'And your liberty, Sir, that on the spot, if you undertake the operation, and the fee so soon as you have done it.'
The doctor's face blazed with a grin of exultation; he squared his shoulders and shook himself a little; and after a little silence, he demanded—
'Can you describe the case, Sir, as you stated it to Sir Hugh Skelton?'
'Surely, Sir, but I rely for it and the terms, upon the description of a village doctor, named Toole; an ignoramus, I fear.'
And with this preface he concisely repeated the technical description which he had compiled from various club conversations of Dr. Toole's, to which no person imagined he had been listening so closely.
'If that's the case, Sir, 'twill kill him.'
'Kill or cure, Sir, 'tis the only chance,' rejoined Dangerfield.
'What sort is the wife, Sir?' asked Black Dillon, with a very odd look, while his eye still rested on the short note that poor Mrs. Sturk had penned.
'A nervous little woman of some two or three and forty,' answered the spectacles.
The queer look subsided. He put the note in his pocket, and looked puzzled, and then he asked—'