"And so we come back to the eternal question, whether a man benefits humanity more by self-development or self-sacrifice? Does knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage ever do any good? Have not the great specialists, the men of genius, who are looked upon as towers of strength, worked mainly at the thing they enjoyed working at?" "Yes," said Miss Lascelles, "but they passed their examinations first." Mona laughed. "True," she said, "I own the soft impeachment; and there you have the one and only argument in favour of girls beginning to study medicine when they are quite young. It is so easy for them to get up facts and tables." "I think one requires to get up less, in the way of facts and tables, for the London than for any other examination. It is more honest, more searching, than any other." Mona smiled--a very sad little smile. "Perhaps," she said. "I don't know what you mean by knowledge that is fastened on as an appendage never doing any good," said the girl who held that the proof of the student was the examination; "I don't profess to have found any mysterious food for my intellectual growth in the action and uses of rhubarb, but I don't find rhubarb any the less efficacious on that account when I prescribe it." "But you open up a pretty wide field for thought when you ask yourself, Why rhubarb rather than anything else?" "It is cheap," said the girl frivolously, "and it is always at hand." No one vouchsafed any reply to this. "You have surely done enough to those brain sections for one day, Miss Lascelles," said Mona; "won't you come and lunch with me? It is only a few minutes' walk to my rooms." The girl hesitated. "Thank you," she said suddenly--"I will. I shall be ready in five minutes." She slipped from her high stool, and stood putting away her things--a tiny figure scarcely bigger than a child, yet full of character and dignity. "In the meantime come and demonstrate this tiresome old artery, Miss Maclean," said Miss Philips. "I am getting hopelessly muddled." "If you knew the surroundings in which I have spent the last six months," said Mona, smiling, "you would not expect me to know more than the name of the internal iliac artery. I shall be very glad to come and look at your dissection though, if I may." "You see I have not forgotten the kindness you showed me when I first began." "I don't remember any kindness on my part. You were kind enough to let me refresh my memory on your dissection, I know." "That's one way of putting it. Do you remember my asking you how closed tubes running through the body could do it any good?" "Yes; and I remember how delighted I was with the intelligence of the question. Heigh-ho! what a child you seemed to me then!" She took the forceps in her hand, and in a moment the old enthusiasm came back. "How very interesting!" she said. "Look at this deep epigastric." And a quarter of an hour had passed before she remembered her guest and her luncheon.