"I'm going to help you, doctor-man, if you please," she said, as he turned to the box of instruments which his assistant held.
"There's another—one of my colleagues—coming I hope," the Young Doctor replied.
"That's all right, but I am staying to see Mr. Crozier through. I said
I'd hold his hand, and I'm going to do it," she added firmly.
"Very well; put on a big apron, and see that you go through with us if you start. No nonsense."
"There'll be no nonsense from me," she answered quietly.
"I want the bed in the middle of the room," the Young Doctor said, and the others gently moved it.
CHAPTER V
A STORY TO BE TOLD
A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never nervous when performing an operation, though there was sometimes a moment when every resource of character, skill, and brain came into play. That was when, having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and unexpected seat of trouble and peril was exposed, and instant action had to be taken. The great man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with it coolly; but he paid the price afterwards in his sleep when, night after night, he performed the operation over and over again with the same strain on his subconscious self.
So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way. She had insisted on being allowed to help at the operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a good knowledge of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so far as the operation was concerned she justified his faith in her. When the banker had to leave the room at the sight of the carnage, she remained, and she and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor and his fellow- anatomist, till it was all over, and Shiel Crozier was started again on a safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would have been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and John Sibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burst into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they sat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like two children.