"And so we come back to the eternal question, whether a man benefits humanity more by self-development or self-sacrifice? Does knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage ever do any good? Have not the great specialists, the men of genius, who are looked upon as towers of strength, worked mainly at the thing they enjoyed working at?"
"Yes," said Miss Lascelles, "but they passed their examinations first."
Mona laughed. "True," she said, "I own the soft impeachment; and there you have the one and only argument in favour of girls beginning to study medicine when they are quite young. It is so easy for them to get up facts and tables."
"I think one requires to get up less, in the way of facts and tables, for the London than for any other examination. It is more honest, more searching, than any other."
Mona smiled—a very sad little smile. "Perhaps," she said.
"I don't know what you mean by knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage never doing any good," said the girl who held that the proof of the student was the examination; "I don't profess to have found any mysterious food for my intellectual growth in the action and uses of rhubarb, but I don't find rhubarb any the less efficacious on that account when I prescribe it."
"But you open up a pretty wide field for thought when you ask yourself, Why rhubarb rather than anything else?"
"It is cheap," said the girl frivolously, "and it is always at hand."
No one vouchsafed any reply to this.
"You have surely done enough to those brain sections for one day, Miss Lascelles," said Mona; "won't you come and lunch with me? It is only a few minutes' walk to my rooms."