“Because he is a country practitioner,” she said, “you—­you patronise him.”

“Not at all,” said the Senior Surgical Interne.  “Personally I like him immensely.”

“Personally!”

The Senior Surgical Interne waved a hand toward Johnny’s bed.

“Look there,” he said.  “You don’t think that chap’s getting any better, do you?”

“If,” said Jane Brown, with suspicious quiet, “if you think you know more than a man who has practised for forty years, and saved more people than you ever saw, why don’t you tell him so?”

There is really no defence for this conversation.  Discourse between a probationer and an interne is supposed to be limited to yea, yea, and nay, nay.  But the circumstances were unusual.

“Tell him!” exclaimed the Senior Surgical Interne, “and be called before the Executive Committee and fired!  Dear girl, I am inexpressibly flattered, but the voice of an interne in a hospital is the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

Twenty-two, who was out on crutches that day for the first time, and was looking very big and extremely awkward, Twenty-two looked back from the elevator shaft and scowled.  He seemed always to see a flash of white duck near the door of H ward.

To add to his chagrin, the Senior Surgical Interne clapped him on the back in congratulation a moment later, and nearly upset him.  He had intended to go back to the ward and discuss a plan he had, but he was very morose those days and really not a companionable person.  He stumped back to his room and resolutely went to bed.

There he lay for a long time looking at the ceiling, and saying, out of his misery, things not necessary to repeat.

So Twenty-two went to bed and sulked, refusing supper, and having the word “Vicious” marked on his record by the nurse, who hoped he would see it some time.  And Jane Brown went and sat beside a strangely silent Johnny, and worried.  And the Senior Surgical Interne went down to the pharmacy and thereby altered a number of things.

The pharmacy clerk had been shaving—­his own bedroom was dark—­and he saw the Senior Surgical Interne in the little mirror hung on the window frame.

“Hello,” he said, over the soap.  “Shut the door.”

The Senior Surgical Interne shut the door, and then sniffed.  “Smells like a bar-room,” he commented.

The pharmacy clerk shaved the left angle of his jaw, and then turned around.

“Little experiment of mine,” he explained.  “Simple syrup, grain alcohol, a dash of cochineal for colouring, and some flavouring extract.  It’s an imitation cordial.  Try it.”

The Senior Surgical Interne was not a drinker, but he was willing to try anything once.  So he secured a two-ounce medicine glass, and filled it.

“Looks nice,” he commented, and tasted it.  “It’s not bad.”

“Not bad!” said the pharmacy clerk.  “You’d pay four dollars a bottle for that stuff in a hotel.  Actual cost here, about forty cents.”