I get your leg in me grip!
Jist you stow some more o' that illigint soup inside your belt, sor,
before I start on the job, an' while ye're aitin' I'll tell you how I
once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was
at ould Trinity, larnin' the profession, in faith!"

"That's right, O'Neil," said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to
set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from
the awful anxiety and grief, under which he was labouring. "Have I
heard the yarn before, eh?"

"Faith, not that I know of, cap'en," returned the doctor _pro tem_ in
his free and easy manner. "Begorrah, the joke's too much ag'inst
meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin' the story too often!"

"Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us," said
the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing
Garry's old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would
have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor
colonel's thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection
of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. "Fire
away with your yarn."

"Bedad, then, here goes," began O'Neil with a grin. "Ye must know,
colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a `sucking sawbones,' so
to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first
year, having barely mastered the bones."

"The bones!" interrupted the skipper. "What the deuce do you mean,
man?"

"Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor," explained Garry rather
grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. "Well, one foine day whin I
an' another fellow who'd kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the
hospital, wonderin' whin we'd be able to pass the college, sure the hall
porter comes into the ward we were in an' axes if we knew where
Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted
at once.

"`Faix,' says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was
with me. `He's gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who's been struck down
with the maysles, an' the divvle only knows whin he'll get back from the
castle, sure! What's the matter, O'Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at
this outlandish toime of day?'

"The hall porter took Mahony's chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness.
`It's moighty sorry I am,' says he; `Master Lancett's gone to the
castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity's sake, sayin' a