“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore.”
“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear upon her cheek.
“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!”
He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”
“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.
“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too.”
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again.
“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.
“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the lodging-house.”