Henry C. Rowland

“ Jones, moodily.
“Yes—just as the steamer was about to sail——”
“But I don’t believe that I ever had real appendicitis, Agnes. I don’t much believe in all that yarn about one’s appendix, anyway. It’s got to be a sort of fad to wear your appendix trimmed close, just like your beard. I’ll make the best of mine the way it was built.”
“You are talking like a child, Worthington. Every progressive surgeon admits that it is an absolutely worthless structure——”
“That’s rank ingratitude for you! They're worth about a thousand dollars apiece to those chaps. ”

“ I’ve got a game appendix there,” he warned.
“Then be yer lave, sorr, I'll put a bit of a poultice on; it will take out every stitch of the pain.”
“You’re a corker!” observed Mr. Jones, admiringly. “I guess the best thing that I can do is to put myself absolutely in your hands, and maybe I won’t need an operation, after all.” He yawned, and his lids dropped heavily. In the reaction of warmth and comfort, the effects of the whiskey began to make themselves apparent. ”

“ With a thankful heart, and considerably touched at the thoughtfulness of his fiancée in telephoning to the hotel to be on the lookout for him, Mr. Jones followed his guide, who led him to a comfortable room, immaculately clean and with a bright fire blazing on the hearth, and here he lost no time in removing his sodden outer garments. The watchman left him for a moment, to return at once with a night-robe and dressing-gown. In compliance with his good-humored offer, Mr. Jones stretched himself upon the bed for the suggested rubbing-down.
“Go easy on the right-hand side of my body ”

“ What would have been your fee for such an operation, including the subsequent treatment?”
“In your case,” replied the surgeon, qualifiedly, “five hundred dollars would have covered it, not including your hospital expenses.”
“Very good. I have always understood that these cursed things”—shaking the bottle savagely—“were expensive luxuries. Now, doctor, I have a proposition to make, actuated not by the fear of ridicule, but by loftier motives. ”

“ She is dead!”
“How long will it take to bring her to life?”
“One hour—two hour—it is imposseeble to say. But monsieur is but a mile from ze gare. We have come so quick zat, if monsieur is willing to walk from here, he has plenty of time. I send ze luggage in ze morning.”
Mr. Jones glanced at his watch, and saw that he had yet over half an hour in which to reach the station, so, with a word of condolence to the unhappy Gaston, he wrapped the rain-coat about him, and plunged into the murk of the night. ”

“ Jones.
“—become insane from automobiling. He has lately developed appendicitis, and now he fancies that he is an automobile with his boiler burned out. Dr. Cutler thinks that this idea has been suggested by pain in the region of the appendix. He is a wonderful diagnostician.” ”

“ He’s to operate there to-morrow on this poor fellow I was telling you about. Dr. Cutler says that there is always work to be found if a man is on the lookout for it.”
“He ought to find it,” admitted Mr. Jones. “Does he own an automobile?” ”

“ As they swept strongly onward, now dipping with the swoop of an owl into shadowy glades where the witch-mist struck damp and chill upon their faces, thence breasting powerfully the opposite grade, and, without pause for breath, plunging on into the redolent, rain-sweet woods, Mr. ”