We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless sea. Cruelly marooned we are--flung ashore without appeal, and here deserted until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the press-gang snatches us again aboard--again without heed to our desire. Whence the ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will carry us we do not know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing the ultimate haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the knowledge--we cannot test them.
But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next turn up no one knows.
And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer, hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners, their wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others from making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the pilots.
Certainly, when the pick strikes a pocket, we turn to carousing; cease cocking a timid eye at the horizon.
Until three o'clock George sat in an operating theatre. An unimportant case was in process: occasionally, through the group of dressers, surgeons and nurses who filled the floor, George caught a glimpse of the subject. He watched moodily, too occupied with his thoughts--three more months of dependency--to take greater interest.
One other student was present. Peacefully he slumbered by George's side until the ring of a dropped forceps awakened him. Noting the cause, “Clumsy beast,” said this Mr. Franklyn; and to George: “Come on, Leicester; my slumber is broken. Let's go for a stroll up West.”
In Oxford Street a pretty waitress in a tea-shop drew Mr. Franklyn's eye; a drop of rain whacked his nose. He winked the eye; wiped the nose. “Tea,” said he; “it is going to rain.”
He addressed the pretty waitress: “I have no wish to seem inquisitive, but which table do you attend?”
The girl jerked her chin: “What's that to you?”
“So much,” Mr. Franklyn earnestly told her, “that, until I know, here, beautiful but inconvenient, in the doorway I stand.”