CHAPTER VI.
Magnificent Arrival Of A Heroine.
I.
Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers, surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts—three more months of dependency—to take greater interest.
One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause, “Clumsy beast,” said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: “Come on, Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West.”
In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose. “Tea,” said he; “it is going to rain.”
He addressed the pretty waitress: “I have no wish to seem inquisitive, but which table do you attend?”
The girl jerked her chin: “What's that to you?”
“So much,” Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, “that, until I know, here, beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand.”
“Well, all of 'em.” She whisked away.
“You're badly snubbed, Franklyn,” George said. “This rain is nothing.”
A summer shower crashed down as he spoke; a mob of shoppers, breathless for shelter, drove them inwards.
“George,” said Mr. Franklyn, seating himself, “your base mind thinks I have designs on this girl. I grieve at so distorted a fancy. The child says prettily that she attends 'all of 'em.' It is a gross case of overwork into which I feel it my duty more closely to inquire.”
George laughed. “Do you always spend your afternoons like this?”
“As a rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad wrench to leave the dear old home.” He continued, a tinge of melancholy in his voice: “You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit. Alone, undismayed, I uphold the old traditions. I am, so to speak, one of the old aristocracy. Beneath the snug characteristics of the latter-day student—his sweet abhorrence of a rag, his nasty delight in plays which he calls 'hot-stuff,' his cigarettes and his chess-playing—beneath these my head, like Henley's, is bloody but unbowed. Forgive a tear.”
The shower ceased; the tea was finished; the pretty waitress was coyly singeing her modesty in the attractive candle of Mr. Franklyn's suggestions. George left them at the game; strolled aimlessly towards the Marble Arch; beyond it; to the right, and so into a quiet square.
Here comes my heroine.