“Courage, soldier,” she said in the colloquialism
her father often used, and she smiled at Crozier a
great-hearted, helpful smile.
“You are a brick of bricks, Kitty Tynan,”
he whispered, and smiled.
“Here comes the Young Doctor,” said Mrs.
Tynan as the door opened unceremoniously.
“Well, I have to make an excursion,” Crozier
said, “and I mayn’t come back. If
I don’t, au revoir, Kitty.”
“You are coming back all right,” she answered
firmly. “It’ll take more than a
horse-thief’s bullet to kill you. You’ve
got to come back. You’re as tough as nails.
And I’ll hold your hand all through it—yes,
I will!” she added to the Young Doctor, who had
patted her shoulder and told her to go to another
room.
“I’m going to help you, doctor-man, if
you please,” she said, as he turned to the box
of instruments which his assistant held.
“There’s another—one of my
colleagues—coming I hope,” the Young
Doctor replied.
“That’s all right, but I am staying to
see Mr. Crozier through. I said I’d hold
his hand, and I’m going to do it,” she
added firmly.
“Very well; put on a big apron, and see that
you go through with us if you start. No nonsense.”
“There’ll be no nonsense from me,”
she answered quietly.
“I want the bed in the middle of the room,”
the Young Doctor said, and the others gently moved
it.
A STORY TO BE TOLD
A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never
nervous when performing an operation, though there
was sometimes a moment when every resource of character,
skill, and brain came into play. That was when,
having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and
unexpected seat of trouble and peril was exposed,
and instant action had to be taken. The great
man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with
it coolly; but he paid the price afterwards in his
sleep when, night after night, he performed the operation
over and over again with the same strain on his subconscious
self.
So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way.
She had insisted on being allowed to help at the
operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a good knowledge
of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so
far as the operation was concerned she justified his
faith in her. When the banker had to leave the
room at the sight of the carnage, she remained, and
she and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor
and his fellow-anatomist, till it was all over, and
Shiel Crozier was started again on a safe journey
back to health. Then a thing, which would have
been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened.
She and John Sibley went out of the house together
into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized them
both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and
burst into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier,
also broke down, and they sat on the stump of a tree
together, her hand in his, and cried like two children.
