Mabel North was not a little proud of her brother as she conducted him into the hospital an hour or so later. He looked such a splendid manly fellow, she thought, with the glamour of his past exploits surrounding him like an aureole, that she wondered how other women could care to display their wretched dandified relatives beside him. In the fulness of her satisfaction, she marched him through various rooms and corridors, and presented him to a number of resplendent ladies who appeared to be receiving the guests, before there was any question of going up-stairs to visit the wards. Then she was seized upon by a suave person of business-like appearance, who turned out to be the secretary, for a few minutes’ confidential talk, and Dick, rather bewildered by his experiences, and wondering why a hospital should employ a lady as secretary, took refuge in the society of a man he had met at his club. “Isn’t this gathering slightly--er--informal?” he asked. “Don’t the doctors, or governors, or whatever they call the authorities of the place, show up at all? All the men here look as though they had been brought by their lady friends.” “Brought?” said the other man, “that’s it exactly. My wife brought me, your sister brought you, and Mountchesnay and the Archdeacon have been brought by their female relatives in just the same way. We are here on sufferance, don’t you know, just to open our minds and enlarge our views.” “Is it a ladies’ day, then?” “No, but the ladies boss the show here. Don’t you know that this is the hospital of the future, manned entirely by women? The tyrant man is in his rightful sphere here, quite at a discount. They think nothing of him. Why, there’s not a man on the premises but the porter, and he is there rather to overawe the relations of the patients than to help the ladies. But do you mean to say that Miss North brought you here without explaining the state of things? It wasn’t fair; she might have given you a shock.” “But who are the _burra mems_--the great ladies--in the other room?” “The doctors, ladies of European reputation. The one who shook hands with you first fought the whole battle for the medical women.” “I didn’t know that you were mixed up with all this kind of thing, Mab,” said Dick, as Mabel, having finished her talk with the secretary, turned to look for him. “All what kind of thing?” “Why, all this rot about lady doctors, and women’s hospitals, and so on.” “Then you don’t read my letters, Dick. I have told you about it again and again. But I have another surprise for you presently. Let us come up-stairs now.”