Ridgeon.  I sec you dont believe in my discovery.  Well, sometimes I dont believe in it myself.  Thank you all the same.  Shall we have Walpole up?

Sir Patrick.  Oh, have him up. [Ridgeon rings].  He’s a clever operator, is Walpole, though he’s only one of your chloroform surgeons.  In my early days, you made your man drunk; and the porters and students held him down; and you had to set your teeth and finish the job fast.  Nowadays you work at your ease; and the pain doesn’t come until afterwards, when youve taken your cheque and rolled up your bag and left the house.  I tell you, Colly, chloroform has done a lot of mischief.  It’s enabled every fool to be a surgeon.

Ridgeon [to Emmy, who answers the bell] Shew Mr Walpole up.

Emmy.  He’s talking to the lady.

Ridgeon [exasperated] Did I not tell you—­

Emmy goes out without heeding him.  He gives it up, with a shrug, and plants himself with his back to the console, leaning resignedly against it.

Sir Patrick.  I know your Cutler Walpoles and their like.  Theyve found out that a man’s body’s full of bits and scraps of old organs he has no mortal use for.  Thanks to chloroform, you can cut half a dozen of them out without leaving him any the worse, except for the illness and the guineas it costs him.  I knew the Walpoles well fifteen years ago.  The father used to snip off the ends of people’s uvulas for fifty guineas, and paint throats with caustic every day for a year at two guineas a time.  His brother-in-law extirpated tonsils for two hundred guineas until he took up women’s cases at double the fees.  Cutler himself worked hard at anatomy to find something fresh to operate on; and at last he got hold of something he calls the nuciform sac, which he’s made quite the fashion.  People pay him five hundred guineas to cut it out.  They might as well get their hair cut for all the difference it makes; but I suppose they feel important after it.  You cant go out to dinner now without your neighbor bragging to you of some useless operation or other.

Emmy [announcing] Mr Cutler Walpole. [She goes out].

Cutler Walpole is an energetic, unhesitating man of forty, with a cleanly modelled face, very decisive and symmetrical about the shortish, salient, rather pretty nose, and the three trimly turned corners made by his chin and jaws.  In comparison with Ridgeon’s delicate broken lines, and Sir Patrick’s softly rugged aged ones, his face looks machine-made and beeswaxed; but his scrutinizing, daring eyes give it life and force.  He seems never at a loss, never in doubt:  one feels that if he made a mistake he would make it thoroughly and firmly.  He has neat, well-nourished hands, short arms, and is built for strength and compactness rather than for height.  He is smartly dressed with a fancy waistcoat, a richly colored scarf secured by a handsome ring, ornaments on his watch chain, spats on his shoes, and a general air of the well-to-do sportsman about him.  He goes straight across to Ridgeon and shakes hands with him.