"Why, of course it made him mad!" said the Little Girl with plainly reviving interest. Thrilled with astonishment at the White Linen Nurse's apparent stupidity she straightened up perkily with inordinately sparkling eyes. "Why, of course it makes him mad!" she explained briskly. "That's why I do it! Why, my Parpa—never even looks at me—unless I make him mad!"

"S—sh!" said the White Linen Nurse. "Why, you mustn't ever say a thing like that! Why, your Marma wouldn't like you to say a thing like that!"

Jerking bumpily back against the White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulder the Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's vivid cheek. "Silly—Pink and White—Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't you know there isn't any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her own superior knowledge she folded her little arms and began to rock herself convulsively to and fro.

"Why, stop!" cried the White Linen Nurse. "Now you stop! Why, you wicked little creature laughing like that about your poor dead mother! Why, just think how bad it would make your poor Parpa feel!"

With instant sobriety the Little Girl stopped rocking, and stared perplexedly into the White Linen Nurse's shocked eyes. Her own little face was all wrinkled up with earnestness.

"But the Parpa—didn't like the Marma!" she explained painstakingly. "The Parpa—never liked the Marma! That's why he doesn't like me! I heard Cook telling the Ice Man once when I wasn't more than ten minutes old!"

Desperately with one straining hand the White Linen Nurse stretched her fingers across the Little Girl's babbling mouth. Equally desperately, with the other hand, she sought to divert the Little Girl's mind by pushing the fur cap back from her frizzly red hair, and loosening her sumptuous coat, and jerking down vainly across two painfully obtrusive white ruffles, the awkwardly short, hideously bright little purple dress.

"I think your cap is too hot," she began casually, and then proceeded with increasing vivacity and conviction to the objects that worried her most. "And those—those ruffles," she protested, "they don't look a bit nice being so long!" Resentfully she rubbed an edge of the purple dress between her fingers. "And a little girl like you,—with such bright red hair,—oughtn't to wear—purple!" she admonished with real concern.

"Now whites and blues—and little soft pussy-cat grays—"

Mumblingly through her finger-muzzled mouth the Little Girl burst into explanations again.

"Oh, but when I wear gray," she persisted, "the Parpa—never sees me! But when I wear purple he cares,—he cares—most awfully!" she boasted with a bitter sort of triumph. "Why when I wear purple and frizz my hair hard enough,—no matter who's there, or anything,—he'll stop right off short in the middle of whatever he's doing—and rear right up so perfectly beautiful and mad and glorious—and holler right out 'For Heaven's sake, take that colored Sunday supplement away!'"

"Your Father's nervous," suggested the White Linen Nurse.

Almost tenderly the Little Girl reached up and drew the White Linen Nurse's ear close down to her own snuggling lips.

"Damned nervous!" she confided laconically.

Quite against all intention the White Linen Nurse giggled. Floundering to recover her dignity she plunged into a new error. "Poor little dev—," she began.

"Yes," sighed the Little Girl complacently. "That's just what the Parpa calls me." Fervidly she clasped her little hands together. "Yes, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes," she asserted, "then at night when he thinks I'm all asleep he comes and stands by my cribby-house like a great black shadow-bear and shakes and shakes his most beautiful head and says, 'Poor little devil—poor little devil.' Oh, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes!" she cried out ecstatically.

"Why, you naughty little thing!" scolded the White Linen Nurse with an unmistakable catch in her voice. "Why, you—naughty—naughty—little thing!"

Like the brush of a butterfly's wing the child's hand grazed the White Linen Nurse's cheek. "I'm a lonely little thing," she confided wistfully. "Oh, I'm an awfully lonely little thing!" With really shocking abruptness the old malicious smile came twittering back to her mouth. "But I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" she threatened joyously, reaching out with pliant fingers to count the buttons on the White Linen Nurse's dress. "Oh, I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" In the midst of the passionate assertion her rigid little mouth relaxed in a most mild and innocent yawn.

"Oh, of course," she yawned, "on wash days and ironing days and every other work day in the week he has to be away cutting up people 'cause that's his lawful business. But Sundays, when he doesn't really need to at all, he goes off to some kind of a green, grassy club—all day long—and plays golf."

Very palpably her eyelids began to droop. "Where was I?" she asked sharply. "Oh, yes, 'the green, grassy club.' Well, when I die," she faltered, "I'm going to die specially on some Sunday when there's a big golf game,—so he'll just naturally have to give it up and stay home and—amuse me—and help arrange the flowers. The Parpa's crazy about flowers. So am I," she added broodingly. "I raised almost a geranium once. But the Parpa threw it out. It was a good geranium, too. All it did was just to drip the tiniest-teeniest bit over a book and a writing and somebody's brains in a dish. He threw it at a cat. It was a good cat, too. All it did was to—"

A little jerkily her drooping head bobbed forward and then back again. Her heavy eyes were almost tight shut by this time, and after a moment's silence her lips began moving dumbly like one at silent devotions. "I'm making a little poem, now," she confided at last. "It's about—you and me. It's a sort of a little prayer." Very, very softly she began to repeat.

Now I sit me down to nap All curled up in a Nursie's lap, If she should die before I wake—

Abruptly she stopped and stared up suspiciously into the White Linen Nurse's eyes. "Ha!" she mocked, "you thought I was going to say 'If I should die before I wake,'—didn't you? Well, I'm not!"

"It would have been more generous," acknowledged the White Linen Nurse.

Very stiffly the Little Girl pursed her lips. "It's plenty generous enough—when it's all done!" she said severely. "And I'll thank you,—Miss Malgregor,—not to interrupt me again!" With excessive deliberateness she went back to the first line of her poem and began all over again,

Now I sit me down to nap, All curled up in a Nursie's lap, If she should die before I wake, Give her—give her ten cents—for Jesus' sake!

"Why that's a—a cunning little prayer," yawned the White Linen Nurse. Most certainly of course she would have smiled if the yawn hadn't caught her first. But now in the middle of the yawn it was a great deal easier to repeat the "very cunning" than to force her lips into any new expression. "Very cunning—very cunning," she kept crooning conscientiously.

Modestly like some other successful authors the Little Girl flapped her eyelids languidly open and shut for three or four times before she acknowledged the compliment. "Oh, cunning as any of 'em," she admitted off-handishly. Only once again did she open either mouth or eyes, and this time it was merely one eye and half a mouth. "Do my fat iron braces—hurt you?" she mumbled drowsily.

"Yes, a little," conceded the White Linen Nurse.

"Ha! They hurt me—all the time!" gibed the Little Girl.

Five minutes later, the child who didn't particularly care about being held, and the girl who didn't particularly care about holding her, were fast asleep in each other's arms,—a naughty, nagging, restive little hornet all hushed up and a-dream in the heart of a pink wild-rose!

Stalking out of the house in his own due time the Senior Surgeon reared back aghast at the sight.

"Well—I'll be hanged!" he muttered. "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!"

Awkwardly, on the top step, he struggled alone into his cumbersome coat. Every tingling nerve in his body, every shuddering sensibility, was racked to its utmost capacity over the distressing scenes he had left behind him in the big house. Back in that luxuriant sickroom, Youth Incarnate lay stripped, root, branch, leaf, bud, blossom, fruit, of All its manhood's promise. Back in that erudite library, Culture Personified, robbed of all its fine philosophy, sat babbling illiterate street-curses into its quivering hands. Back in that exquisite pink and gold boudoir, Blonded Fashion, ravished for once of all its artistry, ran stumbling round and round in interminable circles like a disheveled hag. In shrill crescendos and discordant basses, with heartpiercing jaggedness, with blood-curdling raspishness, each one, boy, father, mother, meddlesome relative, competent or incompetent assistant, indiscriminate servant, filing his separate sorrow into the Senior Surgeon's tortured ears!

With one of those sudden revulsions to materialism which is liable to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed in his body clamoring for expression—before it, too, should be hurtled into oblivion. "Eat, you fool, and drink, you fool, and be merry,—you fool,—for to-morrow—even you,—Lendicott R. Faber—may have to die!" brawled and re-brawled through his mind like a ribald phonograph tune.

At the edge of the bottom step a precipitous lilac branch that must have budded and bloomed in a single hour smote him stingingly across his cheek. "Laggard!" taunted the lilac branch.

With the first crunching grit of gravel under his feet, something transcendently naked and unashamed that was neither Brazen Sorrow nor Brazen Pain thrilled across his startled consciousness. Over the rolling, marshy meadow, beyond the succulent willow-hedge that hid the winding river, up from some fluent, slim canoe, out from a chorus of virile young tenor voices, a little passionate Love Song—divinely tender—most incomparably innocent—came stealing palpitantly forth into that inflammable Spring world without a single vestige of accompaniment on it!

Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me, There's no bird in brake or brere, But to his little mate sings he, "Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here And Love is Lord of you—and me!"

Wrenched like a sob out of his own lost youth the Senior Surgeon's faltering college memories took up the old refrain.

As I go singing, to my dear, "Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me!"

Just for an instant a dozen long-forgotten pictures lanced themselves poignantly into his brain,—dingy, uncontrovertible old recitation rooms where young ideas flashed bright and futile as parade swords,—elm-shaded slopes where lithe young bodies lolled on green velvet grasses to expound their harshest cynicisms! Book-history, book-science, book-economics, book-love,—all the paper passion of all the paper poets swaggering imperiously on boyish lips that would have died a thousand bashful deaths before the threatening imminence of a real girl's kiss! Magic days, with Youth the one glittering, positive treasure on the Tree of Life—and Woman still a mystery!

"Woman a mystery?" Harshly the phrase ripped through the Senior Surgeon's brain. Croakingly in that instant all the grim gray scientific years re-overtook him, swamped him, strangled him. "Woman a mystery? Oh ye Gods! And Youth? Bah! Youth,—a mere tinsel tinkle on a rotting Christmas tree!"

Furiously with renewed venom he turned and threw his weight again upon the stubbornly resistant crank of his automobile.

Vaguely disturbed by the noise and vibration the White Linen Nurse opened her big, drowsy, blue eyes upon him.

"Don't—jerk—it—so!" she admonished hazily, "You'll wake the Little Girl!"

"Well, what about my convenience, I'd like to know?" snapped the Senior Surgeon in some astonishment.

Heavily the White Linen Nurse's lashes shadowed down again across her sleep-flushed cheeks.

"Oh, never mind—about—that," she mumbled non-concernedly.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake—wake up there!" bellowed the Senior Surgeon above the sudden roar of his engine.

Adroitly for a man of his bulk he ran around the radiator and jumped into his seat. Joggled unmercifully into wakefulness, the Little Girl greeted his return with a generous if distinctly non-tactful demonstration of affection. Grabbing the unwitting fingers of his momentarily free hand she tapped them proudly against the White Linen Nurse's plump pink cheek.

"See! I call her 'Peach'!" she boasted joyously with all the triumphant air of one who felt assured that mental discrimination such as this could not possibly fail to impress even a person so naturally obtuse as—a father.

"Don't be foolish!" snarled the Senior Surgeon.

"Who? Me?" gasped the White Linen Nurse in a perfect agony of confusion.

"Yes! You!" snapped the Senior Surgeon explosively half an hour later after interminable miles of absolute silence—and dingy yellow field-stubble—and bare brown alder bushes.

Truly out of the ascetic habit of his daily life, "where no rain was," as the Bible would put it, it did seem to him distinctly foolish, not to say careless, not to say out and out incendiary, for any girl to go blushing her way like a fire-brand through a world so palpably populated by young men whose heads were tow, and hearts indisputably tinder, rather than tender.

"Yes! You!" he reasserted vehemently at the end of another silent mile.

Then plainly begrudging this second inexcusable interruption of his most vital musings concerning Spinal Meningitis he scowled his way savagely back again into his own grimly established trend of thought.

Excited by so much perfectly good silence that nobody seemed to be using the Little Crippled Girl ventured gallantly forth once more into the hazardous conversational land of grown-ups.

"Father?" she experimented cautiously with most commendable discretion.

Fathoms deep in abstraction the Senior Surgeon stared unheeding into the whizzing black road. Pulses and temperatures and blood-pressures were seething in his mind; and sharp sticks and jagged stones and the general possibilities of a puncture; and murmurs of the heart and rles of the lungs; and a most unaccountable knock-knock-knocking in the engine; and the probable relation of middle-ear disease; and the perfectly positive symptoms of optic neuritis; and a damned funny squeak in the steering gear!

"Father?" the Little Girl persisted valiantly.

To add to his original concentration the Senior Surgeon's linen collar began to chafe him maddeningly under his chin. The annoyance added two scowls to his already blackly furrowed face, and at least ten miles an hour to his running time; but nothing whatsoever to his conversational ability.

"Father!" the Little Girl whimpered with faltering courage. Then panic-stricken, as wiser people have been before her, over the dreadful spookish remoteness of a perfectly normal human being who refuses either to answer or even to notice your wildest efforts at communication, she raised her waspish voice in its shrillest, harshest war-cry. "Fat Father! Fat Father! F-a-t F-a-t-h-e-r!" she screeched out frenziedly at the top of her lungs.

The gun-shot agony of a wounded rabbit was in the cry, the last gurgling gasp of strangulation under a murderer's reeking fingers,—catastrophe unspeakable,—disaster now irrevocable!

Clamping down his brakes with a wrench that almost tore the insides out of his engine the Senior Surgeon brought the great car to a staggering standstill.

"What is it?" he cried in real terror. "What is it?"

Limply the Little Girl stretched down from the White Linen Nurse's lap till she could nick her toe against the shiniest woodwork in sight. Altogether aimlessly her small chin began to burrow deeper and deeper into her big fur collar.

"For Heaven's sake, what do you want?" demanded the Senior Surgeon. Even yet along his spine the little nerves crinkled with shock and apprehension. "For Heaven's sake what do you want?"

Helplessly the child lifted her turbid eyes to his. With unmistakable appeal her tiny hand went clutching out at one of the big buttons on his coat. Desperately for an instant she rummaged through her brain for some remotely adequate answer to this most thunderous question,—and then retreated precipitously as usual to the sacristy of her own imagination.

"All the birds were there, Father!" she confided guilelessly. "All the birds were there,—with yellow feathers instead of hair! And bumblebees—crocheted in the trees. And—"

Short of complete annihilation there was no satisfying vengeance whatsoever that the Senior Surgeon's exploding passion could wreak upon his offspring. Complete annihilation being unfeasible at the moment he merely climbed laboriously out of the car, re-cranked the engine, climbed laboriously back into his place and started on his way once more. All the red blustering rage was stripped completely from him. Startlingly rigid, startlingly white, his face was like the death-mask of a pirate.

Pleasantly excited by she-didn't-know-exactly-what, the Little Girl resumed her beloved falsetto chant, rhythmically all the while with her puny iron-braced legs beating the tune into the White Linen Nurse's tender flesh.

All the birds were there With yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumblebees crocheted in the trees And—and—all the birds were there, With yellow feathers instead of hair, And—

Frenziedly as a runaway horse trying to escape from its own pursuing harness and carriage the Senior Surgeon poured increasing speed into both his own pace and the pace of his tormentor. Up hill,—down dale,—screeching through rocky echoes,—swishing through blue-green spruce-lands,—dodging indomitable boulders,—grazing lax, treacherous embankments,—the great car scuttled homeward. Huddled behind his steering wheel like a warrior behind his shield, every body-muscle taut with strain, every facial muscle diabolically calm, the Senior Surgeon met and parried successively each fresh onslaught of yard, rod, mile.

Then suddenly in the first precipitous descent of a mighty hill the whole earth seemed to drop out from under the car. Down-down-down with incredible swiftness and smoothness the great machine went diving towards abysmal space! Up-up-up with incredible bumps and bouncings, trees, bushes, stonewalls went rushing to the sky!

Gasping surprisedly towards the Senior Surgeon the White Linen Nurse saw his grim mouth yank round abruptly in her direction as it yanked sometimes in the operating-room with some sharp, incisive order of life or death. Instinctively she leaned forward for the message.

Not over-loud but strangely distinct the words slapped back into her straining ears.

"If—it will rest your face any—to look scared—by all means—do so! I've lost control of the machine!" called the Senior Surgeon sardonically across the roar of the wind.

The phrase excited the White Linen Nurse but it did not remotely frighten her. She was not in the habit of seeing the Senior Surgeon lose control of any situation. Merely intoxicated with speed, delirious with ozone, she snatched up the Little Girl close, to her breast.

"We're flying!" she cried. "We're dropping from a parachute! We're—!"

Swoopingly like a sled striking glare, level ice the great car swerved from the bottom of the hill into a soft rolling meadow. Instantly from every conceivable direction, like foes in ambush, trees, stumps, rocks reared up in threatening defiance.

Tighter and tighter the White Linen Nurse crushed the Little Girl to her breast. Louder and louder she called in the Little Girl's ear.

"Scream!" she shouted. "There might be a bump! Scream louder than a bump! Scream! Scream! Scream!"

In that first over-whelming, nerve-numbing, heart-crunching terror of his whole life as the great car tilted up against a stone,—plowed down into the mushy edge of a marsh,—and skidded completely round, crash-bang— into a tree, it was the last sound that the Senior Surgeon heard,—the sound of a woman and child screeching their lungs out in diabolical exultancy!



CHAPTER V

When the White Linen Nurse found anything again she found herself lying perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought she noticed a slight black and blue discoloration towards the west, but more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be seriously injured. The earth, she feared had not escaped so easily. Even way off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as sore—as sore—as could be—under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy eyes the hot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she should have to jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might arise there seemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek. Not until the Little Crippled Girl's dirt-smouched face intervened between her own staring eyes and the sky did she realize that the pain in her cheek was a pinch.

"Wake up! Wake up!" scolded the Little Crippled Girl shrilly. "Naughty—Pink and White Nursie! I wanted to hear the bump! You screamed so loud I couldn't hear the bump!"

With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly around her.

It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field,—acres and acres of mild old grass tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the stone-wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the back-sliders.

Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes the White Linen Nurse turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up rakish and bruised as a prizefighter's. One sable sleeve was wrenched disastrously from its arm-hole, and along the edge of the vivid little purple skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery.

A trifle self-consciously the Little Girl began to gather herself together.

"We—we seem to have fallen out of something!" she confided with the air of one who halves a most precious secret.

"Yes, I know," said the White Linen Nurse. "But what has become of—your Father?"

Worriedly for an instant the Little Girl sat scanning the remotest corners of the field. Then abruptly with a gasp of real relief she began to explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her black eye.

"Oh, never mind about Father," she asserted cheerfully. "I guess—I guess he got mad and went home."

"Yes—I know," mused the White Linen Nurse. "But it doesn't seem—probable."

"Probable?" mocked the Little Girl most disagreeably. Then suddenly her little hand went shooting out towards the stranded automobile.

"Why, there he is!" she screamed. "Under the car! Oh, Look—Look—Lookey!"

Laboriously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her knees. Desperately she tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizziness round her temples.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! What's the dose for anybody under a car?" she babbled idiotically.

Then with a really herculean effort,—both mental and physical, she staggered to her feet, and started for the automobile.

But her knees gave out, and wilting down to the grass she tried to crawl along on all-fours, till straining wrists sent her back to her feet again.

Whenever she tried to walk the Little Girl walked,—whenever she tried to crawl the Little Girl crawled.

"Isn't it fun!" the shrill childish voice piped persistently. "Isn't it just like playing ship-wreck!"

When they reached the car both woman and child were too utterly exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on the ground and—stare.

Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the Senior Surgeon's body lay rammed face-down deep, deep into the grass.

It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.

"I think he's dead!" she volunteered sagely. "His legs look—awfully dead—to me!" Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application of such excitement. "I hadn't—exactly—planned—on having him dead!" she began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional collapse zig-zagged suddenly across her face. "I won't have him dead! I won't! I won't!" she screamed out stormily.

In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at the Senior Surgeon's prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.

"Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do,—I know I could do it! Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!" she kept repeating helplessly.

Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the edge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellow wheel-spokes. "Father!" she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness. "Father!" she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.

Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees and jostled the Little Girl aside.

"Fat Father!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "Fat Father! Fat Father! Fat Father!" she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that had never yet failed to rouse him.

Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon's horridly quiet shoulders a little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.

"Oh, his heart!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "I must find his heart!"

Throwing herself prone upon the cool meadowy ground and frantically reaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm's length she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.

"Ouch! You tickle me!" spluttered the Senior Surgeon weakly.

Rolling back quickly with fright and relief the White Linen Nurse burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" she giggled. "Hi! Hi! Titter! Titter! Titter!"

Perplexedly at first but with increasing abandon the Little Girl's voice took up the same idiotic refrain. "Ha-Ha-Ha," she choked. And "Hi-Hi-Hi!" And "Titter! Titter! Titter!"

With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of stale golden-rod.

"Blankety-blank-blank—BLANK!" he announced in due time, "Blankety-blank-blank-blank—BLANK! Maybe when you two—blankety-blank—imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank cackling you'll have the—blankety-blank decency to save my—my blankety-blank-blank—blank—blank-blank life!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" persisted the poor helpless White Linen Nurse with the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Hi! Hi! Hi!" snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs.

Feeling hopelessly crushed under two tons and a half of car, the Senior Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt quite sure, could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic, blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it was the fires of Hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man he found himself staring impudently close instead into the White Linen Nurse's furiously flushed face that lay cuddled on one plump cheek staring impudently close at him.

"Why—why—get out!" gasped the Senior Surgeon.

Very modestly the White Linen Nurse's face retreated a little further into its blushes.

"Yes, I know," she protested. "But I'm all through giggling now. I'm sorry—I'm—"

In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon's features crinkled wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from the appalling proximity of the girl's face.

"Your—eyelashes—are too long," he complained querulously.

"Eh?" jerked the White Linen Nurse's face. "Is it your brain that's hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it's your brain that's hurt?"

"It's my stomach!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I tell you I 'm not hurt,—I'm just—squashed! I'm paralyzed! If I can't get this car off me—"

"Yes, that's just it," beamed the White Linen Nurse's face. "That's just what I crawled in here to find out,—how to get the car off you. That's just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course,—only I couldn't run, 'cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take hours—and the car might start or burn up or something while I was gone. But you don't seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery," she added more brightly, "it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could only get the car off you! But it's so heavy. I had no idea it would be so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?"

"Take it apart—Hell!" groaned the Senior Surgeon.

A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse's face. "All the same," she asserted stubbornly, "if some one would only tell me what to do—I know I could do it!"

Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little tremor quickened suddenly and was hushed again.

"Get out of here—quick!" stormed the Senior Surgeon's ghastly face.

"I won't!" said the White Linen Nurse's face. "Until you tell me—what to do!"

Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray eyes battled each other.

"Can you do what you're told?" faltered the Senior Surgeon.

"Oh, yes," said the White Linen Nurse.

"I mean can you do exactly—what you're told?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them—explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own judgment?"

"Oh, but I haven't got any—judgment," protested the White Linen Nurse.

Palpably in the Senior Surgeon's blood-shot eyes the leisurely seeming diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions.

"Then get out of here—quick—for God's sake—and get to work!" he ordered.

Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the wheel-spokes again. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical problem his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed eyelids.

"Yes, sir?" prodded the White Linen Nurse.

"Keep still!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I've got to think," he said. "I've got to work it out! All in a moment you've got to learn to run the car. All in a moment! It's awful!"

"Oh, I don't mind, sir," affirmed the White Linen Nurse serenely.

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again. "You don't—mind?" he groaned. "You don't—mind? Why, you've got to learn—everything! Everything—from—the very beginning!"

"Oh, that's all right, sir," crooned the White Linen Nurse.

Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again. The Senior Surgeon did not stop to argue any further.

"Now come here," ordered the Senior Surgeon. "I'm going to—I'm going to—" Startlingly his voice weakened,—trailed off into nothingness,—and rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness. "Look here now! For Heaven's sake use your brains! I'm going to dictate to you—very slowly—one thing at a time—just what to do!"

Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and began to grin at him. "Oh, no, sir," she said. "I couldn't do it that way,—not 'one thing at a time.' Oh, no indeed, sir! No!" Absolute finality was in her voice,—the inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person.

"You'll do it the way I tell you to!" roared the Senior Surgeon struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint.

"Oh, no, sir," beamed the White Linen Nurse. "Not one thing at a time! Oh, no, I couldn't do it that way! Oh, no, sir, I won't do it that way—one thing at a time," she persisted hurriedly. "Why, you might faint away or something might happen—right in the middle of it—right between one direction and another—and I wouldn't know at all—what to turn on or off next—and it might take off one of your legs, you know, or an arm. Oh, no,—not one thing at a time!"

"Good-by—then," croaked the Senior Surgeon. "I'm as good as dead now." A single shudder went through him,—a last futile effort to stretch himself.

"Good-by," said the White Linen Nurse. "Good-by, sir.—I'd heaps rather have you die—perfectly whole—like that—of your own accord—than have me run the risk of starting the car full-tilt and chopping you up so—or dragging you off so—that you didn't find it convenient to tell me—how to stop the car."

"You're a—a—a—" spluttered the Senior Surgeon indistinguishably.

"Crinkle-crackle," went that mysterious, horrid sound from somewhere in the machinery.

"Oh my God!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Do it your own—damned way! Only—only—" His voice cracked raspingly.

"Steady! Steady there!" said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a sudden odd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectly serene. "Now begin at the beginning," she begged. "Quick! Tell me everything—just the way I must do it! Quick—quick—quick!"

Twice the Senior Surgeon's lips opened and shut with a vain effort to comply with her request.

"But you can't do it," he began all over again. "It isn't possible. You haven't got the mind!"

"Maybe I haven't," said the White Linen Nurse. "But I've got the memory. Hurry!"

"Creak," said the funny little something in the machinery. "Creak—drip—bubble!"

"Oh, get in there quick!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Sit down behind the wheel!" he shouted after her flying footsteps. "Are you there? For God's sake—are you there? Do you see those two little levers where your right hand comes? For God's sake—don't you know what a lever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!"

A little jerkily then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be manipulated to start the car!

Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly the White Linen Nurse visualized each separate detail in her abnormally retentive mind!

"But you can't—possibly remember it!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "You can't—possibly! And probably the damn car's bust and won't start—anyway—and—!" Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl of despair.

"Don't be a—blight!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "I've never forgotten anything yet, sir!"

Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expression was no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuant nostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepened suddenly into sheer dilating terror.

"Left foot—press down—hard—left pedal!" she began to sing-song to herself.

"No! Right foot!—right foot!" corrected the Little Girl blunderingly from somewhere close in the grass.

"Inside lever—pull—way—back!" persisted the White Linen Nurse resolutely as she switched on the current.

"No! Outside lever! Outside! Outside!" contradicted the Little Girl.

"Shut your darned mouth!" screeched the White Linen Nurse, her hand on the throttle as she tried the self starter.

Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the car the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl's terse, unconscious mimicry of his own most venomous tones.

Then with all the forty-eight lusty, ebullient years of his life snatched from his lips like an untasted cup, and one single noxious, death-flavored second urged,—forced,—crammed down his choking throat, he felt the great car quicken and start.

"God!" said the Senior Surgeon. Just "God!" The God of mud, he meant! The God of brackish grass! The God of a man lying still hopeful under more than two tons' weight of unaccountable mechanism, with a novice in full command.

Up in her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whirr of wheels, the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal. "Short lever—spark—long lever—gas!" she persisted resolutely. "It must be right! It must!"

Jerkily then, and blatantly unskilfully, with riotous puffs and spinning of wheels, the great car started,—faltered,—balked a bit,—then dragged crushingly across the Senior Surgeon's flattened body, and with a great wanton burst of speed tore down the sloping meadow into the brook—rods away. Clamping down the brakes with a wrench and a racket like the smash of a machine-shop the White Linen Nurse jumped out into the brook, and with one wild terrified glance behind her staggered back up the long grassy slope to the Senior Surgeon.

Mechanically through her wooden-feeling lips she forced the greeting that sounded most cheerful to her. "It's not much fun, sir,—running an auto," she gasped. "I don't believe I'd like it!"

Half propped up on one elbow,—still dizzy with mental chaos, still paralyzed with physical inertia,—the Senior Surgeon lay staring blankly all around him. Indifferently for an instant his stare included the White Linen Nurse. Then glowering suddenly at something way beyond her, his face went perfectly livid.

"Good God! The—the car's on fire!" he mumbled.

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. "Why! Didn't you know it, sir?"



CHAPTER VI

Headlong the Senior Surgeon pitched over on the grass,—his last vestige of self-control stripped from him,—horror unspeakable racking him sobbingly from head to toe.

Whimperingly the Little Girl came crawling to him, and settling down close at his feet began with her tiny lace handkerchief to make futile dabs at the mud-stains on his gray silk stockings. "Never mind, Father," she coaxed, "we'll get you clean sometime."

Nervously the White Linen Nurse bethought her of the brook. "Oh, wait a minute, sir—and I'll get you a drink of water!" she pleaded.

Bruskly the Senior Surgeon's hand jerked out and grabbed at her skirt.

"Don't leave me!" he begged. "For God's sake—don't leave me!"

Weakly he struggled up again and sat staring piteously at the blazing car. His unrelinquished clutch on the White Linen Nurse's skirt brought her sinking softly down beside him like a collapsed balloon. Together they sat and watched the gaseous yellow flames shoot up into the sky.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" piped the Little Girl.

"Eh?" groaned the Senior Surgeon.

"Father," persisted the shrill little voice. "Father,—do people ever burn up?"

"Eh?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. Brutally the harsh, shuddering sobs began to rack and tear again through his great chest.

"There! There!" crooned the White Linen Nurse, struggling desperately to her knees. "Let me get—everybody—a drink of water."

Again the Senior Surgeon's unrelinquished clutch on her skirt jerked her back to the place beside him.

"I said not to leave me!" he snapped out as roughly as he jerked.

Before the affrighted look in the White Linen Nurse's face a sheepish, mirthless grin flickered across one corner of his mouth.

"Lord! But I'm shaken!" he apologized. "Me—of all people!" Painfully the red blood mounted to his cheeks. "Me—of all people!" Bluntly he forced the White Linen Nurse's reluctant gaze to meet his own. "Only yesterday," he persisted, "I did a laparotomy on a man who had only one chance in a hundred of pulling through—and I—I scolded him for fighting off his ether cone,—scolded him—I tell you!"

"Yes, I know," soothed the White Linen Nurse. "But—"

"But nothing!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "The fear of death? Bah! All my life I've scoffed at it! Die? Yes, of course,—when you have to,—but with no kick coming! Why, I've been wrecked in a typhoon in the Gulf of Mexico. And I didn't care! And I've lain for nine days more dead than alive in an Asiatic cholera camp. And I didn't care! And I've been locked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and a dynamite bomb. And I didn't care! And twice in a Pennsylvania mine disaster I've been the first man down the shaft. And I didn't care! And I've been shot, I tell you,—and I've been horse-trampled,—and I've been wolf-bitten. And I've never cared! But to-day—to-day—" Piteously all the pride and vigor wilted from his great shoulders, leaving him all huddled up like a woman, with his head on his knees. "But to-day, I've got mine!" he acknowledged brokenly.

Once again the White Linen Nurse tried to rise. "Oh, please, sir, let me get you a—drink of water," she suggested helplessly.

"I said not to leave me!" jerked the Senior Surgeon.

Perplexedly with big staring eyes the Little Crippled Girl glanced up at this strange fatherish person who sounded so suddenly small and scared like herself. Jealous instantly of her own prerogatives she dropped her futile labors on the mud-stained silk stockings and scrambled precipitously for the White Linen Nurse's lap where she nestled down finally after many gyrations, and sat glowering forth at all possible interlopers.

"Don't leave any of us!" she ordered with a peremptoriness not unmixed with supplication.

"Surely some one will see the fire and come and get us," conceded the Senior Surgeon.

"Yes—surely," mused the White Linen Nurse. Just at that moment she was mostly concerned with adjusting the curve of her shoulder to the curve of the Little Girl's head. "I could sit more comfortably," she suggested to the Senior Surgeon, "if you'd let go my skirt."

"Let go of your skirt? Who's touching your skirt?" gasped the Senior Surgeon incredulously. Once again the blood mounted darkly to his face. "I think I'll get up—and walk around a bit," he confided coldly.

"Do, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Ouchily with a tweak of pain through his sprained back the Senior Surgeon sat suddenly down again. "I sha'n't get up till I'm good and ready!" he attested.

"I wouldn't, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Very slowly, very complacently, all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!" crooned the White Linen Nurse.

"I don't know—as you need to—make a song about it!" winced the Senior Surgeon. "It's just about the crudest case of complete muscular atrophy that I've ever seen!"

Blandly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his. "It wasn't her 'complete muscular atrophy' that I was thinking about!" she said. "It's her panties that are so unbecoming!"

"Eh?" jumped the Senior Surgeon.

"Poor little legs—poor little legs—poor little legs," resumed the White Linen Nurse droningly.

Very slowly, very complacently, all around them April kept right on—being April.

Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the grass kept On growing, and the trees kept right on budding. Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the blue sky kept right on fading into its early evening dove-colors.

Nothing brisk, nothing breathless, nothing even remotely hurried was there in all the landscape except just the brook,—and the flash of a bird,—and the blaze of the crackling automobile.

The White Linen Nurse's nostrils were smooth and calm with the lovely sappy scent of rabbit-nibbled maple bark and mud-wet arbutus buds. The White Linen Nurse's mind was full of sumptuous, succulent marsh marigolds, and fluffy white shad-bush blossoms.

The Senior Surgeon's nostrils were all puckered up with the stench of burning varnish. The Senior Surgeon's mind was full of the horrid thought that he'd forgotten to renew his automobile fire-insurance,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that his rival colleague had told him he didn't know how to run an auto anyway—and that the cook had given notice that morning,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that the moths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress suit,—and that the Superintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch of pink roses for his birthday,—and that the boiler in the kitchen leaked,—and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read a paper on "Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo,"—and he hadn't even begun the paper yet,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that the wall-paper on his library hung in shreds and tatters waiting for him to decide between a French fresco effect and an early English paneling,—and that his little daughter was growing up in wanton ugliness under the care of coarse, indifferent hirelings,—and that the laundry robbed him weekly of at least five socks,—and that it would cost him fully seven thousand dollars to replace this car,—and that he had a sprained back!

"It's restful, isn't it?" cooed the White Linen Nurse.

"Isn't what restful?" glowered the Senior Surgeon.

"Sitting down!" said the White Linen Nurse.

Contemptuously the Senior Surgeon's mind ignored the interruption and reverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning the gloomy, black-walnut shadowed entrance hall of his great house, and how many yards of imported linoleum at $3.45 a yard it would take to recarpet the "damned hole,"—and how it would have seemed anyway if—if he hadn't gone home—as usual to the horrid black-walnut shadows that night—but been carried home instead—feet first and—quite dead—dead, mind you, with a red necktie on,—and even the cook was out! And they wouldn't even know where to lay him—but might put him by mistake in that—in that—in his dead wife's dead—bed!

Altogether unconsciously a little fluttering sigh of ineffable contentment escaped the White Linen Nurse.

"I don't care how long we have to sit here and wait for help," she announced cheerfully, "because to-morrow, of course, I'll have to get up and begin all over again—and go to Nova Scotia."

"Go where?" lurched the Senior Surgeon.

"I'd thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard!" said the White Linen Nurse just a trifle stiffly.

Incredulously once more the Senior Surgeon withdrew his detaining hand. "I'm not even touching your skirt!" he denied desperately. Nothing but denial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for an instant. "Why, for Heaven's sake, should I want to hold on to your skirt?" he demanded peremptorily. "What the deuce—?" he began blusteringly. "Why in—?"

Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the White Linen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw every vestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded out sometimes in the operating-room when in the midst of some ghastly, unforeseen emergency that left all his assistants blinking helplessly around them, his whole wonderful scientific mind seemed to break up like some chemical compound into all its meek component parts,—only to reorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action that fairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers—but was pretty apt to knock the breath into the body of the person most concerned.

When the Senior Surgeon's scientific mind had reorganized itself to meet this emergency he found himself infinitely more surprised at the particular type of explosion that had taken place than any other person could possibly have been.

"Miss Malgregor!" he gasped. "Speaking of preferring 'domestic service,' as you call it,—speaking of preferring domestic service to—nursing,—how would you like to consider—to consider a position of—of—well,—call it a—a position of general—heartwork—for a family of two? Myself and the Little Girl here being the 'two,'—as you understand," he added briskly.

"Why, I think it would be grand!" beamed the White Linen Nurse.

A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation. "Your frank and immediate—enthusiasm," he murmured, "is more, perhaps, than I had dared to expect."

"But it would be grand!" said the White Linen Nurse. Before the odd little smile in the Senior Surgeon's eyes her white forehead puckered all up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened, her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an unwonted footfall. "What—did—you—say?" she repeated worriedly. "Just exactly what was it that you said? I guess—maybe—I didn't understand just exactly what it was that you said."

The smile in the Senior Surgeon's eyes deepened a little. "I asked you," he said, "how you would like to consider a position of 'general heartwork' in a family of two,—myself and the Little Girl here being the 'two.' 'Heartwork' was what I said. Yes,—'Heartwork,'—not housework!"

"Heartwork?" faltered the White Linen Nurse. " Heartwork? I don't know what you mean, sir." Like two falling rose-petals her eyelids fluttered down across her affrighted eyes. "Oh, when I shut my eyes, sir, and just hear your voice, I know of course, sir, that it's some sort of a joke. But when I look right at you—I—don't know—what it is!"

"Open your eyes and keep them open then till you do find out!" suggested the Senior Surgeon bluntly.

Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged each other.

"'Heartwork' was what I said," persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpably his narrowing eyes shut out all meaning but one definite one.

The White Linen Nurse's face went almost as blanched as her dress. "You're—you're not asking me to—marry you, sir?" she stammered.

"I suppose I am!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon.

"Not marry you!" cried the White Linen Nurse. Distress was in her voice,—distaste,—unmitigable shock, as though the high gods themselves had fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments.

"Oh—not marry you, sir?" she kept right on protesting. "Not be—engaged, you mean? Oh, not be engaged—and everything?"

"Well, why not?" snapped the Senior Surgeon.

Like a smitten flower the girl's whole body seemed to wilt down into incalculable weariness.

"Oh—no—no! I couldn't!" she protested. "Oh, no,—really!" Appealingly she lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurred with tears. "I've—I've been engaged—once—you know," she explained falteringly. "Why—I was engaged, sir, almost as soon as I was born, and I stayed engaged till two years ago. That's almost twenty years. That's a long time, sir. You don't get over it—easy." Very, very gravely she began to shake her head. "Oh—no—sir! No! Thank you—very much—but I—I just simply couldn't begin at the beginning and go all through it again! I haven't got the heart for it! I haven't got the spirit! Carvin' your initials on trees and—and gadding round to all the Sunday school picnics—"

Brutally like a boy the Senior Surgeon threw back his head in one wild hoot of joy. Infinitely more cautiously as the agonizing pang in his shoulder lulled down again he proceeded to argue the matter, but the grin in his face was even yet faintly traceable.

"Frankly, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I'm infinitely more addicted to carving people than to carving trees. And as to Sunday school picnics? Well, really now—I hardly believe that you'd find my demands in that direction—excessive!"

Perplexedly the White Linen Nurse tried to stare her way through his bantering smile to his real meaning. Furiously, as she stared, the red blood came flushing back into her face.

"You don't mean for a second that you—that you love me?" she asked incredulously.

"No, I don't suppose I do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddie here—loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it that we both—need you!"

"What you mean is—" corrected the White Linen Nurse, "that needing somebody—very badly, you've just suddenly decided that that somebody might as well be me?"

"Well—if you choose to put it—like that!" said the Senior Surgeon a bit sulkily.

"And if there hadn't been an auto accident?" argued the White Linen Nurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, "if there hadn't been just this particular kind of an auto accident—at this particular hour—of this particular day—of this particular month—with marigolds and—everything, you probably never would have realized that you did need anybody?"

"Maybe not," admitted the Senior Surgeon.

"U—m—m," said the White Linen Nurse. "And if you'd happened to take one of the other girls to-day—instead of me,—why then I suppose you'd have felt that she was the one you really needed? And if you'd taken the Superintendent of Nurses—instead of any of us girls—you might even have felt that she was the one you most needed?"

With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back the Senior Surgeon wrenched himself around until he faced her quite squarely.

"Now see here, Miss Malgregor!" he growled. "For Heaven's sake listen to sense, even if you can't talk it! Here am I, a plain professional man—making you a plain professional offer. Why in thunder should you try to fuss me all up because my offer isn't couched in all the foolish, romantic, lace-paper sort of flub-dubbery that you think such an offer ought to be couched in? Eh?"

"Fuss you all up, sir?" protested the White Linen Nurse with real anxiety.

"Yes—fuss me all up!" snarled the Senior Surgeon with increasing venom. "I'm no story-writer! I'm not trying to make up what might have happened a year from next February in a Chinese junk off the coast of—Nova Zembla—to a Methodist preacher—and a—and a militant suffragette! What I'm trying to size up is—just what's happened to you and me—to-day! For the fact remains that it is to-day! And it is you and I! And there has been an accident! And out of that accident—and everything that's gone with it—I have come out—thinking of something that I never thought of before! And there were marigolds!" he added with unexpected whimsicality. "You see I don't deny—even the marigolds!"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Yes what?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.

Softly the White Linen Nurse's chin burrowed down a little closer against the sleeping child's tangled hair. "Why—yes—thank you very much—but I never shall love again," she said quite definitely.

"Love?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Why, I'm not asking you to love me!" His face was suddenly crimson. "Why, I'd hate it, if you—loved me! Why, I'd—"

"O—h—h," mumbled the White Linen Nurse in new embarrassment. Then suddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. "What do you want?" she asked.

Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands. "My goodness!" he said. "What do you suppose I want? I want some one to take care of us!"

Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate the shifting little sleepyhead on her breast.

"You can hire some one for that," she suggested with real relief.

"I was trying to hire—you!" said the Senior Surgeon quite tersely.

"Hire me?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Why! Why!"

Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon's astonished arms.

"I—I don't want to hold her," he protested.

"She—isn't mine!" argued the White Linen Nurse.

"But I can't talk while I'm holding her!" insisted the Senior Surgeon.

"I can't listen—while I'm holding her!" persisted the White Linen Nurse.

Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon's face like an excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your up-raised hand is a lump of sugar—or a live coal.

"You're trying to hire—me?" she prompted him nudgingly with her voice. "Hire me—for money?"

"Oh my Lord, no!" said the Senior Surgeon. "There are plenty of people I can hire for money! But they won't stay!" he explained ruefully. "Hang it all,—they won't stay!" Above his little girl's white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with unspeakable anxiety.

"Why, just this last year," he complained, "we've had nine different housekeepers—and thirteen nursery governesses!" Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to re-adjust the weight of the little iron leg-braces. "But I tell you—no one will stay with us!" he finished hotly. "There's—something the matter—with us! I don't seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody—stay with us!"

Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin.

"So you see what I'm trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to—hire you with something that will just—naturally compel you to stay!"

If the grin round his mouth strengthened a trifle, so did the anxiety in his eyes.

"For Heaven's sake, Miss Malgregor," he pleaded. "Here's a man and a house and a child all going to—rack and ruin! If you're really and truly tired of nursing—and are looking for a new job,—what's the matter with tackling us?"

"It would be a job!" admitted the White Linen Nurse demurely.

"Why, it would be a deuce-of-a-job!" confided the Senior Surgeon with no demureness whatsoever.



CHAPTER VII

Very soberly, very thoughtfully then, across the tangled, snuggling head of his own and another woman's child, he urged the torments—and the comforts of his home upon this second woman.

"What is there about my offer—that you don't like?" he demanded earnestly. "Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I put it? 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two?' What is the matter with that? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage proposal? Or is it that it's just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere plain business proposition?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Yes what?" insisted the Senior Surgeon.

"Yes—sir," flushed the White Linen Nurse.

Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. "'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U—m—m." Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a—to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely romantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and business-like as ours, there's got to be some vestige of affection in it,—some vestige at least of the intelligence of affection,—else what gain is there for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor," explained the Senior Surgeon gravely, "my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am,—cynic—scientist,—any harsh thing you choose to call me,—marriage in some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a—mutually original experience. Certainly whether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness,—whether it eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an emotion that cannot be reduplicated while life lasts."

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon's face something gray that was not years shadowed suddenly and was gone again.

"Even so, Miss Malgregor," he argued, "even so—without any glittering romance whatsoever, no woman I believe is very grossly unhappy in any—affectional place—that she knows distinctly to be her own place. It's pretty much up to a man then I think,—though it tear him brain from heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what place it is that he is offering her in his love,—or his friendship,—or his mere desperate need. No woman can ever hope to step successfully into a second-hand home who does not know from her man's own lips the measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish thing compared to the mercy we owe the living. In my own case—"

Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse's lax shoulders quickened, and the sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French inflection. "Yes, sir," she said.

"In my own case," said the Senior Surgeon bluntly, "in my own case, Miss Malgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I—did not love my wife. And my wife did not love me." Only the muscular twitch in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. "The details of that marriage are unnecessary," he continued with equal bluntness. "It is enough perhaps to say that she was the daughter of an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides as it was by strong personal ambitions was one of those so-called 'marriages of convenience' which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship. For two years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste. For three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity. At the last, I am thankful to remember, that we had one year together again that was at least an—armed truce."

Darkly the gray shadow and the red flush chased each other once more across the man's haggard face.

"I had a theory," he said, "that possibly a child might bridge the chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself reluctantly to the fact. And when she—in giving birth to—my theory,—the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-analysis that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders." Like the stress of mid-summer the tears of sweat started suddenly on his forehead. "But I am a fair man, I hope,—even to myself, and the cooler, less-tortured judgment of the subsequent years has practically assured me that, for types as diametrically opposed as ours, such a thing as mutual happiness never could have existed."

Mechanically he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from the little girl's eyelids.

"And the child is the living physical image of her," he stammered. "The violent hair,—the ghost-white skin,—the facile mouth,—the arrogant eyes,—staring—staring—maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing. My own stubborn will,—my own hideous temper,—all my own ill-favored mannerisms—mocked back at me eternally in her mother's—unloved features." Mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon's mouth twisted up a little at one corner. "Maybe I could have borne it better if she'd been a boy," he acknowledged grimly. "But to see all your virile—masculine vices come back at you—so sissified—in skirts!"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

With an unmistakable gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon expanded his great chest.

"There! That's done!" he said tersely. "So much for the Past! Now for the Present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself! A man and a very little girl,—not guaranteed,—not even recommended,—offered merely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase of the day,—offered frankly in an open package,—accepted frankly,—if at all—'at your own risk.' Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us! Look at us closely, I ask, and—decide for yourself! I am forty-eight years old. I am inexcusably bad-tempered,—very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of great mercy. I am moody. I am selfish. I am most distinctly unsocial. But I am not, I believe, stingy,—nor ever intentionally unfair. My child is a cripple,—and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her. And she shows it. We have lived alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with all a man's needs,—mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all a child's needs,—mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be a great deal of work to do! And it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say 'Oh, but I didn't know you would expect me to do this! Oh, but I hadn't any idea you would want me to do that! And I certainly don't see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!'"

Across the Senior Surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly.

"Really, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I'm afraid there isn't much of anything that you won't be expected to do! And as to your 'Thursdays out'? Ha! If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering! And as to 'wages'? Yes! I want to talk everything quite frankly! In addition to my average yearly earnings,—which are by no means small,—I have a reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no luxury I think that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of the independent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should be very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also,—though the offer looks small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large to you later,—also, I will personally guarantee to you—at some time every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two months' holiday. So the offer stands,—my 'name and fame,'—if those mean anything to you,—financial independence,—an assured 'breathing spell' for at least two months out of twelve,—and at last but not least,—my eternal gratitude! 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'! There! Have I made the task perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you know. But immediately where necessity urges it,—gradually as confidence inspires it,—ultimately if affection justifies it,—every womanish thing that needs to be done in a man's and a child's neglected lives? Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Oh, and there's one thing more," confided the Senior Surgeon. "It's something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first thing of all!" Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. "As regards my actual morals you have naturally a right to know that I've led a pretty decent sort of life,—though I probably don't deserve any special credit for that. A man who knows enough to be a doctor isn't particularly apt to lead any other kind. Frankly,—as women rate vices I believe I have only one. What—what—I'm trying to tell you—now—is about that one." A little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied his heart of its last tragic secret. "Through all the male line of my family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' graves.' In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil. Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively, but out of the agony and humiliation of—several less successful methods." Hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite-like furrows again. "Naturally, under these existing conditions," he warned her almost threateningly, "I am not peculiarly susceptible to the mawkishly ignorant and sentimental protests of—people whose strongest passions are an appetite for—chocolate candy! For eleven months of the year," he hurried on a bit huskily, "for eleven months of the year,—eleven months,—each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed tea or coffee. In the twelfth month,—June always,—I go way, way up into Canada,—way, way off in the woods to a little log camp I own there,—with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years. And live like a—wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping, salmon-fighting,—whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance friends would call a—'spree.' To be quite frank, I suppose it is what—anybody would call a 'spree.' Then the first of July,—three or four days past the first of July perhaps,—I come out of the woods—quite tame again. A little emotionally nervous, perhaps,—a little temperishly irritable,—a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned jail-bird,—but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work again."

Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White Linen Nurse's imperturbable face. "It's an—established custom, you understand," he rewarned her. "I'm not advocating it, you understand,—I'm not defending it. I'm simply calling your attention to the fact that it is an established custom. If you decide to come to us, I—I couldn't, you know, at forty-eight—begin all over again to—to have some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me—what a low beast I am—till I go down the steps again—the following June."

"No, of course not," conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his. "Father's like that!" she confided amiably. "Once a year,—just Easter Sunday only,—he always buys him a brand new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to him,—I don't know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk,—oh mad, fighting drunk is what I mean, and goes out and tries to tear up the whole county." Worriedly two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows. "And always," she said, "he makes Mother and me go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It's pretty hard sometimes," she said, "to find anything dressy enough for the morning, that's serviceable enough for the afternoon."

"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared. "Well, it's all right then, is it? You'll take us?" he asked brightly.

"Oh, no!" said the White Linen Nurse. "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no indeed, sir!" Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the grass. "Thank you very much!" she persisted courteously. "It's been very interesting! I thank you very much for telling me, but—"

"But what?" snapped the Senior Surgeon.

"But it's too quick," said the White Linen Nurse. "No man could tell like that—just between one eye-wink and another what he wanted about anything,—let alone marrying a perfect stranger."

Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled. "I assure you, my dear young lady," he retorted, "that I am entirely and completely accustomed to deciding between 'one wink and another' just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people living to-day who wouldn't be living, if it had taken me even as long as a wink and three-quarters to make up my mind!"

"Yes, I know, sir," acknowledged the White Linen Nurse. "Yes, of course, sir," she acquiesced with most commendable humility. "But all the same, sir, I couldn't do it!" she persisted with inflexible positiveness. "Why, I haven't enough education," she confessed quite shamelessly.

"You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital," drawled the Senior Surgeon a bit grumpily. "And that's quite as much as most people have, I assure you! 'A High School education or its equivalent,'—that is the hospital requirement, I believe?" he questioned tartly.

"'A High School education or its—equivocation' is what we girls call it," confessed the White Linen Nurse demurely. "But even so, sir," she pleaded, "it isn't just my lack of education! It's my brains! I tell you, sir, I haven't got enough brains to do what you suggest!"

"I don't mean at all to belittle your brains," grinned the Senior Surgeon in spite of himself. "Oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor! But you see it isn't especially brains that I'm looking for! Really what I need most," he acknowledged frankly, "is an extra pair of hands to go with the—brains I already possess!"

"Yes, I know, sir," persisted the White Linen Nurse. "Yes, of course, sir," she conceded. "Yes, of course, sir, my hands work—awfully—well—with your face. But all the same," she kindled suddenly, "all the same, sir, I can't! I won't! I tell you sir, I won't! Why, I'm not in your world, sir! Why, I'm not in your class! Why—my folks aren't like your folks! Oh, we're just as good as you—of course—but we aren't as nice! Oh, we're not nice at all! Really and truly we're not!" Desperately through her mind she rummaged up and down for some one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argument for all time. "Why—my father—eats with his knife," she asserted triumphantly.

"Would he be apt to eat with mine?" asked the Senior Surgeon with extravagant gravity.

Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of her father's intrinsic honor. "Oh, no!" she denied with some vehemence. "Father's never cheeky like that! Father's simple sometimes,—plain, I mean. Or he might be a bit sharp. But, oh, I'm sure he'd never be—cheeky! Oh, no, sir! No!"

"Oh, very well then," grinned the Senior Surgeon. "We can consider everything all comfortably settled then I suppose?"

"No, we can't!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. A little awkwardly with cramped limbs she struggled partly upward from the grass and knelt there defying the Senior Surgeon from her temporarily superior height. "No, we can't!" she reiterated wildly. "I tell you I can't, sir! I won't! I won't! I've been engaged once and it's enough! I tell you, sir, I'm all engaged out!"

"What's become of the man you were engaged to?" quizzed the Senior Surgeon sharply.

"Why—he's married!" said the White Linen Nurse. "And they've got a kid!" she added tempestuously.

"Good! I'm glad of it!" smiled the Senior Surgeon quite amazingly. "Now he surely won't bother us any more."

"But I was engaged so long!" protested the White Linen Nurse. "Almost ever since I was born, I said. It's too long. You don't get over it!"

"He got over it," remarked the Senior Surgeon laconically.

"Y-e-s," admitted the White Linen Nurse. "But I tell you it doesn't seem decent. Not after being engaged—twenty years!" With a little helpless gesture of appeal she threw out her hands. "Oh, can't I make you understand, sir?"

"Why, of course, I understand," said the Senior Surgeon briskly. "You mean that you and John—"

"His name was 'Joe,'" corrected the White Linen Nurse.

With astonishing amiability the Senior Surgeon acknowledged the correction. "You mean," he said, "you mean that you and—Joe—have been cradled together so familiarly all your babyhood that on your wedding night you could most naturally have said 'Let me see—Joe,—it's two pillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double-fold of blanket at the foot?' You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe's headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called Joe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory,—until a year or so ago,—Life has never once been just You and Life, but always You and Life and Joe? You and Spring and Joe,—You and Summer and Joe,—You and Autumn and Joe,—You and Winter and Joe,—till every conscious nerve in your body has been so everlastingly Joed with Joe's Joeness that you don't believe there 's any experience left in life powerful enough to eradicate that original impression? Eh?"

"Yes, sir," flushed the White Linen Nurse.

"Good! I'm glad of it!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "It doesn't make you seem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offer marriage to. Good, I say! I'm glad of it!"

"Even so—I don't want to," said the White Linen Nurse. "Thank you very much, sir! But even so, I don't want to."

"Would you marry—Joe—now if he were suddenly free and wanted you?" asked the Senior Surgeon bluntly.

"Oh, my Lord, no!" said the White Linen Nurse.

"Other men are pretty sure to want you," admonished the Senior Surgeon. "Have you made up your mind—definitely that you'll never marry anybody?"

"N—o, not exactly," confessed the White Linen Nurse.

An odd flicker twitched across the Senior Surgeon's face like a sob in the brain.

"What's your first name, Miss Malgregor?" he asked a bit huskily.

"Rae," she told him with some surprise.

The Senior Surgeon's eyes narrowed suddenly again.

"Damn it all, Rae," he said, "I—want you!"

Precipitously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet. "If you don't mind, sir," she cried, "I'll run down to the brook and get myself a drink of water!"

Impishly like a child, muscularly like a man, the Senior Surgeon clutched out at the flapping corner of her coat.

"No you don't!" he laughed, "till you've given me my definite answer—yes or no!"

Breathlessly the White Linen Nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs. Her eyes were blurred with tears. "You've no business—to hurry me so!" she protested passionately. "It isn't fair!—It isn't kind!"

Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon's jolted arms the Little Girl woke from her feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk into her father's face.

"Where's—my kitty?" she asked hazily.

"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.

Harshly the little iron leg-braces clanked together.

In an instant the White Linen Nurse was on her knees in the grass. "You don't hold her right, sir!" she expostulated. Deftly with little soft, darting touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into her own tears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a buckle or the dragging weight on a little cramped hip.

Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness.

"All the birds were there, Father," she droned forth feebly from her sweltering mink-fur nest.

All the birds were there With yellow feathers instead of—hair, And bumble bees—and bumble bees— And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?

Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her Father's shoulder. "And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake—'buzzed' in the trees!" interpolated the Senior Surgeon.

Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffened suddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time swept away by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the Little Girl stared up agonizingly into her father's face. "Oh, I don't think—'buzzed' was the word!" she began convulsively. "Oh, I don't think—!"

Startlingly through the twilight the Senior Surgeon felt the White Linen Nurse's rose-red lips come smack against his ear.

"Darn you! Can't you say 'crocheted' in the trees?" sobbed the White Linen Nurse.

Grotesquely for an instant the Senior Surgeon's eyes and the White Linen Nurse's eyes glared at each other in frank antagonism.

Then suddenly the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing. "Oh, very well!" he surrendered. "'Crocheted in the trees'!"

Precipitously the White Linen Nurse sank back on her heels and began to clap her hands.

"Oh, now I will! Now I will!" she cried exultantly.

"Will what?" frowned the Senior Surgeon.

Abruptly the White Linen Nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to wring them nervously in her lap instead. "Why—will—will!" she confessed demurely.

"Oh!" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "Oh!" Then equally jerkily he began to pucker his eyebrows. "But for Heaven's sake—what's the 'crocheted in the trees' got to do with it?" he asked perplexedly.

"Nothing much," mused the White Linen Nurse very softly. With sudden alertness she turned her curly blonde head towards the road. "There's somebody coming!" she said. "I hear a team!"

Overcome by a bashfulness that tried to escape in jocosity, the Senior Surgeon gave an odd little choking chuckle.

"Well, I never thought I should marry a—trained nurse!" he acknowledged with somewhat hectic blitheness.

Impulsively the White Linen Nurse reached for her watch and lifted it close to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace crept suddenly over her.

"You won't, sir!" she said amiably.

"It's twenty minutes of nine, now. And the graduation was at eight!"



CHAPTER VIII

For any real adventure except dying, June is certainly a most auspicious month.

Indeed it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of June that the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardous adventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little crippled daughter.

The wedding was at noon in some kind of a gray granite church. And the Senior Surgeon was there, of course,—and the necessary witnesses. But the Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing—it proved later,—to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressed her, concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-colored stockings with her brightest little purple dress.

The Senior Surgeon's stockings, if you really care to know, were gray. And the Senior Surgeon's suit was gray. And he looked altogether very huge and distinguished,—and no more strikingly unhappy than any bridegroom looks in a gray granite church.

And the White Linen Nurse,—no longer now truly a White Linen Nurse but just an ordinary, every-day, silk-and-cloth lady of any color she chose, wore something rather coat-y and grand and bluish, and was distractingly pretty of course but most essentially unfamiliar,—and just a tiny bit awkward and bony-wristed looking,—as even an Admiral is apt to be on his first day out of uniform.

Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom went to a wonderful green and gold caf all built of marble and lined with music, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is that they had a very large lunch, but didn't eat any of it!

Then in a taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise colored stockings.

And the Senior Surgeon in a Canadian-bound train, just exactly like any other Canadian-bound train, started off alone,—as usual, on his annual June "spree."

Please don't think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who was responsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding day. No indeed! The Senior Surgeon didn't want to be married the first day of June! He said he didn't! He growled he didn't! He snarled he didn't! He swore he didn't! And when he finished saying and growling and snarling and swearing,—and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for a confirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectly amiably and said, "Yes, sir!"

Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp of relief and announced resonantly, "Well, it's all settled then? We'll be married some time in July,—after I get home from Canada?" And when the White Linen Nurse kept on smiling perfectly amiably and said, "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, thank you, sir! It wouldn't seem exactly legal to me to be married any other month but June!" Then the Senior Surgeon went absolutely dumb with rage that this mere chit of a girl,—and a trained nurse, too,—should dare to thwart his personal and professional convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to—accommodate you—sir,—and if June doesn't accommodate you—I'd rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism case'!" the Senior Surgeon would protest.

Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the three special arguments that should best protect him, he thought, from the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June.

"But you can't get ready so soon!" he suggested at last with real triumph. "You've no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be married! There are so many people she has to tell,—and everything!"

"There's never but two that she's got to tell—or bust!" conceded the White Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves the most—and the woman she hates the worst. I'll write my mother to-morrow. But I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday."

"The deuce you did!" snapped the Senior Surgeon.

Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his. "Yes, sir," she said, "and she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her."

"Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now," he hastened to contend. "The house now needs a lot of fixing over! It's all run down! It's all—everything! We never in the world could get it into shape by the first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough to make it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!"

A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the pages of her memorandum book. "I've always had money enough to 'go slow and make things perfectly right,'" she confided a bit wistfully. "Never in all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren't guaranteed, or a dress that wouldn't wash, or a hat that wasn't worth at least three re-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to,—so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here's this wall-paper now,"—tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book—"it's got peacocks on it—life size—in a queen's garden—and I wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade! Maybe we'd get tired of it! Maybe it would poison us! Slam it on one week—and slash it off the next! I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir! I thought maybe—while you were way off in Canada—"

Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his—fiance's.

"Now, my dear girl," he said. "That's just what I want to explain! That's just what I want to explain! Just what I want to explain! To—er—explain!" he continued a bit falteringly.

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one of his cuffs.

"All this talk of yours—about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my—Canadian trip!" he contended. "Why, it's all damned nonsense!"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of dust on his other cuff.

"Why my—my dear girl," he persisted. "It's absurd! It's outrageous! Why people would—would hoot at us! Why they'd think—!"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Why, my dear girl," sweated the Senior Surgeon. "Even though you and I understand perfectly well the purely formal, business-like conditions of our marriage, we must at least for sheer decency's sake keep up a certain semblance of marital conventionality—before the world! Why, if we were married at noon the first day of June—as you suggest,—and I should go right off alone as usual—on my Canadian trip—and you should come back alone to the house—why, people would think—would think that I didn't care anything about you!"

"But you don't," said the White Linen Nurse serenely.

"Why, they'd think," choked the Senior Surgeon. "They'd think you were trying your—darndest—to get rid of me!"