"Oh, give Sir Frank Carver a rest. Sir Rashleigh Hewitt's good enough for me and for anyone else who knows."
"All right," said Ginger. "Keep your hair on!"
"My hair's on right enough," said Six-foot-two. "It's you who are getting ratty."
There was a pause, and both lighted new cigarettes, each taking one of his own.
"What puzzles me," Six-foot-two began slowly, "is no one saying anything about your patella. That's the great marvel of my case—my patella. It's full of holes, like a sieve. There's never been one like it before. The profession's wild about it. That's what makes me so interesting to them."
"Where is it, anyway?" Ginger snapped out.
"In the knee, of course."
"In the knee! Well, if it's in the knee mine must be full of holes too. I've got everything you can have in the knee, I tell you. Everything."
"Have they written anything about you in the papers?" Six-foot-two asked. "No. Ah," he went on triumphantly, "they have about me. There's a medical paper with a piece in it all about my patella. I sent it home and they've framed it. It's the most astonishing thing in surgery that I should be able to be walking about at all."
"That's what they tell me," Ginger replied. "But, anyhow, your bullets are all out. I've got another one yet, and by the time that's out I dare say I shall have had twenty operations and a whole column in the papers. But as for articles in papers, they're nothing. Have you got your X-ray photograph?"