“Yes, but he’s hors de combat, my lad, and you don’t want to jump on a fallen enemy.”
“Don’t know so much about that, doctor,” said the young man, dryly, “but you ought.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Leigh, “but I am what you would call crotchety, and I must treat him as I would a man who never did me harm. Come, your wine has strung you up. Let’s get to work.”
“Must I? Hadn’t you better put the beggar out of his misery? He isn’t a bit of good in the world, and has done a lot of harm to everyone he knows.”
“Bad fracture,” said Leigh, gravely, as he passed his hand round the insensible man’s head, “but not complicated. He must have fallen with tremendous violence.”
“Of course he did,” said Claud. “He had my weight on him, as well as his own. Can he hear what we say?”
“No, and will not for some time to come. Now, take the scissors out of my pocket-book, and cut away all the hair round the back. There, cut close: don’t be afraid.”
“Afraid! Not I,” said Claud, with a laugh, “I’ll take it all off, and make him look like a—what I hope he will be—a convict.”
He began snipping away industriously, talking flippantly the while, to keep down the feeling of faintness which still troubled him.
“Fancy me coming to be old Garstang’s barber! I say, doctor, you’d like to keep a lock of the beggar’s hair, wouldn’t you? I mean to have one.”