case, I assure you! It was twelve o'clock at night before they were
done!"

She paused, laughing a little at the hot questions with which Larry
assailed her, but he could see the unshed tears gleaming in her eyes.
"I was summoned to a private case next day; I don't know what happened
to the unfortunate poor creature of a patient."

"A stiff leg he has, I'll be bound!" said Mrs. Mangan.

Larry lay silent. He saw it all. The long, dark ward, the white angel
figure (he thought, romantically) bending over the tortured creature
on the bed, and, far away, the pool of yellow light and in it those
two--he sought in vain for adjectives to express what he thought of
Dr. I'll-not-tell-you-his-name, and his young colleague.




CHAPTER XI


In the years that followed, "Larry's cads" came to be, for the young
Talbot-Lowrys, a convenient designation for the friends into whose
bosom Providence had seen fit to fling their cousin. But Larry never
either approved or accepted it. He was entirely pleased with his new
friends, and especially with that son of the house whose position he
had usurped, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan.

Barty was a lengthy, languid, gentle youth, of nearly nineteen,