The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth.  The surgeon with his staff of assistants is there.  In comes Ailie:  one look at her quiets and abates the eager students.  That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her.  These rough boys feel the power of her presence.  She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet shoes.  Behind her was James with Rab.  James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble head between his knees.  Rab looked perplexed and dangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.

Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand.  The operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform—­one of God’s best gifts to his suffering children—­was then unknown.  The surgeon did his work.  The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent.  Rab’s soul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going on,—­blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man.  But James had him firm, and gave him a glower from time to time, and an intimation of a possible kick;—­all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off Ailie.

It is over:  she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the table, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students, she courtesies, and in a low, clear voice begs their pardon if she has behaved ill.  The students—­all of us—­wept like children; the surgeon happed her up carefully, and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following.  We put her to bed.  James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, “Maister John, I’m for nane o’ yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie.  I’ll be her nurse, and I’ll gang aboot on my stockin’ soles as canny as pussy.”  And so he did; and handy and clever and swift and tender as any woman was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man.  Everything she got he gave her:  he seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her.  As before, they spoke little.

Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was demolishing some adversary.  He took a walk with me every day, generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild, declined doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry indignities, and was always very ready to turn, and came faster back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that door.