nd stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants
is there. In comes Ailie; one look at her quiets and abates the eager
students. The beautiful old woman is too much for them. They sit down,
and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her
presence.

She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her
neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat,
showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was
James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and
noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous;
forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.

Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend
the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut
her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at
once begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform--one of God's best
gifts to his suffering children--was then unknown. The surgeon did his
work. Rab's soul was working within him; he saw that something strange
was going on--blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his
ragged ear was up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a
sharp impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that
man. But James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_[109-2] from time to
time, and an intimation of a possible kick;--all the better for James,
it kept his eye and his mind off Ailie.

It is over; she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students,
she curtsies--and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has
behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like children; the surgeon
happed her up carefully--and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to her
room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy shoes,
crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully
under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge
nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang about on my
stockin' soles as canny as pussy."

And so he did; handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was
that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he
gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of
the darkness, fixed on her. As before, they spoke little.

Rab beh