"
"Give it time," his master answered sadly. "Maybe even that is a job
that will get itself done one of these days."
Cai and his bride had departed, and the Major faced the ordeal of
Regatta Day with much trepidation. Heaven help him to play his part
like a man!
But it appeared that the sightseers, who, as ever, began to pour into
the town at nine in the morning and passed the door in one steady,
continuous stream until long past noonday, had either seen the Hymen
Hospital before or were intent first on culling the more evanescent
pleasures of the day. In fact, no visitor troubled him until one
o'clock, when, in the lull between the starts of the sailing and the
rowing races, and while the Regatta Committee was dining ashore to
the strains of a brass band, a farm labourer in his Sunday best,
crowned with a sugar-loaf hat, entered, flung himself into a chair,
and demanded to have a tooth extracted.
"You needn' mind which," he added encouragingly; "they all aches at
times. Only don't let it be more than one, for I can't afford it.
I been countin' up how to lay out my money, an' I got sixpence over;
an' it can't be in beer, because I promised the missus."
The Major assured him that the extraction of a tooth or teeth did not
fall within the sphere of the hospital's provision.
"W'y not?" asked the countryman, and added coaxingly, "Just to pass
the time, now!"
"Not even to pass the time," the Major answered with firmness.
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