"When do you operate?" asked Medfield a little dryly.
"Um—this is Wednesday? Yes—about Friday, then." He got up. "There is something I want you to do meantime." He rang for the nurse and called for a roll of bandage.
When she brought it, he asked her to send Aunt Jane to Suite A.
"Do you know where she is?" he asked.
"In the Children's Ward, I think," said Miss Canfield.
"Very well. Ask her to come. I want her to have special charge of this brace for me."
He turned back to the window. "Now, if I may have you here. I want to take measurements, please."
The man stood straight as a tailor's dummy while the surgeon's hands flitted over and around him. The tall figure outlined against the window had a singular grace and charm; and the short, square one moving jerkily around it, taking measurements and jotting down figures had an added absurdity from the contrast.... Now, Dr. Carmon was on his hands and knees on the floor; and now, stretching tiptoe to pass a tape-measure over the tall, thin shoulders of the aristocratic figure.
It was thus that Aunt Jane saw the two men as she opened the door. She stood for a moment in the doorway. Then she closed the door and came in.
But between the opening of the door and the closing it, she had seen for the first time Dr. Carmon as he really was—a homely and grotesque and brusque little man. It added, perhaps, a touch of severity to the expression of the round face and its crisp cap strings.