I got a friend here to let me try on the square college cap “mortar board,” and it fitted so nicely over my bow that I do not think I should be at all troubled by ideas of anything unusual being on my head; and I can take it off without trouble. Through your kind help I think all these arrangements are in perfect order, and I am looking forward much (preliminarily) to our meeting at Balmoral Hotel.
March 27, 1900.
I should have liked to beg a ticket besides the two which you kindly mention for my nephew, Arthur Ormerod, who has just taken his M.D., so I wired off to him at Oxford, but, to his great regret, he cannot come. I hope the weather will be better, but we have a good bright sunshine between the occasional light snow showers, and both Miss Hartwell and myself have good furred mantles, and with the snug small carriage all our own way, I think we shall do very well.
What a sight the hall will be! also your small flock of aspirant doctors; may be as anxious in their minds as some one I know of. But I am really not alarmed. I am sure you will keep me right. What time of day does the ceremony begin? And what happens after?—do we retire respectively like rabbits to our own burrows?
March 29, 1900.
The pamphlet on the McEwan Hall [the number of the “Student” describing the opening of the Hall] is a great boon to me, and what a noble building!
While in Edinburgh my idea is to have lunch at one o’clock, my usual time, and a sort of miscellaneous meal at 6.30, and rest in the evening after it, and I shall think it a great compliment and a very great pleasure if friends may do me the favour to look in after, say, about two o’clock. It will be much safer for me, under present circumstances of wanting to keep fresh and strong for the day, not to go out, so I should be on the spot. Sir Wm. Muir and his daughter, Mrs. Arbuthnot, kindly wrote that they meant to look in, but it would be only a pleasure to me to see any friends. Please to consider me as quite under your guidance for this, to me, so very great occasion, and wholly thankful so to be, excepting in the feeling of the great trouble that you are kindly taking.
Yours very sincerely,
Eleanor A. Ormerod.
P.S.—Dr. E. L. thought it would be best for me to return by the Sunday night sleeping train, and the Midland manager has given permission for it to stop here on Monday morning.