“The female students almost deserve this rebuff,” said the _Spectator_,[63] “for making the concessions they have done to English prudery, concessions not made either in France, Austria, or the United States. The only safe ground for them to stand on is that science is of no sex, and cannot be indelicate unless made so of _malice prepense_, and that by the very conditions of the profession the modesty of ignorance must be replaced by the modesty of pure intent.” Footnote 62: April 27th, 1870. Footnote 63: April 23rd, 1870. It is not to be supposed that the women students were fortified by a unanimous chorus of journalistic support: far from it: some six or seven months later the _Spectator_ strove to understand “the bitter and, so far as we know, the unprecedented malignity with which women who aspire to be Doctors are pursued by the literary class.” One does not wish to dwell on this. It was simply bound to be. As Sir James Stansfeld said seven years later in reviewing the whole movement: “It is one of the lessons of human progress that when the time for a reform has come you cannot resist it, though, if you make the attempt, what you may do is to widen its character or precipitate its advent. Opponents, when the time has come, are not merely dragged at the chariot wheels of progress—they help to turn them. The strongest force, whichever way it seem to work, does most to aid.” It is the more pleasing, however, to record the sane and wholesome view taken from the first by the leading responsible papers, including _Punch_. “I am very vexed about the General Council,” wrote Miss Pechey from her home; “but it’s no use worrying,—at least so the nightingale tells me. She sang two hours at my bedroom window last night, and said all sorts of pretty things. I wish I could bring her to Edinburgh with me, but she wouldn’t like it; besides they are a very old family, and have lived in the place from the time of the Britons, so she wouldn’t like to move. Papa did not write to the _Scotsman_. I knew he wouldn’t unless someone told him what to say; and I believe, if the truth were told, he still has some lurking prejudice against mixed classes. He isn’t a bit scientific, never notices the butterflies and beetles in a walk unless I point them out to him, and there are lovely ones now, peacocks and brimstones and tortoiseshells.” It is clear that just then Miss Pechey was having a very good time. She was the woman of the moment, a lion abroad as well as in her country home, and she had the courage and the sense to enjoy the position quietly and without making a fuss. Moreover both she and S.J.-B. were human enough to appreciate the situation all the more because, from the ordinary point of view, the heroine was a truly pretty girl, as disarming as heroine well could be. CHAPTER VII PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES