But one day he asked: “What are you going to do when you grow up, Tim? Breed cats?”
Tim laughed a denial.
“I don’t know what, yet. Sometimes I think one thing, sometimes another.”
This was a typical boy answer. Welles disregarded it.
“What would you like to do best of all?” he asked.
Tim leaned forward eagerly. “What you do!” he cried.
“You’ve been reading up on it, I suppose,” said Welles, as casually as he could. “Then you know, perhaps, that before anyone can do what I do, he must go through it himself, like a patient. He must also study medicine and be a full-fledged doctor, of course. You can’t do that yet. But you can have the works now, like a patient.”
“Why? For the experience?”
“Yes. And for the cure. You’ll have to face that fear and lick it. You’ll have to straighten out a lot of other things, or at least face them.”
“My fear will be gone when I’m grown up,” said Timothy. “I think it will. I hope it will.”