“You’d better take this case, Carey.  It’s a subject you ought to know something about.”

Philip flushed, all the more because the surgeon spoke obviously with a humorous intention, and his brow-beaten dressers laughed obsequiously.  It was in point of fact a subject which Philip, since coming to the hospital, had studied with anxious attention.  He had read everything in the library which treated of talipes in its various forms.  He made the boy take off his boot and stocking.  He was fourteen, with a snub nose, blue eyes, and a freckled face.  His father explained that they wanted something done if possible, it was such a hindrance to the kid in earning his living.  Philip looked at him curiously.  He was a jolly boy, not at all shy, but talkative and with a cheekiness which his father reproved.  He was much interested in his foot.

“It’s only for the looks of the thing, you know,” he said to Philip.  “I don’t find it no trouble.”

“Be quiet, Ernie,” said his father.  “There’s too much gas about you.”

Philip examined the foot and passed his hand slowly over the shapelessness of it.  He could not understand why the boy felt none of the humiliation which always oppressed himself.  He wondered why he could not take his deformity with that philosophic indifference.  Presently Mr. Jacobs came up to him.  The boy was sitting on the edge of a couch, the surgeon and Philip stood on each side of him; and in a semi-circle, crowding round, were students.  With accustomed brilliancy Jacobs gave a graphic little discourse upon the club-foot:  he spoke of its varieties and of the forms which followed upon different anatomical conditions.

“I suppose you’ve got talipes equinus?” he said, turning suddenly to Philip.

“Yes.”

Philip felt the eyes of his fellow-students rest on him, and he cursed himself because he could not help blushing.  He felt the sweat start up in the palms of his hands.  The surgeon spoke with the fluency due to long practice and with the admirable perspicacity which distinguished him.  He was tremendously interested in his profession.  But Philip did not listen.  He was only wishing that the fellow would get done quickly.  Suddenly he realised that Jacobs was addressing him.

“You don’t mind taking off your sock for a moment, Carey?”

Philip felt a shudder pass through him.  He had an impulse to tell the surgeon to go to hell, but he had not the courage to make a scene.  He feared his brutal ridicule.  He forced himself to appear indifferent.

“Not a bit,” he said.

He sat down and unlaced his boot.  His fingers were trembling and he thought he should never untie the knot.  He remembered how they had forced him at school to show his foot, and the misery which had eaten into his soul.

“He keeps his feet nice and clean, doesn’t he?” said Jacobs, in his rasping, cockney voice.

The attendant students giggled.  Philip noticed that the boy whom they were examining looked down at his foot with eager curiosity.  Jacobs took the foot in his hands and said: