Podger’s hand, right or left; otherwise you would have been placed on that black leather couch in the corner there under the shelf of lint and tow, and you would have been weary waiting in that receiving-room, counting the various form of splints hanging round it, and listening to the groans of other sufferers waiting till dinner was over, or the game of cribbage finished, for your wounds and bruises to be attended to. At a card-party, say, in the house surgeon’s room, her manner was much appreciated. A knock. “Come in!” “Accident sir!” “Oh, bother, Podger, what a fidget you are!” “Well, sir, it wasn’t me as caused it; there’s three of ’em, for the matter of that, and they have been here about half-an-hour, and I thought as you’d like to know.” “Fifteen two, and a pair’s four, and his nob! Now, Podger, wet your whistle, old girl; here, have a toothful, and tell them you have called the doctors, and they are all in the wards over a bad case, but are coming to see them directly.” “Bless you, sir,” says Podger, having bobbed a curtsey, “I told ’em that when they came in. Here’s your very good ’ealth, gentlemen, and long life and plenty of practice for you all.” And she returns to the receiving-room refreshed in spirit and better able to contend with the grumbling of the unhappy victims it contained. She would have dressed their wounds, and sent them all off packing about their business, but it was against the rules, grave scandals having arisen from this “unqualified treatment.” Not but that the work would have been often done quite as well as if the students, to the number of say eight or nine, had all had “a go” at it, and with infinitely less discomfort and even agony to the patient; but it was “agin’ the rules,” as she declared “’cos why? it didn’t seem proper for ‘a nuss’ to set broken limbs; besides, it pervented the boys from gettin’ ‘the experience’ they paid for.” She was very anxious they should avail themselves of every opportunity that arose to improve themselves. No member of the staff was more interested than she in the pass list of the College of Surgeons; she felt it as a reproach against her teaching when any of them failed, and on the eve of a “Pass Exam.” or a “Final College,” she spared the patients in the receiving-room no agony as long as any one of the men “going up,” could extract useful information about fracture, dislocation, or the adjustment of a splint.