He was plainly tired of the subject.
My first disappointment had yielded to a spiritless catechism of how this and how that.
My persistent canvass of the matter brought him nearer a manifestation of ill-temper than I had ever seen in him.
There was a great deal, he said, that he couldn't talk about to a girl of eighteen. But had I or anybody else ever heard of a man who was a doctor himself wanting his sister, or his daughter to study medicine? He had never known one. Not one.
I confessed I couldn't think why that was, except that nobody belonging to a girl ever wanted her to do anything, except—I stopped short and then hurried on.... "But after all, you know that women do go through the medical schools and come out all right."
He shook his head. "They've lost something. Though I admit most of the women you mean, never had the thing I mean."
I said I didn't understand.
"Well, you ought to. You've got it." He looked at me with an odd expression and asked how long I'd had this notion in my head. I said a year. "All this time! You've been full of this ever since I was here last!"
I lied. I said I had thought of absolutely nothing else all that time. He stood up ... but I still sat there wondering what had made me tell him that lie.
"You won't go," I said, "without seeing my mother."