“To put it plainly, your leg should be broken again, and properly set.”
“What is wrong with it?”
“You know you have two bones in that part of the leg which is below the knee, the tibia and the fibula? Well, they were broken—by a blow, was it? No, a fall—well, they practically amount to the same thing, though there are indications that this injury was caused by a blow——”
“He fell off one rock onto another, doctor,” put in Benson.
“Ah, yes! That accounts for it. As I was saying, they were broken slantwise, and now, instead of being in correct apposition, the upper parts override the lower ones. Do you follow?”
“Suppose they are not interfered with, will they heal all right?” said Power.
“Y-yes,” came the grudging admission; “but you’ll walk with a limp.”
“Bar that, the left leg will be as strong as the right one?”
“Stronger, in that particular place. Nature does some first-rate grafting, when the stock is young and exceptionally healthy.”
Power smiled, almost with the compelling good-humor of other days. “Then I’ll limp along, Doctor,” he said. “I have things to do, and this enforced waste of time is the worst feature of the whole business. It is very good of you to come out here, and more than kind of Mr. Benson to accompany you; but I won’t, if I can avoid it, endure another ten days like the sample I have just passed through.”