Because he won’t annex
The females to his Grex.”
CHAPTER XV
PAYING THE PRICE
All through that autumn S. J.-B’s mind must have been simply seething with the manifold interests that claimed her attention.
“If anybody ever deserved a rest, you do,” writes Miss Stevenson, “and I most earnestly hope you will take a thorough one. I do not think any of us are able fully to realize the importance of Lord Gifford’s decision to all men and women in all time coming.”
“I am truly glad that something is definitely settled at last,” writes Miss Bovell from Paris, “and not least for your sake. I do trust you may have much less worry in future, though I fear the ‘separate classes’ will still prove a source of trouble. Perhaps some time hence the British Medical Profession, as well as the British Public, may be sufficiently advanced to throw aside the unscientific scruples which happily appear to have no existence here....
I suppose you will be going in for your Professional in October? I wish you all possible honours. I trust your mind is now sufficiently at ease for you to work at books, but you will take a holiday in the country first, will you not?”
The difficulty of arranging classes was so great that a good many of the students had scattered for the summer months. Mrs. Chaplin Ayrton, as well as Miss Bovell, was in Paris; Miss Massingberd Mundy and Miss Dahms had gone to Dr. Lucy Sewall at Boston, and Miss Pechey was working at the Lying-in Hospital in Endell Street.
“Oh, Lucy, I’m so tired of it all!” S. J.-B. had written to her friend a month or two before this. “When those children went to you a fortnight ago, I did so wish I could have gone and been rested and nursed for a few months!
But I’m sure you will see how utterly without choice I am,—that I must stay at my post as long as I can stand.