"You can call her which you like," replied Scott, affably. "Are you very busy this afternoon, Ludlow?" "I am not busy at all." "Then I wish you would go to Pitt. I can't spare the time. I've a heap of work on my shoulders to-day: it was only the pressing note I got from Bevere about his arm that brought me out of it. He is getting a bit doubtful himself, you see; and Pitt had better come to it without loss of time." "Bevere won't thank me for sending Pitt to him. You heard what he said." "Nonsense as to Bevere's thanks. The arm is worse than he thinks for. In my opinion, he stands a good chance of losing it." "No!" I exclaimed in dismay. "Lose his arm!" "Stands a chance of it," repeated Scott. "It will be his own fault. A week yesterday he damaged it again, the evening he came back here, and he has neglected it ever since. You tell Pitt what I say." "Very well, I will. I suppose the account Bevere gave to his mother and Mr. Brandon--that he had been living lately with you--was all a fable?" Scott nodded complaisantly, striding along at the pace of a steam-engine. "Just so. He couldn't bring them down upon him here, you know." I did not exactly know. And thoughts, as the saying runs, are free. "So he hit upon the fable, as you call it, of saying he had shared my lodgings," continued Scott. "Necessity is a rare incentive to invention." We had gained the Bell-and-Clapper Station as he spoke: two minutes yet before the train for the city would be in. Scott utilized the minutes by dashing to the bar for a glass of ale, chattering to Miss Panken and the other one while he drank it. Then we both took the train; Scott going back to the hospital--where he fulfilled some official duty beyond that of ordinary student--and I to see after Pitt. II. Roger Bevere's arm proved obstinate. Swollen and inflamed as I had never seen any arm yet, it induced fever, and he had to take to his bed. Scott, who had his wits about him in most ways, had not spoken a minute too soon, or been mistaken as to the probable danger; while Mr. Pitt told Roger every time he came to dress it, beginning with the first evening, that he deserved all he got for being so foolhardy as to neglect it: as a medical man in embryo, he ought to have foreseen the hazard. It seemed to me that Roger was just as ill as he was at Gibraltar Terrace, when they sent for his mother: if not worse. Most days I got down to Paradise Place to snatch a look at him. It was not far, taking the underground-railway from Miss Deveen's.