"
Arthur opened his eyes and looked anxiously around him.
Pearl was beside him at once.
"Pearl," he said, "what is wrong with me? What terrible
pain is this that has me in its clutches?" The strength
had gone out of the man, he could no longer battle with it.
Pearl hesitated. It is not well to tell sick people your
gravest fears. "Still Arthur is English, and the English
are gritty," Pearl thought to herself.
"Arthur," she said, "I think you have appendicitis."
Arthur lay motionless for a few moments. He knew what
that was.
"But that requires an operation," he said at length,
"a very skilful one."
"It does," Pearl replied, "and that's what you'll get
as soon as Dr. Clay gets here, I'm thinking."
Arthur turned his face into his pillow. An operation for
appendicitis, here, in this place, and by that young man,
no older than himself perhaps? He knew that at home, it
was only undertaken by the oldest and best surgeons in
the hospitals.
Pearl saw something of his fears in his face. So she
hastened to reassure him. She said cheerfully:
"Don't ye be worried, Arthur, about it at all at all.
Man alive! Dr. Clay thinks no more of an operation like
that than I would o' cuttin' your nails."
A strange feeling began at Arthur's heart, and spread up
to his brain. It had come! It was here!
From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence
and famine; from battle and murder and sudden
death;--Good Lord, deliver us!
He had prayed it many times, meaninglessly.
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