True to her promise, Doris called before eleven.
"Well, this is a surprise," said Mona. "I did not in the least expect to see you."
"Why? I said I would come."
"Yes; but I thought you would go off to visit that woman, and forget all about me. What is old friendship when weighed against the misfortune of being 'hadden doon' of a husband and four children!"
"The man was a selfish brute," said Doris, ignoring an imputation she would have resented if her mind had been less full of other things. "Did you notice? He let his wife carry more than half the bundles. I sent John to take them from her, and fortunately that put him to shame."
"And how did John like it?"
Doris laughed. "Oh, I don't know; I never thought of him. I think John is rather attached to me."
"I have yet to meet the man in any rank of life who knows you and is not attached to you. I think that has taught me more of the nature of men than any other one thing. They little dream of the contempt and scorn that lie behind that daisy face, and yet they seem to know by a sort of instinct that their charms are thrown away on you,—that the fruit is out of reach; and instead of sensibly saying 'sour grapes,' they knock themselves to pieces against the wall."
"Mona, you do talk nonsense! I have scarcely had an offer of marriage in my life."
"I imagine that few women who really respect themselves have more than one, unless the men of their acquaintance—like the population of the British Isles—are 'mostly fools.'"
"Oh, they are all that. But I think what you say is very true. The first offer comes like a slap in the face, 'out of the everywhere.' Who could have foreseen it? But after that one gets to know when there is electricity in the air, don't you think so?"
"I suppose so. But the experience is not much in my line. Sensible men are rather apt to think me a guter Kamerad, and one weak-minded young curate asked me to share two hundred a year with him—his 'revenue' he called it, by the way. Behold the extent of my dominion over the other sex! I sometimes think," she added gloomily, "it is commensurate with the extent to which I have attained the ideal of womanhood!"
"Mona! If the sons of God were to take unto themselves wives of the daughters of men, we should hear a different tale. As things are, I am glad you are not a man's woman. You are a woman's woman, which is infinitely better. If you could be turned into a man to-morrow, half the girls of your acquaintance would marry you. I know I would, for one."
"You are my oldest friend, Doris," said Mona gratefully. "The others like me because I am moody and mysterious, and occasionally motherly. Women always fall in love with the Unknown."
"How could they marry men if it were otherwise?" said Doris, but she did not in the least mean it for wit.
"You miserable old cynic! I am going to introduce you to-day—I say advisedly introduce you—to a man who will convert even Doris Colquhoun to a love of his sex. He met me at the station last night, but I suppose you were too much taken up with your protégées to notice him."
"I caught a glimpse of white hair and an old-world bow. One can't judge of faces in the glaring light and black shadows of a railway station at night."
"That's true. Everybody looks like an amateur photograph taken indoors. But you shall see Mr Reynolds to-day. He promised to come in. Present company excepted, I don't know that I love any one in the world as I do him—unless it be Sir Douglas Munro."
"Sir Douglas Munro! Oh Mona! I heard my father say once that Sir Douglas was a good fellow, but that no one could look at him and doubt that he had sown his wild oats very thoroughly."
"Don't!" said Mona, with a little stamp of her foot. "Why need we think of it? I cannot even tell you how kind he has been to me."
Doris was about to reply, but Mr Reynolds came in at the moment, and they chatted on general topics for a few minutes. "Dr Alice Bateson has just come in," he said, in answer to Doris's inquiry after Lucy.
Doris's face flushed. "Oh," she said eagerly, "I should so like to meet Dr Alice Bateson."
"Should you?" he said, with a fatherly smile. "That is easily managed. We will open the door and waylay her as she comes down. Ah, doctor! here is a young lady from Scotland who is all anxiety to make your acquaintance. May I introduce her?"
Miss Bateson came in. She did not at all like to be made a lion of, but Doris's fair, eager face was irresistible.
"I am very glad," Doris said shyly, "to express my personal thanks to any woman who is helping on what I consider one of the noblest causes in the world."
"It is a grand work," said Dr Bateson rather shortly. "Miss——" she looked at Mona.
"Maclean," said Mona, with a smile.
"Miss Maclean will be able to show you our School and Hospital. Perhaps we may meet some day at the Hospital. Good morning."
"Well?" said Mona, when she was gone.
"I think she is splendid—so energetic and sensible. But, you know, I do wish she wore gloves; and she would look so nice in a bonnet."
"Come, don't be narrow-minded."
"I am not narrow-minded. Personally I like her all the better for her unconventionality. It is the Cause I am thinking of."
"Oh, the Cause! It seems to me, dear, that the prophets of great causes always have a thorn in the flesh that they themselves are conscious of, and half-a-dozen other thorns that other people are conscious of; but the cause survives notwithstanding."
"I have no doubt that it will survive; but it seems to me that a little care on the part of the prophets would make it grow so much faster. Well, dear, I must go. I will come again on Friday. You will come to my aunt's 'At Home,' won't you?"
"If Lucy is better, and your aunt gives me another chance, I shall be only too glad. I shall have to unearth a gown from my boxes at Tilbury's. Heigh-ho, Doris! I might as well have gone all along, for all the good my abstinence did me. A deal of wasted pluck and moral courage goes to failing in one's Intermediate M.B.!"
"You have been gone a quarter of an hour," said Lucy fretfully, when Mona re-entered the sick-room, "and Miss Colquhoun had you all day yesterday."
"You are getting better, little woman," said Mona, kissing her.
"We have so much to talk about——"
"So we have, dear, but not to-day, nor yet to-morrow. I won't have my coming throw you back. You are to eat all the milk and eggs and nursery pudding that you possibly can, and I will read you the last new thing in three-volume novels."
Lucy resigned herself to this régime the more readily as she was too weak to talk; and she certainly did make remarkable progress in the next day or two. She was very soon able—rather to her own disappointment—to do without morphine at night; and when, a few days later, Mona read the last page of the novel, Lucy was lying in a healthy natural sleep.
Mona stole out of the room, listened outside the door for a minute or two, and then ran down-stairs.
"I hope you are going out?" said Mr Reynolds, looking up from his Guardian. "You have been shut up for three or four days now."
"Yes; I told Lucy that if she went to sleep I would go for a run. She is to ring as soon as she wakes."
"Well, don't hurry back. I expect the child will sleep all the afternoon; and if she does not, she may content herself with the old man's company for an hour or two."
"Lucky girl!" said Mona, looking at him affectionately. "I should think 'the old man's company' would more than make up to most people for being ill."
Lucy's fellow-students had called regularly to enquire for her, and this Friday morning a bright young girl had come in on her way to the Medical School, at the same moment as Doris Colquhoun.
"I only wish I were going with you," Doris had said to her; and Mona had thankfully availed herself of the opportunity so to arrange matters.
"I will go and have tea with Doris now," she thought, "and hear all her impressions before their edge has worn off."
She set off in high spirits. After all, it was very pleasant to be in London again, especially in this bright cold weather. The shop-windows still had all their old attraction, and she stopped every few minutes to look at the new winter fads and fashions, wondering what pretty things it would be well to take back to Borrowness; for Rachel had reluctantly consented to the investment of a few pounds in fresh stock-in-trade.
"Whatever I buy will be hideously out of keeping with everything else," thought Mona; "but a shop ought to be a shop before it professes to be a work of art. At present it is what Dr Dudley would call 'neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor guid red herrin'.'"
She had taken the measure of her clientèle at Borrowness pretty correctly, and she had a very good idea what things would appeal to their fancy, without offending her own somewhat fastidious taste; but she took as much pride in making the most of those pounds as if her own bread and cheese had depended on it. "We will do nothing hastily, my dear," she said to herself. "We will exhaust all the possibilities before we commit ourselves to the extent of one shilling. Oh dear, I am glad I have not to go to the School after all! I am in no mood for fencing."
Rash thought! It had scarcely passed through her mind before a voice behind her said—
"How do you do, Miss Maclean?" and looking round she saw two of her fellow-students, bag in hand.
As ill-luck would have it, one of them was the only student of her own year with whom Mona had always found herself absolutely out of sympathy. This one it was who spoke.
"It is a surprise to see you! Miss Reynolds said you were not coming back this winter."
"Nor am I. I am only in town for a day or two."
"Are you reading at home?"
"At present I am not reading at all."
"It seems a great pity."
"Do you think so? I think it does us no harm to climb up occasionally on the ridge that separates our little furrow from all the others, and see what is going on in the rest of the field."
"But you always did that, did you not? I thought you were a great authority on the uses of frivolling."
"And you thought it a pity that the results of my examinations did not do more to bear out my teaching? Never mind. It is only one of the many cases in which a worthy cause has suffered temporarily in the hands of an unworthy exponent."
The girl coloured. Mona's hypersensitive perception had read her thought very correctly.
"We miss you dreadfully," put in the other student hastily. "I do wish you would come back."
"I suppose," continued the first, glancing at the window before which they had met, "you are busy with your winter shopping. Regent Street has not lost its old attractions, though the Medical School has."
"What would they say," thought Mona, "if I calmly told them the whole truth?—that I am, with the utmost care and economy, buying goods for a very small shop in Borrowness, behind the counter of which I have the honour of standing, and serving a limited, and not very enlightened, public."
For a moment the temptation to "make their hair stand on end" was almost irresistible; but fortunately old habits of reserve are not broken through in a moment, and she merely said, "Oh no. It will be a serious symptom when Regent Street loses its attractions. That would indeed be a strong indication for quinine and cod-liver oil, or any other treatment you can suggest for melancholia. Good-bye, and success to you both!"
She shook hands—rather cavalierly with the first, cordially with the second. "You all right?" she asked quietly, as they parted.
"Yes, thank you."
"She is queer," said the student who had spoken first, when Mona was out of hearing. "My private opinion is that she is going to be married. My brother saw her on board one of the Fjord steamers in Norway a month or two ago, with a very correct party; and he said a tall fellow 'with tremendous calves' was paying her a lot of attention."
"Did your brother speak to her?"
"No. He was much smitten with her at the last prize-giving, and wanted me to introduce him, but I did not get a chance. She knows a lot of people. I think she gives herself too many airs, don't you?"
"I used to, but I began to think last term that that was a mistake. You know, Miss Burnet, I like her."
"I don't."
"The fact is,"—the girl coloured and drew a long breath,—"I know you won't repeat it, but I have much need to like her. I was in frightful straits for money last term. I actually had a summons served upon me. I could not tell my people at home, and one night, when I was simply in despair, I went to Miss Maclean. I did not like her, but borrowers can afford even less than beggars to be choosers, and she always seemed to have plenty of money. She was by no means the first person I had applied to, and I had ceased to expect anything but refusals. Well, I shall never forget how her face lighted up as she said, 'How good of you to come to me! I know what it is to be short of money myself.' I did not think she gave herself airs then; I would have worked my fingers to the bone, if it had been necessary, to pay her back before the end of term."
"I don't see anything so wonderful in that. She had the money, and you had not."
"That's all very well. Wait till you have been refused by half-a-dozen people who could quite afford to help you. Wait till you have been treated to delightful theories on the evils of borrowing, when you are half frantic for the want of a few pounds."
"I am sure Miss Maclean wastes money enough. I was in the pit at the Lyceum one night, and I saw her and Miss Reynolds in the stalls. I am quite sure none of the money came out of Miss Reynolds' pocket."
"Miss Reynolds is a highly favoured person. I quite admit that there is nothing wonderful about her. But I like Miss Maclean, and if she gives up medicine she will be a terrible loss."
"She has been twice ploughed."
"The more shame to the examiners!"
"Doris," said Mona a few minutes later, as she entered the æsthetic drawing-room where her friend was sitting alone at tea, "stay me with Mazawattee and comfort me with crumpets, for I have just met my bête noire."
Doris looked up with a bright smile of welcome. "Come," she said, "'don't be narrow-minded'!"
Mona took up a down cushion and threw it at her friend.
"Pick that up, please," said Doris quietly. "If my aunt comes in and sees her new Liberty cushion on the floor, it will be the end of you, so far as her good graces are concerned."
Mona picked it up, half absently, and replaced it on the sofa.
"Well, go on. Tell me all about your bête noire. Who is he?"
"He, of course! How is one to break it to you, dear Doris, that every member of our charming sex is not at once a Hebe and a Minerva?"
"I will try to bear up—remembering that 'God Almighty made them to match the men.' Proceed."
But Mona did not proceed at once. She drank her tea and looked fierce.
"I am narrow-minded," she said at last. "I wish that any power, human or divine, would prevent all women from studying medicine till they are twenty-three, and any woman from studying it at all, unless she has some one qualification, physical, mental, moral, or social, for the work. These remarks do not come very aptly from one who has been twice ploughed, but we are among friends."
"Well, dear," said Doris thoughtfully, "there were a few students at the School to-day whom one could have wished to see—elsewhere; but on the whole, they struck me as a party of happy, healthy, sensible, hard-working girls."
"Did they?" said Mona eagerly; "I am very glad."
"Yes, assuredly they did, and a few of them seemed to be really remarkable women."
"Oh yes! the exceptions are all right; but tell me about your visit. I wish you could have gone in summer, when they are sitting about in the garden with books and bones, and materia medica specimens."
"Two of them were playing tennis when I went in—playing uncommonly well too. We watched them for a while, and then we went to the dissecting-room."
"Well?"
"I am very glad you told me what you did about it—very. I think if I had gone quite unprepared I might have found it very ghastly and very awful. It is painful, of course, but it is intensely interesting. The demonstrator is such a nice girl. She took me round and showed me the best dissections; I had no idea the things looked like that. Do you know"—Doris waxed triumphant—"I know what fascia is, and I know a tendon from a nerve, and both from a vein."
"You have done well. Some of us who have worked for years cannot say as much—in a difficult case."
"Don't mock me; you know what I mean. Oh, Mona, how you can be in London and not go back to your work is more than I can imagine."
"Yes? That is interesting, but not strictly to the point. What did you do when you left the dissecting-room?"
"Attended a physiology lecture, delivered by a young man who kept his eyes on the ceiling, and never moved a muscle of his face, unless it was absolutely necessary."
"I know," said Mona, laughing; "but he knew exactly what was going on in the room all the time, and was doubtless wondering who the new and intelligent student was. He is delightful."
"He seemed nice," said Doris judicially, "and he certainly was very clever; but it would be much better to have women lecturers."
"That's true. But not unless they did the work every whit as well as men. You must not forget, dear, that a good laundress helps on the 'cause' of women better than a bad doctor or lecturer."
"Oh, I know that. But there must be plenty of women capable of lecturing on physiology."
Mona shrugged her shoulders.
"More things go to making a good physiology lecturer than you imagine,—a great many more," she added impressively.
Doris's face flushed.
"Not vivisection!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, vivisection. It may be that our modern science has gone off on an entirely wrong tack; it may be, as a young doctor said to me at Borrowness the other day, that we cannot logically stop short now of vivisecting human beings; but, as things are at present, I do not see how any man can conscientiously take an important lectureship on physiology, unless he does original work. I don't mean to say that he must be at that part of it all the time. Far from it. He may make chemical physiology or histology his specialty. But you see physiology is such a floating, growing, mobile science. It exists in no text-book. Photograph it one day, and the picture is unrecognisable the next. What the physiologist has to do is to plunge his mind like a thermometer, into the world of physiological investigation, and register one thing one moment, and another thing the next. He need never carry on experiments on living animals before his students, but he must live in the midst of the growing science—or be a humbug. I thought once that I should like nothing better than to be a lecturer on physiology, but I see now that it is impossible," she shivered,—"although, you know, dear, vivisection, as it exists in the popular mind, is a figment of the imaginations of the anti-vivisectionists."
Doris did not reply. She could not bear to think that Mona did not judge wisely and truly; she tried to agree with her in most things; but this was a hard saying.
"What does the young doctor at Borrowness say to a woman doctor?" she asked suddenly.
Mona winced. "He does not know that I am a medical student. Why should he?"
"Oh, Mona, you don't mean to say you have not told him! What an opportunity lost!"
"It is not my custom to go about ticketed, dear; but, if you wish, you shall tie a label round my neck."
"However, you will see him again. There is no hurry."
"It is to be hoped not," said Mona a little bitterly; "and now, dear, I must go.”