"
Then Grandmamma got very stiff, Margery says (she always is rather
stiff), and said, "I am sorry, Dr. Brown, to hear you speak so ill of
the members of an honourable profession, to which you yourself
belong."
And Dr. Brown found out that he had brushed his hat the wrong way, and
he brushed it right, and said, "Not at all, Madam, not at all! I think
we're a very decent set, for men with large public responsibilities,
almost entirely shielded from the wholesome light of public criticism,
who handle more lives than most Commanders, and are not called upon to
publish our disasters or make returns of our losses. But don't expect
too much of us! I say we are not reformers. They rise up amongst us
now and again; but we don't encourage them, we don't encourage them.
We are a privileged caste of medicine men, whose 'mysteries' are
protected by the faith of those to whom we minister, a faith
fortified by ignorance and fear. I wish you good-morning, Madam."
Margery has often repeated this to me. We call it "Dr. Brown's
Speeches." She is very fond of spouting speeches, much longer ones
than Dr. Brown's. She learns them by heart out of history books, and
then dresses up and spouts them to me in our attic.
Margery says she did not understand at the time what they were
quarrelling about; and when, afterwards, she asked Grandmamma what a
cesspool was, Grandmamma was cross with her too, and said it was a
very coarse and vulgar word, and that Dr.
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