"What I mean is," I explained, quite miserably crestfallen, "my mother wouldn't understand what I feel about studying medicine. But _you_"--and I had a struggle to keep the tears back--"I've looked forward so to telling you----" He turned the papers over with an odd misliking expression. "For one thing, you could never pass the entrance examination," he said. I asked why he thought that. "Do you see yourself going to classes in London, cramming yourself with all this?"--his hand swept the qualifications list. "Not classes in London," I said. "But people do the London Matriculation without that. I am taking the University Tutorial Correspondence Course," I said. I was swallowing tears as I boasted myself already rather good at Botany and French. My mother thought even my German tolerable. I picked up the little pamphlet issued by the University of London on the subject of Matriculation Regulations, and I pointed out Section III., "Provincial Examinations." The January and June Matriculation Examinations were held at the Brighton Municipal Technical College. He could see that made it all quite convenient and easy. "I can see it is all quite mad," he answered. "Suppose by some miracle you were to pass the entrance exams.--have you any idea how long they keep you grinding away afterwards?" "Five to seven years," I said. "Well! Can't you see what a wild idea it is?" I said to myself: he knows about our straitened means. "You mean it costs such a great deal." "It costs a great deal more than you think," he said, shifting about discontentedly in his chair. Then I told him that my mother had some jewels. "I am sure that when she sees I am in earnest, when I have got my B. A., she will be willing I should use the jewels----" "It's a dog's life," he said, "for a woman." I gathered my precious papers together. "You think I shall mind the hard work. But I shan't." "It isn't the hard work," he said, "though it's not easy for a man. For a woman----" he left the woman medical-student hanging over the abyss. For all my questions I could not bring him to the point of saying what these bugbears were. He was plainly tired of the subject. My first disappointment had yielded to a spiritless catechism of how this and how that. My persistent canvass of the matter brought him nearer a manifestation of ill-temper than I had ever seen in him. There was a great deal, he said, that he couldn't talk about to a girl of eighteen. But had I or anybody else ever heard of a man who was a doctor himself wanting his sister, or his daughter to study medicine? He had never known one. _Not one._ I confessed I couldn't think why that was, except that nobody belonging to a girl ever wanted her to do anything, except--I stopped short and then hurried on.... "But after all, you know that women do go through the medical schools and come out all right."