“You seem to me to be much older-looking, much more careworn, with lines making their appearance round your eyes and mouth, such as I never noticed before. So, at least, it strikes me, but I may be, and I dare say I am, quite wrong.”
The widow seemed at a loss what to say. Tom’s words had evidently rendered her very uneasy. “Then what would you advise me to do?” she said, after a time. “If you can detect the disease so readily, you should have no difficulty in specifying the remedy.”
“Ah, now I am afraid you are getting beyond my depth,” said Tom, with a smile. “I am little more than a theorizer, you know; but I should have no hesitation in saying that your disorder is connected with the mind.”
“Gracious me, Mr. Bristow!”
“Yes, Mrs. McDermott, my opinion is that you are suffering from an undue development of brain power.”
The widow looked puzzled. “I was always considered rather intellectual,” she said, with a glance at her brother. But the Squire still slept.
“You are very intellectual, madam; and that is just where the evil lies.”
“Excuse me, but I fail to follow you.”
“You are gifted with a very large and a very powerful brain,” said Tom, with the utmost gravity. The Squire snorted suddenly in his sleep. The widow held up a warning finger. There was silence in the room till the Squire’s gentle long-drawn snores announced that he was again happily fast asleep.
“Very few of us are so specially gifted,” resumed Tom. “But every special gift necessitates a special obligation in return. You, with your massive brain, must find that brain plenty of work to do—a sufficiency of congenial employment—otherwise it will inevitably turn upon itself, grow morbid and hypochondriacal, and slowly but surely deteriorate, till it ends by becoming—what I hardly like to say.”