‘Somehow, I thought you would be.’
‘What made you think I would be?’ he asked, falling into the trap.
‘Well, you are not a stupid man, and you have been about the world a lot. You seemed to me to be unusually open-minded.’
‘Well, I won’t go so far as to say I am against it, you know,’ he conceded.
And then the argument started, amplified by facts and reasons which would have opened any mind, and which finally sent him off ‘almost persuaded.’
* * * * *
An R.A.M.C. general in a responsible position called one day when the senior medical officers were out. He was received by another member of the medical staff, and assuming the semi-jocular, semi-familiar attitude which professional women dislike so much in their colleagues, permitted himself to say:
‘I don’t know anything about lady doctors. Do you bite?’
It was almost the only time that this sort of thing was encountered. As a rule, there was no want of courtesy; and the doctors met with the kindest consideration on all sides.
A more trying type of visitor was a celebrated neurologist who, as he went round the wards, looked over the patients as though they were goods on a counter, and said in front of them: