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Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth), 1835-1915

"A Novel"

Dunbar's clothes. His trousers
had to be cut away from his broken leg before anything could be done.
Mr. Daphney removed his patient's coat and waistcoat; but the linen
shirt was left, and the chamois-leather belt worn by the banker was
under this shirt, next to and over a waistcoat of scarlet flannel.
"I wear a leather belt next my flannel waistcoat," Mr. Dunbar said, as
the two men were undressing him; "I don't wish it to be removed."
He fainted away presently, for his leg was very painful; and on reviving
from his fainting fit, he looked very suspiciously at his attendants,
and put his hand to the buckle of his belt, in order to make himself
sure that it had not been tampered with.
All through the long, feverish, restless night he lay pondering over
this miserable interruption of his journey, while the sick-nurse and the
surgeon's assistant alternately slopped cooling lotions about his
wretched broken leg.
"To think that _this_ should happen," he muttered to himself every now
and then. "Amongst all the things I've ever dreaded, I never thought of
this."
His leg was set in the course of the next day, and in the evening he had
a long conversation with the surgeon.
This time Henry Dunbar did not speak so much of his anxiety to get away
upon the second stage of his continental journey.


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