Montgomery had returned by devious ways to the surgery. The horses were smoking at the door, and the doctor was just back from his long journey.
Several patients had called in his absence, and he was in the worst of tempers.
"I suppose I should be glad that you have come back at all, Mr.
Montgomery!" he snarled. "When next you elect to take a holiday, I trust, it will not be at so busy a time."
"I am sorry, sir, that you should have been inconvenienced."
"Yes, sir, I have been exceedingly inconvenienced." Here, for the first time, he looked hard at the a.s.sistant. "Good heavens, Mr. Montgomery, what have you been doing with your left eye?"
It was where Anastasia had lodged her protest.
Montgomery laughed. "It is nothing, sir," said he.
"And you have a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition.
How did you receive these injuries?"
"Well, sir, as you know, there was a little glove-fight to-day over at Croxley."
"And you got mixed up with that brutal crowd?"
"I _was_ rather mixed up with them."
"And who a.s.saulted you?"
"One of the fighters."
"Which of them?"
"The Master of Croxley."
"Good heavens! Perhaps you interfered with him?"
"Well, to tell the truth, I did a little."
"Mr. Montgomery, in such a practice as mine, intimately a.s.sociated as it is with the highest and most progressive elements of our small community, it is impossible----"
But just then the tentative bray of a cornet-player searching for his keynote jarred upon their ears, and an instant later the Wilson Colliery bra.s.s band was in full cry with, "See the Conquering Hero Comes,"
outside the surgery window. There was a banner waving, and a shouting crowd of miners.
"What is it? What does it mean?" cried the angry doctor.
"It means, sir, that I have, in the only way which was open to me, earned the money which is necessary for my education. It is my duty, Doctor Oldacre, to warn you that I am about to return to the University, and that you should lose no time in appointing my successor."
THE END