Oh, Nature had made a great mistake!
He was still reading the titles on the backs of Pamela's naughty black books, and cold shivers were running down his spine, when the door opened and a girl came in.
He looked up, with mild reproof in his eyes, expecting to see Pamela; but it was not his sister, it was Lucy.
Lucy had not come into Pamela Gwatkin's room by choice. She had been sent with a message from one of the Dons, and she had come under protest.