Who plastered his head, Ma'am ?' 'Doctor Toole, Sir.' 'Toole--Toole--h'm--I see--hey--hi--tut! 'tis the devil's pair of fractures, Ma'am.

See--nearer--d'ye see, there's two converging lines--d'ye see, Ma'am ?' and he indicated their directions with the silver handle of an instrument he held in his hand, 'and serrated at the edges, I'll be bound.' And he plucked off two or three strips of plaster with a quick whisk, which made poor little Mrs.Sturk wince and cry, 'Oh, dear, Sir!' 'Threpan, indeed!' murmured Black Dillon, with a coarse sneer, 'did they run the scalpel anywhere over the occiput, Ma'am ?' 'I--I--truly, Sir--I'm not sure,' answered Mrs.Sturk, who did not perfectly understand a word he said.
The doctor's hair had not been cut behind.

Poor Mrs.Sturk, expecting his recovery every day, would not have permitted the sacrilege, and his dishevelled cue lay upon his shoulders.

With his straight surgical scissors Black Dillon snipped off this sacred appendage before the good lady knew what he was about, and cropped the back of his head down to the closest stubble.
'Will you send, if you please, Ma'am, for Doctor--Doctor--Thingumee ?' 'Doctor Toole ?' enquired Mrs.Sturk.
'Doctor Toole, Ma'am; yes,' answered the surgeon.
He himself went down to the coach at the hall-door, and in a few minutes returned with a case, and something in a cloth.

From the cloth he took an apparatus, like the cushioned back of a chair, with straps and buckles attached to it, and a sort of socket, the back of which was open, being intended to receive the head in.
'Now, Ma'am, we'll prop him up comfortable with this, if you please.' And having got it into place, and lowered by a screw, the cushions intended to receive his head, and got the lethargic trunk and skull of the Artillery doctor well-placed for his purpose, he took out a roll of sticking-plaster and a great piece of lint, and laid them on the table, and unlocked his box, which was a large one, and took out several instruments, silver-mounted, straight and crooked, with awful adaptations to unknown butcheries and tortures, and then out came another--the veritable trepan--resembling the homely bit-and-brace, but slender, sinister, and quaint, with a murderous sort of elegance.
'You may as well order in half-a-dozen clean towels, if you please, Ma'am.' 'Oh! Doctor, you're not going to have an operation to-night, gasped Mrs.
Sturk, her face quite white and damp, and her clasped hands trembling.
'Twenty to one, Ma'am,' he replied with a slight hiccup, 'we'll have nothing of the kind; but have them here, Ma'am, and some warm water for fear of accidents--though maybe 'tis only for a dhrop of punch we'll be wanting it,' and his huge, thirsty mouth grinned facetiously; and just then Dr.Toole entered the room.