The boy laughed. "And Collett will never manage that sole of the foot without you," he said. "Collett must." Dudley smiled up at the eager face that was bending over his dissection. "I only undertook to find the cutaneous branch of the internal plantar," and he lifted the nerve affectionately on the handle of his scalpel. "Come, Jones, fire away. _Ce n'est pas la mer à boire_. Half an hour will do it." "Oh, I say! It would take me four hours. You know, Dudley, there is such a lot of reading on the axilla. I am all in a muddle as it is. I'll sit up half the night reading it, if you will give me another day." "Very sorry, old man. _Ars longa_. I must get on with my thorax. It will do you far more good to read in the dissecting-room. Preconceived ideas are a mistake. Get a good lunch, and come back. That's your scalpel, I think, Collett." "Oh, bother! I only wish I had ideas of any kind! I wish to goodness somebody would demonstrate the whole thing to me, and finish the dissection as he goes along!" "I will do that with pleasure, if you like, to-morrow. The gain will be mine--and perhaps it will be the best thing you can do now. But don't play that little game too often, if you mean to be an anatomist." "I don't," cried the boy vehemently. "I wish to heaven I need never see this filthy old hole again!" Dudley glanced round the fine airy room, as he stood with his hands under the tap. "I know that feeling well," he said. "You, Dudley! Why, somebody said the other day that the very dust of the dissecting-room was dear to you." "So it is, I think," said Ralph, smiling. "But it was very different in the days when I stroked the nettle in the gingerly fashion you are doing now." "You mean that you think I should like it better if I really tucked into it," said the boy ruefully. "I don't think at all; I know. 9 A.M. to-morrow sharp, then." Dudley stepped out briskly into the raw damp air. The mud was thick under foot, and the whole aspect of the world was depressing to the hard-worked student. One by one the familiar furrows took possession of his brow, and his step slackened gradually, till it kept pace with the dead march of his thoughts. He was within a stone's-throw of his rooms, when a dashing mail-phaeton came up behind him. A good horse was always a source of pleasure to him, and he noted, point by point, the beauties of the two fine bays, which, bespattered with foam, were chafing angrily at the delay caused by some block in the street. Suddenly Ralph bethought himself of Melville's story about the "irony of fate," and he glanced with amused curiosity at the occupant of the carriage. There was no irony here. The reins lay firmly but easily in the hands of a man who was well in keeping with the horses,--fine-looking, of military bearing, with ruddy face, and curly white hair. He, too, seemed annoyed at the block, for there was a heavy frown on his brow.