“Then, sir, Sister told me to ask you if I had better let the chaplain know?” “Chaplain be hanged!” he cried. “Certainly not! It would only depress the poor devil. No! no! Plenty of brandy! Keep him up! Cheer him all you can; tell him it is only a trifling, every-day sort of affair, and he will be well in a jiffy. You may send for his wife.” “Oh, sir, she has been waiting about the hospital all day.” “All right, then! Now, gentlemen, to business. You shall see me do something pretty. Bishop says I may do it all myself as soon as the ether is given. Is Bishop in the wards?” “No, I saw him in the pathologist’s room with Crowe an hour ago, and he said he should be here but part of the day. I’ll tell him, shall I?” asked a dresser. “Do!” The bell rang for the operation, to assemble the students, some of whom said “It was a beastly shame to torture a poor wretch who hadn’t a chance of getting over it.” “Ah, you won’t talk like that when you are house surgeon (H.S. they always termed it) yourself. You will be glad to operate on your own father if you can’t get anybody else. Besides, what are hospitals for, if not to qualify us for our work? If people don’t want us to learn all we can from them, why don’t they stay at home and die? The parish doctor won’t disturb their latter moments with operations.” And so, while the case was being discussed by the novelty-hunting lads, and the grim tools of the surgeons were being selected and placed on a pretty little table by the side of the couch in the theatre, and covered with a white napkin;—while the nurses were assembling who had to assist, and the surgeon refreshing his memory by a last peep at the text-book directing the steps of the operation;—while the poor patient, who, after much worrying, had at last consented to undergo what he was told was a trifling affair that would be certain to cure him—an agonised young woman, with a baby at her breast, was pacing up and down the courtyard of the “cathedral of surgery,” as the Sunday papers called it, feeling that her poor husband was fast leaving her and his little home, and much doubting if she should have given that young doctor her consent to cut and hack the sinking frame of the father of her babe. But what was she to do? Had not five well speaking, kind-looking gentlemen told her that very morning it was the only chance of saving him? Did not the pretty nurse and the ladylike sister urge her to do just whatever the doctor in charge of the case advised? There was only her own heart, her sad misgivings, standing between her and the operation that they said was to give her Jimmy back to health. She had yielded; it was to be done. She had seen him, and kissed him; but her heart told her she would see him and hear his voice no more in life.