The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 15 Nerves and Intuition

"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?"