Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/52

 For years he had never wept, but now tears were wrung from him. He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow and tried to wriggle his body away from that steady gnawing; he fretted as a child might do.

The night about him was as it were a great watching presence that would not help nor answer.

Behind the brass plate at the corner which said "Dr. Elihu Barrack" Mr. Huss found a hard, competent young man, who had returned from the war to his practice at Sundering after losing a leg. The mechanical substitute seemed to have taken to him very kindly. He appeared to be both modest and resourceful; his unfavourable diagnosis was all the more convincing because it was tentative and conditional. He knew the very specialist for the case; no less a surgeon than Sir Alpheus Mengo came, it happened, quite frequently to play golf on the Sundering links. It would be easy to arrange for him to examine Mr. Huss in Dr. Barrack's little consulting room, and if an operation had to be performed it could be managed with a minimum of expense in Mr. Huss's own lodgings without any extra charge for mileage and the like.

"Of course," said Mr. Huss, "of course," with a clear vision of Mrs. Croome confronted with the proposal.

Sir Alpheus Mengo came down the next Saturday, and made a clandestine examination. He decided to