He looked at me in a fatherly, studious fashion for several seconds.
“Fallon,” he said, in a very ordinary tone of voice, “I think you will.”
It wasn’t more than an hour after that when I was on the operating table for the infected fragments of my thumb had to be cut away and if the arm was to be saved at all other surgical work was necessary. As to the success of these operations it is only necessary to say that I still have my arm and my hand, though it is thumbless. For a long time this right arm of mine was a useless appendage dangling from my shoulder. But week by week it became more like a living member of my body.
When I was given an anæsthetic for the major operation, I suddenly got the absurd notion of counting—counting from one to nineteen. Well, it was “20” before I woke up.
When I did so it was to find myself squeezing for dear life the hand of the nurse beside me. As I batted my eyes she said:
“You bad boy, you’re hurting me.”
“I thought I was in heaven holding the hand of an angel!” I gasped at her, not making much of a success, however, of this attempt to be gay.
But she chuckled—the nicest softest chuckle you ever heard.
“That,” she told me, “will be sufficient of your blarney.”
Then I had a long sleep. And when I awakened I was weak as an infant and for days fed like one—hot milk out of a bottle from a baby’s tube affixed.