"Satisfied?" he asked of Leaver, as the other came out of Jamie's room.
Leaver nodded. "Rather better than I had hoped. He's a plucky little
chap."
"You're right, he is."
The two went up to the dressing-room. Half an hour later, clad in
white from head to foot, arms bare and gleaming, hands gloved,
allowing assistants to open and close doors for them lest the slightest
contamination affect their rigid cleanliness, they came into the
operating-room. For the moment they were left alone there, while the
nurses went to summon the bearer of the little patient. It was the
moment Burns had dreaded, the stillness before action which most tries
the spirit at any crisis.
He could not help giving one quick glance at his friend before he turned
away to look out of the window with eyes which saw nothing outside it.
In that instant's glance he thought the old Leaver stood before him,
cool, collected, armed to the teeth, as it were, for the fight, and
looking forward to it with eagerness. There had been possibly a slight
pallor upon his face, as Miss Dodge had adjusted his mask of gauze, but,
as Burns recalled it, this was a common matter with many surgeons, and it
might easily have been characteristic of Leaver himself, even though
Burns had not remembered it. His own heart was thumping heavily in his
breast, as it had never thumped when he had been the chief actor in the
coming scene.
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