"I have come partly to look after my two daughters," said the old man, smiling. "Let me have a good look at this one. Lucy tells me you are working yourself to death." "One of Lucy's effective statements." But Mona flushed rather nervously under his steady gaze. "I suppose you have just come from her now." "Yes." "She is working splendidly if you will." "So I gather." He smiled. "She is very indignant to-night about the rudeness of the doctor under whom she is working at hospital." "I don't think it is very serious. They are excellent friends in the main, and you cannot expect all men to be gentlemen. The fact is"--Mona drew down her brows in earnest consideration--"we women are excellent, really excellent, at taking a good hard blow when we are convinced that we deserve it. That is where our metal comes in. But if we really mean to share men's work, we have got to learn within the next generation to take a little miscellaneous knocking about from our superiors, without enquiring too closely whether we have deserved it or not. That is where our ignorance of the world comes in." "I should think that was extremely true," Mr Reynolds said reflectively, "especially in a busy life like a doctor's, where there is so little time for explanations. There must be a good deal of give and take. But, my dear girl, don't let your common-sense run away with one atom of your womanliness. One would not think it necessary to say so, if one had not been disappointed in that respect, once and again." "I know," Mona answered hurriedly. "It is a case of Scylla and Charybdis. We don't want to be mawkish and sentimental, and in the first swing of reaction we are apt to go to the other extreme and treat the patients in hospital as mere material. But you know, Mr Reynolds, if one realises that the occupant of each bed is a human soul, with its own rights and its own reserves--if one takes the trouble to knock at the door, in fact, and ask admission instead of leaping over the wall--life becomes pretty intense; a good deal gets crowded into a very few hours." "I know. That is quite true. But all things become easier by practice. It may be the view of a half-informed outsider, but I cannot help thinking that, if you take the trouble, when you first begin ward-work, as Lucy calls it, to gain admission with the will of the patient, you will in time become the possessor of a magic _passe-partout_, which will make entrance not only infinitely more satisfactory and complete, but also even easier than by leaping over the wall." "You should preach a sermon to women-doctors," Mona said, smiling; "and have it printed. I would lay it to heart for one." "You will do far more good by preaching it yourself in your daily life, as indeed I believe you are doing now. But in any case, I did not come here to preach to you." "You don't know how much I stand in need of it." "I want you to talk to me. Do you know it is more than a year since I saw you?"