"Oh—clever, yes! But clever women don't need to—but there! I can't go into all that again. I simply give the subject up. Don't mention it to me again."
"But you know I am a staunch believer in women doctors. When my sister was so ill, the doctor at the station said she would be an invalid for life, and a staff surgeon who was passing through said the same. As a last resource I got a woman doctor to come a hundred miles to see her, and she brought Lena round in a few weeks. She knew her business, but—she was very different from Miss Maclean."
"Wasn't she? That's just it! Oh, I know they're a necessary evil. I should like to see a man doctor look at my Evelyn, except for a sore throat or a cut finger! I have always upheld the principle, in spite of the sacrifice involved; but how could I tell that any of my own womankind would take it up? You see, she was left so much to her own resources, poor child! There was no one to warn her of what it all meant. I reproach myself now for not having looked after her more; but how on earth could I know that she was going to turn out anything in particular? Gad! Dickinson, when I think of all that girl must know, it makes me sick—sick; but when I am speaking to her—upon my soul, I don't believe it has done her a bit of harm!"
The entrance of Mona and Evelyn into the sunny breakfast-room interrupted the conversation for a moment, and it was presently resumed in a lighter and more frivolous vein over the trout and the coffee.
"Oh, trout, yes!" said Sir Douglas. "I never said anything against the trout. If it were not for that, we should all be reduced to skin and bone. Evelyn, where is your mother?"
It was eight o'clock, and the calesch stood at the door, when Lady Munro appeared, serene and smiling; and then Evelyn and Mona had to hurry away and pack her valise for her.
"You know I've been up for hours," she said, with a charming nod to the Sahib, as she seated herself at the table, "but I began to write some letters——"
"Humph!" said Sir Douglas, and shrugging his shoulders, he abruptly left the room.
When the tardy valise was at last roped on to the calesch, and the portier was opening the door, the young Norwegian landlady came up shyly to Lady Munro.
"Will you haf?" she said in her pretty broken English, holding out a large photograph of the hotel, with its staff on the doorstep.