"It _is_ hard, Zoe, isn't it? She is a physician--an able physician; has studied at Zurich and at Edinburgh, and in France, and has a French diploma; but must not practice in England, because we are behind the Continent in laws and civilization--so _she_ says, confound her impudence, and my folly for becoming a woman's echo! But if I were to tell you her whole story, your blood would boil at the trickery, and dishonesty, and oppression of the trades-union which has driven this gifted creature to a foreign school for education; and, now that a foreign nation admits her ability and crowns her with honor, still she must not practice in this country, because she is a woman, and we are a nation of half-civilized men. That is _her_ chat, you understand, not mine. We are not obliged to swallow all that; but, turn it how you will, here are learning, genius, and virtue starving. We must get her to accept a little money; that means, in her case, a little fire and food. Zoe, shall that woman go to bed hungry to-night?""No, never!" said Zoe, warmly. "'Let me think. Offer her a _loan."_"Well done; that is a good idea. Will _you_ undertake it? She will be far more likely to accept. She is a bit of a prude and all, is my virago.""Yes, dear, she will. Order the carriage. She shall not go to bed hungry-- nobody shall that you are interested in.""Oh, after dinner will do."
Dinner was ordered immediately, and the brougham an hour after.
At dinner, Vizard gave them all the outline of the Edinburgh struggle, and the pros and cons; during which narrative his female hearers might have been observed to get cooler and cooler, till they reached the zero of perfect apathy. They listened in dead silence; but when Harrington had done, Fanny said aside to Zoe, "It is all her own fault. What business have women to set up for doctors?""Of course not," said Zoe; "only we must not say so. He indulges _us_ in our whims."Warm partisan of immortal justice, when it was lucky enough to be backed by her affections, Miss Vizard rose directly after dinner, and, with a fine imitation of ardor, said she could lose no more time--she must go and put on her bonnet. "You will come with me, Fanny?"When I was a girl, or a boy--I forget which, it is so long ago--a young lady thus invited by an affectionate friend used to do one of two things;nine times out of ten she sacrificed her inclination, and went; the tenth, she would make sweet, engaging excuses, and beg off. But the girls of this day have invented "silent volition." When you ask them to do anything they don't quite like, they look you in the face, bland but full, and neither speak nor move. Miss Dover was a proficient in this graceful form of refusal by dead silence, and resistance by placid inertia. She just looked like the full moon in Zoe's face, and never budged. Zoe, being also a girl of the day, needed no interpretation. "Oh, very well," said she, "disobliging thing!"--with perfect good humor, mind you.