Mona took up a down cushion and threw it at her friend. "Pick that up, please," said Doris quietly. "If my aunt comes in and sees her new Liberty cushion on the floor, it will be the end of you, so far as her good graces are concerned."

Mona picked it up, half absently, and replaced it on the sofa.

“Well, go on.

is he?"

“He, of course!

Tell me all about your bête noire. Who

How is one to break it to you, dear Doris, that every member of our charming sex is not at once a Hebe and a Minerva ?"

"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 itvery. 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."

"You have done well. Some of us who have worked for years cannot say as much-in a difficult case."

"Don't mock me; you know what I mean. Oh, Mona, how you can be in London and not go back to your work is more than I can imagine."

"Yes? That is interesting, but not strictly to the point. What did you do when you left the dissecting-room?"

"Attended a physiology lecture, delivered by a young man who kept his eyes on the ceiling, and never moved a muscle of his face, unless it was absolutely necessary."

"I know," said Mona, laughing; "but he knew exactly what was going on in the room all the time, and was doubtless wondering who the new and intelligent student was. He is delightful."

"He seemed nice," said Doris judicially, "and he certainly was very clever; but it would be much better to have women lecturers."

"That's true. But not unless they did the work every whit as well as men. You must not forget, dear, that a good laundress helps on the 'cause' of women better than a bad doctor or lecturer."

"Oh, I know that. But there must be plenty of women capable of lecturing on physiology."

Mona shrugged her shoulders.

"More things go to making a good physiology lecturer than you imagine, a great many more," she added im

pressively.

Doris's face flushed.

"Not vivisection!" she exclaimed.

'Yes, vivisection. It may be that our modern science has gone off on an entirely wrong tack; it may be, as a young doctor said to me at Borrowness the other day, that we cannot logically stop short now of vivisecting human beings; but, as things are at present, I do not see how any man can conscientiously take an important lectureship on physiology, unless he does original work. I don't mean to say that he must be at that part of it all the time. Far from it. He may make chemical physiology or histology his specialty. But you see physiology is such a floating, growing, mobile science. It exists in no text-book. Photograph it one day, and the picture is unrecognisable the next. What the physiologist has to do is to plunge his mind like a thermometer into the world of physiological investigation, and register one thing one moment, and another thing the next. He need never carry on experiments on living animals before his students, but he must live in the midst of the growing science-or be a humbug. I thought once that I should like nothing better than to be a lecturer on physiology, but I see now that it is impossible," she shivered,— "although, you know, dear, vivisection, as it exists in the popular mind, is a figment of the imaginations of the antivivisectionists."

Doris did not reply. She could not bear to think that Mona did not judge wisely and truly; she tried to agree with her in most things; but this was a hard saying.

"What does the young doctor at Borrowness say to a woman doctor?" she asked suddenly.

Mona winced. "He does not know that I am a medical student. Why should he?"

"Oh, Mona, you don't mean to say you have not told him! What an opportunity lost!"

"It is not my custom to go about ticketed, dear; but, if you wish, you shall tie a label round my neck."

However, you will see him again. There is no hurry." "It is to be hoped not," said Mona a little bitterly; "and now, dear, I must go."

CHAPTER XXIV.

A CLINICAL REPORT.

Lucy was up-actually standing by the fire in her own room-and Lucy was as saucy as ever.

"I believe you have grown," said Mona, regarding her critically.

"I should think I had! I must be two inches taller at least. What do you think, Mona? I have had two offers of marriage this summer."

"That is not surprising. I never had much opinion of the intelligence of the other sex. I hope you refused

them."

"I did; but I will accept the next man who asks me, even if he is a chimney-sweep, just to spite you."

"Poor chimney-sweep! But look here, Pussy, you should not stand so long. Sit down in the arm-chair, and let me wrap you up in the eider-down. And put your feet on the stool-so! Comfy?"

'Very comfy, thanks."

"When you are strong enough, I want you to give me a full, particular, and scientific account of your illness. How came you by acute rheumatism? You are not a beef and beer man."

"Well, when I went home I was in the most tearing spirits for the first week, and then I gradually began to feel fit for nothing. No appetite, short breath, and all the rest of it. I knew all I wanted was a tonic, and I determined to prescribe one for myself, on the strength of an intimate acquaintance with Mitchell Bruce. As a preparatory step, in the watches of the night, I tried to run over the ingredients and doses of the preparations of iron; but for the life of me I could not remember them. Think of it! A month after the examination! I could not even remember that

pièce de résistance-you know!-the 'cinchona bark, calumba root, cloves' thing."

Compound tincture of cardamoms and tincture of orange-peel," completed Mona mechanically.

"Of course. That's it. 6 Macerated in peppermintwater,' wasn't it? or something of that sort. does not matter now that I have passed."

"Not in the least!"

However, it

"Well, while I meditated, mother sent for the doctor, a mere boy-ugh! If I had been seriously ill, I should have said, 'Welcome death!' and declined to see him; but it was only a question of a tonic, so I resigned myself. He prescribed hypophosphites, and said I was to have a slice off the roast, or a chop or something, and a glass of porter twice a day."

"Ah!" said Mona.

"It was no use telling mother that the infant knew less than I did. He was the doctor,' and that was enough. His word was law. I will say this for him, that I did get stronger; but just before I came back to town, I began to feel ill in quite a different way; indescribably queer, and fidgety and wretched. Mother made me stick to the beef and porter, as if my soul's weal had depended on it, and we all hoped the change to London might do me good. Just at first, I did feel a little better, and one afternoon Marion Proctor asked me to go down the river with her, and I went. My white dress was newly washed, and I had just done up my hat for the sixth time this summer. You may say what you like, Mona, but I did look awfully nice."

"I don't doubt it."

"I did not take my waterproof, because it completely spoilt the general effect, and I was sure it would not rain; but, as I told you, a tremendous thunderstorm came on, and we were drenched."

"Oh, Lucy!"

"When we got back here, there was not a fire in the house, and, do what I would, I got thoroughly chilled.

N