Dr. Lord, angry as he was at Dr. Hoffman's arraignment of him before the nurses and visitors, was yet a big enough man to realize that he had a chance to learn something from this sarcastic intruder who had so unceremoniously taken his case out of his hands, and swallowing his wrath, asked permission to witness the operation. "Ach, yes, to be sure," said Dr. Hoffman, with his old geniality. "You must not mind that I vas so cross yesterday," he went on, "it vas because I vas so impatient ven I hear you vanted to amputate dot girl's leg off. But I forget," he said magnanimously, "you do not know how to set de badly splintered bones so dey vill knit, as I do. Bring all de doctors in you vant to, and all de nurses too. Ve vill haf a Klinick."
Thus it was that the large operating room of the hospital was crowded to the very edge of the "sterile field" with eager medical men, glad of the chance to watch Dr. Hoffman at work. "Who is that young girl in here?" asked Dr. Lord impatiently, as the anaesthetic was about to be administered.
"Some friend of the patient," explained the head nurse. "Hoffman let her in himself." The young girl in question was Medmangi. Dr. Hoffman knew all about her ambition to become a doctor and allowed her to come into the operating room. So she began her career by witnessing one of the most inspired operations of a widely famed surgeon.
When Sahwah came out of the ether she felt as if she were held in a vise. "What's the matter?" she asked dreamily. "I feel so stiff and queer."
"It's the cast they put you in," answered her mother.
Sahwah moved her arms carefully to see if they were in working order yet. Lightly she touched the hard substance that surrounded her hip bone. "They didn't cut it off, did they?" she asked in sudden terror. She could not tell by the feeling whether she had two legs or one.
Dr. Hoffman, coming in in time to hear the question, snorted violently. "Don't talk such nonsense, Missis Sahvah," he said, waving his hands emphatically. "Dot limb is still vere it belongs, and vill be as good as ever ven de cast comes off."
The watchers around the bed that day wore very different expressions from what they had worn all week. Just since yesterday despair had given way to hope and hope to assurance. Her mother and father and Nyoda hovered over the bed with radiant faces, and the Winnebagos, after seeing Sahwah's favorable condition with their own eyes, retired to Gladys's barn to celebrate. The rules of the hospital forbade the amount of noise they felt they must make. Dick Albright smiled his first smile that day since the night of the accident.