Of course Mr. Crowe was huffy and upset at the meeting, and at the reception which the ladies gave to the handsome young fellow whom they had discovered. He was jealous, too; for Mildred did not conceal the interest she felt in all that was shown her, and Mr. Crowe could not scoff down the good works of which he had evidence that day, though he tried hard to make game of any attempt to Christianize the gipsies, and protested it was a great pity to waste so many opportunities of investigating cholera germs and inoculations in such a favourable field. Mildred set him down when he spoke contemptuously of Elsworth’s Gitano friends. “Now, Mr. Crowe, you surprise me, as a deep student of natural phenomena, to hear you talk so. Don’t you know— ‘No creature’s made so mean But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate, Its supreme worth’?” Mr. Crowe did not think the game was worth the candle; besides, it would spoil the artists’ chances to civilize the gipsies. Elsworth explained that had he attempted to experiment with the cholera patients, if he had been so inclined, he would have fared no better than the native doctors, who were suspected of propagating the disease for the Government, who wished to deplete the population. “Yes,” said Aunt Janet, “can we wonder at the poor Neapolitans and Spaniards, in the late cholera epidemics, attacking the doctors with sticks and stones, declaring they were spreading the disease—as, in fact, they were—by these abominable vaccinations?” “I hear that Pasteur’s hydrophobia cure is entirely discredited by the French experts,” said Mildred. “It is,” replied Elsworth; “and anybody who believed that God, and not the devil, governs the world, might have predicted its failure from the infernal nature of the process for keeping up the supply of the vaccine. Just fancy, keeping in cages, a lot of dogs inoculated with the virus, to inoculate again a lot of rabbits, ready for use for any patient who might want the treatment!” “Do you know, Mr. Elsworth,” said Mildred, “I am almost afraid to venture the opinion, yet it is a growing one with me, that what is called scientific medicine is a contradiction in terms. The human stomach is not a test-tube, and till we leave off treating it as a dyer treats his vats, we can’t expect to make any progress. So many things go to make up therapeutic treatment. How often have I heard my father say that he never could do any good unless the patient had full faith in him!” “I fear you do not estimate very highly either the education you got at St. Bernard’s, or the benefits such institutions confer on the people,” said Mr. Crowe, in a rather sneering tone, when Elsworth had assented to Mildred’s remarks. Dr. Graves maintained that the hospital education given at St. Bernard’s was second to none in Europe, and doubted if it were possible to improve on its methods, as far as they went. “What do you say, Mr. Elsworth?” he asked.