“Sister, let us have another patient!” said Dr. Stanforth, on one occasion, just as one might say, “Hand me another chair,” or “Bring me another book.” It was in the private operating room at St. Bernard’s, screened off from the ward specially set apart for women. The assistant physician of this important department had invented a new apparatus for administering anæsthetics, and it was tried that day for the first time—tried on hospital patients first, of course. It promised materially to assist in bringing the patient under the influence of the anæsthetic with rapidity and comfort. Being a complicated machine, with various ingeniously constructed valves, it was not by any means an easy thing to manage, and the least error might have fatal consequences; it would never do, therefore, to use such a thing out of doors till all its bearings had been taken at the hospital, where any mishap could be adroitly attributed to some other cause. Long before one dare use such a thing on Lady Millefleurs, its capabilities and little eccentricities must be exhibited on the unimportant carcass of Eliza Smith; and so it fell out that day that a little knot of students, interested in giving chloroform or ether, with due address, were assembled to see the working of this pretty bit of mechanism. Dr. Stanforth was an amiable creature, who lived and worked for, and devoted all his energies to his “boys,” as he called his students; for them he spared his patients neither shame nor pang; for them his beds were occupied by so much “teaching stuff.” He was skilful to cure, but at St. Bernard’s he often forebore to cure too rapidly, lest the “pretty case” might get well before all his boys had had their fill of it. It was far better, he used to say, that a patient should “bide a wee,” if any interest attached to her case, than that any budding obstetrician should leave the hospital imperfectly equipped with all the weapons he required. “Have as many patients as you want, my lad,” he said; “let us get the thing right while we are about it.” “The thing” was the new apparatus, and on its first trial on patient number one, had narrowly escaped sending her to kingdom come by suffocation. She appeared to be “going off lovely,” as funny Mr. Philips said, till Dr. Stanforth, suddenly turning round in the middle of a droll story about his friend “Wales and the actress,” seized the patient’s hand, and declared she was “going” in quite another sense. Artificial respiration was performed, and the woman restored to life and consciousness. It was generous not to subject her to any further experiment that day, and she was sent back to her bed, which she had not left for any benefit likely, under any circumstances, to accrue to herself, while the instrument which had so terribly failed was carefully examined for the cause of the mishap. On taking it to pieces, a mechanical genius amongst the students found that a valve had got