Farraday, knowing her for the moment lost to everything save her latest piece of stage management, left her, and joined the Byrds. He engaged himself to visit their studio the following week.
IX
Miss Mason was folding her knitting, and Mary sat in the firelight sewing diligently. Stefan was out in search of paints.
“I tell you what 'tis, Mary Elliston Byrd,” said Miss Mason. “It's 'bout time you saw a doctor. My mother was a physician-homeopath, one of the first that ever graduated. Take my advice, and have a woman.”
“I'd much rather,” said Mary.
“I should say!” agreed the other. “I never was one to be against the men, but oh, my—” she threw up her bony little hands—“if there's one thing I never could abide it's a man doctor for woman's work. I s'pose I got started that way by what my mother told me of the medical students in her day. Anyway, it hardly seems Christian to me for a woman to go to a man doctor.”
Mary laughed. “I wish my dear old Dad could have heard you. I remember he once refused to meet a woman doctor in consultation. She had to leave Lindum—no one would employ her. I was a child at the time, but even then it seemed all wrong to me.”
“My dear, you thank the Lord you live under the Stars and Stripes,” rejoined Miss Mason, who conceived of England as a place beyond the reach of liberty for either women or men.