Mona Maclean, Medical Student: A Novel
9781465671035
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
There was no reply for a second or two. The first speaker was carefully extricating herself from the hammock in which she had been idly swinging under the shade of a smoke-begrimed lime-tree. "No," she said at last, shaking out the folds of her dainty blue gown, "I flatter myself that I do not look like it. I have often told you, my dear Mona, that from the point of view of success in practice, the art of dressing one's hair is at least as important as the art of dissecting." She gave an adjusting touch to her dark-red curls and drew herself to her full height, as though she were defying the severest critic to say that she did not live up to her principles. Presently her whole bearing collapsed, so to speak, into abject despair, half real, half assumed. "But I do wish I were dead, all the same," she said. "Well, I don't see why you should make me wish it too. Why don't you go on with your book?" "Go on with it! I like that! I never began. I have not turned a page for the last half-hour. That's all the credit I get for my self-repression! What time is it?" "A quarter past twelve." "Is that all? And the lists won't be up till two. When shall we start?" "About three, if we are wise—when the crush is over." "Thank you! I mean to be there when the clock strikes two. There won't be any crush. It's not like the Matric; and besides, every one has gone down. I am sure I wish I had! A telegram 'strikes home,' but the slow torture of wading through those lists——!" She broke off abruptly, and Mona returned to her book, but before she had read half-a-dozen lines a parasol was inserted between her eyes and the page. "It will be a treat, won't it?—wiring to the other students that everybody has passed but me!" "Lucy, you are intolerable. Have you finished packing?" "Practically." "Do you mean to travel half the night in that gown?" "Not being a millionaire like you, I do not. You little know the havoc this frock has to work yet. But I presume you would not have me walk down to Burlington House in my old serge?" "Why not? You say everybody is out of town." "Precisely. Therefore we, the exceptions, will be all the more en évidence. I don't mean to be taken for an 'advanced woman.' Some of the Barts. men will be there, and——" But Mona was not listening. She had risen from the cushions on which she had been lounging, and was pacing up and down the grass. "You know, Mona, you may say what you please, but you are rather white about the gills yourself, and you have no cause to be." Mona stopped and shot a level glance at her companion. "Why not?" she said. "Because I have been ploughed once already, and so should be used to skinning like the eels?" "Nonsense! How you contrived to fail once neither I nor any one else can pretend to explain, but certain it is that, with the best of will, you won't achieve the feat a second time. You will be in the Honours list, of course." Mona shrugged her shoulders. "Possibly," she said quietly, "if I pass. But the question is, shall I pass? 'Oh the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!'" They were walking up and down together now. "And even if you don't—it will be a disgrace to the examiners, of course, and a frightful fag, but beyond that I don't see that it matters. There is no one to care." Mona's cheek flushed. She raised her eyebrows, and turned her head very slowly towards her companion, with a glance of enquiry. "I mean," Lucy said hastily, "you are—that is to say, you are not a country clergyman's daughter like me. If I fail, it will be the talk of the parish. The grocer will condole with me over the counter, the postman will carry the news on his rounds, and the farmers will hear all about it when they come in to market next Wednesday. It will be awfully hard on the Pater; he——" "From what I know of him, I think he will be able to hold up his head in spite of it." They both laughed.
