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He took the book, open at a diagram of the dissected
part, and looked at what they had to find.
‘You’re rather a dab at this,’ said Philip.
‘Oh, I’ve done a good deal of dissecting before, animals,
you know, for the Pre Sci.’
There was a certain amount of conversation over the
dissecting-table, partly about the work, partly about the
prospects of the football season, the demonstrators, and the
lectures. Philip felt himself a great deal older than the others.
They were raw schoolboys. But age is a matter of knowl-
edge rather than of years; and Newson, the active young
man who was dissecting with him, was very much at home
with his subject. He was perhaps not sorry to show off, and
he explained very fully to Philip what he was about. Phil-
ip, notwithstanding his hidden stores of wisdom, listened
meekly. Then Philip took up the scalpel and the tweezers
and began working while the other looked on.
‘Ripping to have him so thin,’ said Newson, wiping his
hands. ‘The blighter can’t have had anything to eat for a
month.’
‘I wonder what he died of,’ murmured Philip.
‘Oh, I don’t know, any old thing, starvation chiefly, I sup-
pose.... I say, look out, don’t cut that artery.’
‘It’s all very fine to say, don’t cut that artery,’ remarked
one of the men working on the opposite leg. ‘Silly old fool’s
got an artery in the wrong place.’
‘Arteries always are in the wrong place,’ said Newson.
‘The normal’s the one thing you practically never get. That’s
why it’s called the normal.’

Of Human Bondage