“Now, joking apart,” said Dr. Aubrey, “don’t you think poor Elsworth got a sudden sense of disgust with his rackety life, which was always, I thought, rather assumed—never sat upon him quite naturally—and in a moment resolved to cut it all? I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear that he had settled down in some quiet nook abroad, and was leading a philosophical life. Do you remember Bartley Coleman? You do, don’t you, Fourneaux?—he was of your year. You remember how promising he was? We all made sure he would take the medical scholarship. One fine morning he was missed, and nobody heard of him here till Dr. Sales went into a little grocer’s shop in a Scotch village for some fish-hooks, and was served by the missing Coleman. His father had become bankrupt while he was a student, had a fit of apoplexy soon after, and died, leaving a widow and five girls unprovided for. Poor Coleman heard the call of duty, laid down the scalpel and took up the cheese-cutter, and so supported his mother and his sisters. Noble wasn’t it?” “Oh, I say, Aubrey,” said Maberley, “you don’t mean to imply that Elsworth is keeping a chandler’s shop?” “I imply nothing. I say we know very little of the under-currents of half the men’s lives we are familiar with; we see the surface-water and what floats on it; that is all. The wonder to me is how we keep between the banks as well as we do. Some from inclination, others from duty, more from defective control, get away from the old course, wander off down the rapids, under the rocks, and disappear. Is it any marvel? For my own part, there are times when I long to cast off the restrictions of your so-called civilized existence, and go with a gun or a lasso to the Pampas and the virgin forests.” “Yes, all very fine, and make the welkin ring with cries for your slippers and your grog when tired and heated with the chase. After a very few months of that sort of work, the fit would cool down; and the next thing that the world would see of you, you would be dining with your father at the Fishmongers’ banquet, eating your turtle and drinking your _très sec_ like the rest of the ‘domine diriges.’” “I believe he has gone off with some girl,” said ugly little beetle-browed Mills, the clinical clerk; “or somebody’s wife more likely still.” “Well, you may comfort yourself, Mills, that that indiscretion will never happen to you. I could believe it of a cash-box, but there isn’t a woman living who would elope with you—married or single. You will never create that scandal.” At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and a nurse put her head into the room and, addressing one of the house surgeons, told him the patient Green, in Isabella ward, had consented to undergo the operation which he had suggested, and then added: “Sister says she thinks he is dying fast, and are you going to operate?” “Going to operate! Rather think I was. Don’t you know, Nurse, this is my first capital operation? Do you think I am going to lose the chance?”