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 about me. . . Too merry, perhaps; I can only think it was conscience that made Ruth offer to pay for the operation. Or perhaps it was curiosity. . . I wonder what their feelings would have been if anything had gone amiss. . . No, I am thankful to say there was no hitch of any kind. The anæsthetic was administered, I heard that hammer, hammer, hammer—and then voices very far away. It was all over! That was the preliminary examination. Then I was subjected to that too wonderful X-ray light and saw myself as a black skeleton with a misty-grey covering of flesh, one’s wedding-ring standing out like a black bar round one’s finger. Too marvellous. I do believe in this science. . . But not so marvellous as what followed. Dr. Richardson congratulated me, and I had to beg for enlightenment.

“It will not be necessary,” he said, “to operate after all. The symptoms are exactly as you described them, but a little treatment, principally massage. . .” And that is why I am still here, though I hope to be allowed up on Friday. But lying in bed makes one so absurdly weak! What I have told you is for your ears alone. It would be altogether too much of a triumph for Spenworth. Instead of feeling any thankfulness that I had