“I believe he has gone off with some girl,” said ugly little beetle-browed Mills, the clinical clerk; “or somebody’s wife more likely still.”
“Well, you may comfort yourself, Mills, that that indiscretion will never happen to you. I could believe it of a cash-box, but there isn’t a woman living who would elope with you—married or single. You will never create that scandal.”
At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and a nurse put her head into the room and, addressing one of the house surgeons, told him the patient Green, in Isabella ward, had consented to undergo the operation which he had suggested, and then added: “Sister says she thinks he is dying fast, and are you going to operate?”
“Going to operate! Rather think I was. Don’t you know, Nurse, this is my first capital operation? Do you think I am going to lose the chance?”
“Then, sir, Sister told me to ask you if I had better let the chaplain know?”
“Chaplain be hanged!” he cried. “Certainly not! It would only depress the poor devil. No! no! Plenty of brandy! Keep him up! Cheer him all you can; tell him it is only a trifling, every-day sort of affair, and he will be well in a jiffy. You may send for his wife.”
“Oh, sir, she has been waiting about the hospital all day.”
“All right, then! Now, gentlemen, to business. You shall see me do something pretty. Bishop says I may do it all myself as soon as the ether is given. Is Bishop in the wards?”
“No, I saw him in the pathologist’s room with Crowe an hour ago, and he said he should be here but part of the day. I’ll tell him, shall I?” asked a dresser.
“Do!”