Round The Red Lamp | Page 8

rigidly upon
the wooden ledge in front of him. One glance, one cry, would, he knew,

break down the shred of self-possession which he still retained. He
tried to think of cricket, of green fields and rippling water, of his sisters
at home--of anything rather than of what was going on so near him.
And yet somehow, even with his ears stopped up, sounds seemed to
penetrate to him and to carry their own tale. He heard, or thought that
he heard, the long hissing of the carbolic engine. Then he was
conscious of some movement among the dressers. Were there groans,
too, breaking in upon him, and some other sound, some fluid sound,
which was more dreadfully suggestive still? His mind would keep
building up every step of the operation, and fancy made it more ghastly
than fact could have been. His nerves tingled and quivered. Minute by
minute the giddiness grew more marked, the numb, sickly feeling at his
heart more distressing. And then suddenly, with a groan, his head
pitching forward, and his brow cracking sharply upon the narrow
wooden shelf in front of him, he lay in a dead faint.
When he came to himself, he was lying in the empty theatre, with his
collar and shirt undone. The third year's man was dabbing a wet sponge
over his face, and a couple of grinning dressers were looking on.
"All right," cried the novice, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "I'm sorry
to have made an ass of myself."
"Well, so I should think," said his companion.
"What on earth did you faint about?"
"I couldn't help it. It was that operation."
"What operation?"
"Why, that cancer."
There was a pause, and then the three students burst out laughing.
"Why, you juggins!" cried the senior man, "there never was an
operation at all! They found the patient didn't stand the chloroform well,
and so the whole thing was off. Archer has been giving us one of his

racy lectures, and you fainted just in the middle of his favourite story."

A STRAGGLER OF '15.
It was a dull October morning, and heavy, rolling fog-wreaths lay low
over the wet grey roofs of the Woolwich houses. Down in the long,
brick-lined streets all was sodden and greasy and cheerless. From the
high dark buildings of the arsenal came the whirr of many wheels, the
thudding of weights, and the buzz and babel of human toil. Beyond, the
dwellings of the workingmen, smoke-stained and unlovely, radiated
away in a lessening perspective of narrowing road and dwindling wall.
There were few folk in the streets, for the toilers had all been absorbed
since break of day by the huge smoke-spouting monster, which sucked
in the manhood of the town, to belch it forth weary and work-stained
every night. Little groups of children straggled to school, or loitered to
peep through the single, front windows at the big, gilt-edged Bibles,
balanced upon small, three-legged tables, which were their usual
adornment. Stout women, with thick, red arms and dirty aprons, stood
upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning upon their brooms, and shrieking
their morning greetings across the road. One stouter, redder, and dirtier
than the rest, had gathered a small knot of cronies around her and was
talking energetically, with little shrill titters from her audience to
punctuate her remarks.
"Old enough to know better!" she cried, in answer to an exclamation
from one of the listeners. "If he hain't no sense now, I 'specs he won't
learn much on this side o'Jordan. Why, 'ow old is he at all? Blessed if I
could ever make out."
"Well, it ain't so hard to reckon," said a sharp- featured pale-faced
woman with watery blue eyes. "He's been at the battle o' Waterloo, and
has the pension and medal to prove it."
"That were a ter'ble long time agone," remarked a third. "It were afore I
were born."

"It were fifteen year after the beginnin' of the century," cried a younger
woman, who had stood leaning against the wall, with a smile of
superior knowledge upon her face. "My Bill was a-saying so last
Sabbath, when I spoke to him o' old Daddy Brewster, here."
"And suppose he spoke truth, Missus Simpson, 'ow long agone do that
make it?"
"It's eighty-one now," said the original speaker, checking off the years
upon her coarse red fingers, "and that were fifteen. Ten and ten, and ten,
and ten, and ten--why, it's only sixty-and-six year, so he ain't so old
after all."
"But he weren't a newborn babe at the battle, silly!" cried the young
woman with a chuckle. "S'pose he were only twenty, then he couldn't
be less than six-and-eighty now, at the lowest."
"Aye, he's that--every day of it," cried several.
"I've had 'bout enough of it,"