"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."