Read Ebook: Mona Maclean Medical Student: A Novel by Travers Graham

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Ebook has 4013 lines and 145005 words, and 81 pages

"Got back, Mona?" said Lady Munro, emerging fresh and fragrant from her room.

"Yes, thank you." But before Mona had time to say more, Lady Munro turned to speak to Sir Douglas. It was impossible to begin a long story then.

The sudden change in the weather had induced many of the tourists to stay on, so the large dining-room was crowded. Mona just caught a glimpse of the son of Anak at the opposite end of another table, and she attempted once more to give a modified account of her afternoon's adventure. But the Fates were against her. A well-known Edinburgh professor was sitting opposite Sir Douglas, and the conversation became general.

"Let us hope he will give me five minutes' grace on the verandah," she said resignedly; but she had just remarked, by way of introduction, that the mist had almost entirely cleared, and Sir Douglas was in the act of lighting his first cigar, when the door opened, and her friend strode in with an air of infinite assurance.

"Aunt Maud," she began, but her voice was drowned in a general exclamation.

"Why, Sahib!" "Dickinson Sahib! Where on earth did you drop from?" "What a delightful surprise!" "Who would have thought of seeing you here? Sit down and tell us all about it. Oh, I forgot--Mr Dickinson, my niece, Miss Maclean."

"I was sure of it," exclaimed the new-comer, shaking hands cordially with the astonished Mona. "If I had met her in the wilds of Arabia, I could have sworn that she was a relative of Lady Munro's." And then the whole story came out, with modifications.

"Well, I must say," said Mona, when the questioning and explanations were over, "that you have treated me extremely badly."

He laughed like a schoolboy. "I am sure you don't grudge me my very small joke."

"No--especially as it makes us quits. Now we can begin a new page."

"I hope it may prove as pleasant as the first."

"Prettily said, Sahib," said Lady Munro. "Now, be sensible and give us an account of your eccentric movements."

"Eccentric!" he said, meditating a far-fetched compliment, but he was a sensible man and he thought better of it. "That's easily done. One of my Scotch visits fell through--a death in the house--so I ran over here for a few days. I thought I should probably run against you,--they say people always do meet in Norway. Of course, I knew you had sailed to Bergen."

"And what is your route now?"

"Is it for you to ask me that, as the filing said to the magnet?"

Sir Douglas went in search of maps and guide-books, and Mr Dickinson took a low chair beside Lady Munro.

"I need not ask if you are enjoying your tour," he said. "You are looking famously."

"Oh yes, I think this primitive world quite charming, and the air is so bracing! You have no idea what a pedestrian I have become. When Mona and my husband go off on breakneck excursions, Evelyn and I walk for hours--the whole day long nearly."

Mona looked up hastily. She had never heard of these wonderful walks; but her eyes met Evelyn's, and her question died on her lips.

"And Sir Douglas?" asked Mr Dickinson.

Lady Munro laughed, a low sweet laugh. "Oh, of course, he always grumbles; he says he has lived on roast leather and boiled flannel ever since we came. But he is enjoying himself immensely. It is a great thing for him to have Mona's company, as indeed it is for all of us. I am afraid she finds us dreadfully stupid. You have no idea what books she reads."

Everybody laughed.

"Then you are meditating a cutting critique," said her aunt.

"I am reading the book simply and entirely for amusement," said Mona. "I am getting a little tired of ormolu and marqueterie, but one can't have everything one wants."

"But you don't really care for Ouida?" said the Sahib seriously.

Sir Douglas returned, and the conversation resolved itself into a discussion of routes and steamers.

"I will not sleep again at that horrid noisy Voss," he said. "We must lunch and change horses there, and get on to Eide the same night."

"Can you be ready to start at eight?" said the Sahib to Lady Munro.

"Oh dear, yes! I am up every morning hours before that."

Sir Douglas laughed cynically.

"Who is Mr Dickinson?" said Mona, when she and Evelyn had retired to their room.

"Deputy-Commissioner of--I always forget the name of the place."

"Never mind. Boggley Wallah will do equally well for me. And why do they call him Sahib? I thought everybody was a Sahib?"

"His family call him that for a joke, and it has stuck somehow. It was because he was very young when he got some appointment or other."

"He looks a mere boy now."

"I think he is thirty-three."

"I wish you would not tell him that I am a medical student; I don't feel that I have done credit to my cloth. I should not like him to think medical women were muffs."

"Oh, Mona, I do wish you would not be a medical woman, as you call it. Why don't you marry?"

"'Nobody axed me, sir, she said.' At least nobody that I call anybody."

"If you would go out to India, somebody would ask you every week of your life."

"Thanks. Even that is not absolutely my ideal of blessedness."

"But you don't want to be an old maid?"

"That expression is never heard now outside the walls of a ladies' boarding-school," said Mona severely. "Oh, my dear, at the romantic age of seventeen you cannot even imagine how much I prize my liberty; how many plans I have in my head that no married woman could carry out. It seems to me that the unmarried woman is distinctly having her innings just now. She has all the advantages of being a woman, and most of the advantages of being a man. I don't see how it can last. Let her make hay while the sun shines.

'Ergreife die Gelegenheit! Sie kehret niemals wieder.'"

"Well, I know I should be very disappointed, if I thought I should never have little children of my own."

"O Maternity, what crimes are perpetrated in thy name! Mothering is woman's work without a doubt, but she does not need to have children of her own in order to do it. You dear little soul! Never mind me. I wish you as many as you will wish for yourself when the time comes, and a sweet little mother they will have!"

BONS CAMARADES.

"Nonsense!"

"Fact, my dear fellow! I knew it before I knew her, or I simply should never have believed it It's an awful shock to one's theories, don't you know?--one's views of womanliness and all that sort of thing. I have thought about it till I am tired, and I can't make it out; but upon my soul, Dickinson, you may say what you like, the girl's a brick."

"I'm quite sure of that already, and I'm sure she's clever enough for anything."

"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."

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