The doctor was leaning over Gladys and breathing heavily through his nostrils. His hands, lean, brown, and slightly stained with iodine, were placed firmly yet tenderly upon the pink and white of the child’s thigh. His fingers moved like tentacles, searching, soothing the spastic muscles under the skin. Gladys gave a sudden frightened, ‘Oh . . . _mam_!’—and the fingers tightened like bands of steel. All the man’s mind was in his fingers; his eyes gazed vaguely out of the window to the cascades of fading laburnum blossom in his shrubbery, the billowy outline of lilac against the white sky. ‘Yes . . .’ he said at last. ‘Separated epiphysis. Lower end of femur. I shall want a small Liston splint and plenty of strapping. I expect she’ll need a whiff of chloroform, too. If you’ll get it I won’t move.’ Then he addressed Mary. ‘I think it will be better if the small boy is out of the room. They can look after him in the kitchen.’ Bribed by a sup of cocoa, Morgan allowed himself to be taken away from his mother by the doctor’s wife, who soon returned with the splint, the dressings, and the anæsthetic. ‘I’ll just get her under, if you’ll see that she doesn’t move. If she kicks about there may be a lot more hæmorrhage.’ His wife took his place and he sprinkled a few drops of heavy liquid on to a wire mask covered with lint. A sweetish odour mingled with that of the lilac. It seemed to Abner that the room had suddenly become oppressively hot. ‘Now breathe deeply. Smell it in! It’s ever so nice!’ said the doctor. Gladys sniffed, then choked, and tried to push away the mask with her hands. ‘Hold her fingers, mother!’ said the doctor. Mary closed her eyes and took the child’s fingers in her own. ‘That’s better . . . that’s better.’ He sprinkled more chloroform on the lint. In another minute he raised the mask. Gladys was now breathing heavily; her face was suffused, and she puffed out her lips with each breath. The doctor handed over the mask to his wife. ‘Give her a drop now and then,’ he said, ‘and plenty of air as well. She’s just nicely under.’ He pushed back an eyelid with his finger to see that the pupillary reflex was active. ‘Nicely . . . nicely.’ He rose to his feet and changed places with his wife. Again he placed his hands on the child’s thigh, but now the hands were no longer gentle agents of perception, but strong and ruthless weapons. His brown fingers grasped the limb firmly. The room swam before Abner’s eyes. He went down like a stone. Mary gave a cry of alarm. ‘He’s all right,’ said the doctor, with a glance over his shoulder. ‘These big strong fellows are always the most liable to faint over a job like this. Give me a woman, any day!’