The White Linen Nurse

 By Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

 Author of "Molly Make-Believe, " "The Sick-a-Bed Lady, " etc. , etc. 

 1913

TO MAURICE HOWE RICHARDSON

WHO LOVED ROMANCE ALMOST AS MUCH AS HE LOVED SURGERY, THIS LITTLE STORYIS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF TWO PERSONS' UNFADING MEMORIES

THE WHITE LINEN NURSE

CHAPTER I

The White Linen Nurse was so tired that her noble expression ached. 

Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs achedand the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothingof her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Likea strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by twotugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smileseemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensationcertainly was very unpleasant. 

Looking back thus on the three spine-curving, chest-cramping, foot-twinging, ether-scented years of her hospital training, it dawnedon the White Linen Nurse very suddenly that nothing of her ever hadfelt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression!

Impulsively she sprang for the prim white mirror that capped her primwhite bureau and stood staring up into her own entrancing, bright-colored Novia Scotian reflection with tense and unwontedinterest. 

Except for the unmistakable smirk which fatigue had clawed into herplastic young mouth-lines there was certainly nothing special the matterwith what she saw. 

"Perfectly good face!" she attested judicially with no more than commoncourtesy to her progenitors. "Perfectly good and tidy looking face! Ifonly--if only--" her breath caught a trifle. "If only--it didn't look sodisgustingly noble and--hygienic--and dollish!"

All along the back of her neck little sharp prickly pains began suddenlyto sting and burn. 

"Silly--simpering--pink and white puppet!" she scolded squintingly, "I'll teach you how to look like a real girl!"

Very threateningly she raised herself to her tiptoes and thrust herglowing, corporeal face right up into the moulten, elusive, quick-silver face in the mirror. Pink for pink, blue for blue, gold forgold, dollish smirk for dollish smirk, the mirror mocked her seethinginner fretfulness. 

"Why--darn you!" she gasped. "Why--darn you! Why, you looked more humanthan that when you left the Annapolis Valley three years ago! There wereat least--tears in your face then, and--cinders, and--your mother's bestadvice, and the worry about the mortgage, and--and--the blush of JoeHazeltine's kiss!"

Furtively with the tip of her index-finger she started to search herimperturbable pink cheek for the spot where Joe Hazeltine's kiss hadformerly flamed. 

"My hands are all right, anyway!" she acknowledged with infinite relief. Triumphantly she raised both strong, stub-fingered, exaggeratedlyexecutive hands to the level of her childish blue eyes and stoodsurveying the mirrored effect with ineffable satisfaction. "Why my handsare--dandy!" she gloated. "Why they're perfectly--dandy! Why they'rewonderful! Why they're--. " Then suddenly and fearfully she gave ashrill little scream. "But they don't go with my silly doll-face!" shecried. "Why, they don't! They don't! They go with the Senior Surgeon'sscowling Heidelberg eyes! They go with the Senior Surgeon's grim grayjaw! They go with the--! Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?"

Dizzily, with her stubby finger-tips prodded deep into every jadedfacial muscle that she could compass, she staggered towards the air, anddropping down into the first friendly chair that bumped against herknees, sat staring blankly out across the monotonous city roofs thatflanked her open window, --trying very, very hard for the first time inher life, to consider the General-Phenomenon-of-Being-a-Trained-Nurse. 

All around and about her, inexorable as anesthesia, horrid as the hushof tomb or public library, lurked the painfully unmistakable sense ofinstitutional restraint. Mournfully to her ear from some remote kitchenyregion of pots and pans a browsing spoon tinkled forth from time to timewith soft-muffled resonance. Up and down every clammy white corridorinnumerable young feet, born to prance and stamp, were creepingstealthily to and fro in rubber-heeled whispers. Along the somberfire-escape just below her windowsill, like a covey of snubbed doves, six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together withexcessive caution concerning the imminent graduation exercises that wereto take place at eight o'clock that very evening. Beyond her dreariestken of muffled voices, beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick, ona far faint hillside, a far faint streak of April green went roamingjocundly skyward. Altogether sluggishly, as though her nostrils wereplugged with warm velvet, the smell of spring and ether and scorchedmutton-chops filtered in and out, in and out, in and out, of herabnormally jaded senses. 

Taken all in all it was not a propitious afternoon for any girl as tiredand as pretty as the White Linen Nurse to be considering the generalphenomenon of anything--except April!

In the real country, they tell me, where the Young Spring runs wild andbare as a nymph through every dull brown wood and hay-gray meadow, theblasé farmer-lad will not even lift his eyes from the plow to watch thepinkness of her passing. But here in the prudish brick-minded city wherethe Young Spring at her friskiest is nothing more audacious than asweltering, winter-swathed madcap, who has impishly essayed some finemorning to tiptoe down street in her soft, sloozily, green, silk-stockinged feet, the whole hob-nailed population reels back aghastand agrin before the most innocent flash of the rogue's green-veiledtoes. And then, suddenly snatching off its own cumbersome winterfoot-habits, goes chasing madly after her, in its own prankish, vari-colored socks. 

Now the White Linen Nurse's socks were black, and cotton at that, acombination incontestably sedate. And the White Linen Nurse had wadedbarefoot through too many posied country pastures to experience anyordinary city thrill over the sight of a single blade of grass pushingscarily through a crack in the pavement, or puny, concrete-strangledmaple tree flushing wanly to the smoky sky. Indeed for three hustling, square-toed, rubber-heeled city years the White Linen Nurse had nevereven stopped to notice whether the season was flavored with frost orthunder. But now, unexplainably, just at the end of it all, sittinginnocently there at her own prim little bed-room window, staringinnocently out across indomitable roof-tops, --with the crackle of gloryand diplomas already ringing in her ears, --she heard, instead, for thefirst time in her life, the gaily dare-devil voice of the spring, ahoydenish challenge flung back at her, leaf-green, from the crest of awinter-scarred hill. 

"Hello, White Linen Nurse!" screamed the saucy city spring. "Hello, White Linen Nurse! Take off your homely starched collar! Or your sillycandy-box cap! Or any other thing that feels maddeningly artificial! Andcome out! And be very wild!"

Like a puppy dog cocking its head towards some strange, unfamiliarsound, the White Linen Nurse cocked her head towards the lure of thegreen-crested hill. Still wrestling conscientiously with theGeneral-Phenomenon-of-Being-a-Trained-Nurse she found her collarsuddenly very tight, the tiny cap inexpressibly heavy and vexatious. Timidly she removed the collar--and found that the removal did not resther in the slightest. Equally timidly she removed the cap--and foundthat even that removal did not rest her in the slightest. Then very, very slowly, but very, very permeatingly and completely, it dawned onthe White Linen Nurse that never while eyes were blue, and hair gold, and lips red, would she ever find rest again until she had removed hernoble expression!

With a jerk that started the pulses in her temples throbbing like twotoothaches she straightened up in her chair. All along the back of herneck the little blonde curls began to crisp very ticklingly at theirroots. 

Still staring worriedly out over the old city's slate-gray head to thatinciting prance of green across the farthest horizon she felt her wholebeing kindle to an indescribable passion of revolt against all HushedPlaces. Seething with fatigue, smoldering with ennui, she experiencedsuddenly a wild, almost incontrollable impulse to sing, to shout, toscream from the housetops, to mock somebody, to defy everybody, to breaklaws, dishes, heads, --anything in fact that would break with a crash!And then at last, over the hills and far away, with all the outragedworld at her heels, to run! And run! And run! And run! And run! Andlaugh! Till her feet raveled out! And her lungs burst! And there wasnothing more left of her at all, --ever--ever--any more!

Discordantly into this rapturously pagan vision of pranks and posiesbroke one of her room-mates all awhiff with ether, awhirr with starch. 

Instantly with the first creak of the door-handle the White Linen Nursewas on her feet, breathless, resentful, grotesquely defiant. 

"Get out of here, Zillah Forsyth!" she cried furiously. "Get out ofhere--quick!--and leave me alone! I want to think!"

Perfectly serenely the newcomer advanced into the room. With her pale, ivory-tinted cheeks, her great limpid brown eyes, her soft dark hairparted madonna-like across her beautiful brow, her whole face was likesome exquisite, composite picture of all the saints of history. Hervoice also was amazingly tranquil. 

"Oh, Fudge!" she drawled. "What's eating you, Rae Malgregor? I won'teither get out! It's my room just as much as it is yours! And Helene'sjust as much as it is ours! And besides, " she added more briskly, "it'sfour o'clock now, and with graduation at eight and the dance afterwards, if we don't get our stuff packed up now, when in thunder shall we get itdone?" Quite irrelevantly she began to laugh. Her laugh was perceptiblyshriller than her speaking voice. "Say, Rae!" she confided. "Thatminister I nursed through pneumonia last winter wants me to pose as'Sanctity' for a stained-glass window in his new church! Isn't he thesoftie?"

"Shall--you--do--it?" quizzed Rae Malgregor a trifle tensely. 

"Shall I do it?" mocked the newcomer. "Well, you just watch me! Fourmornings a week in June--at full week's wages? Fresh Easter lilies everyday? White silk angel-robes? All the high-souls and high-paintskowtowing around me? Why it would be more fun than a box of monkeys!Sure I'll do it!"

Expeditiously as she spoke the newcomer reached up for the framed mottoover her own ample mirror and yanking it down with one single tug beganto busy herself adroitly with a snarl in the picture-cord. Like a witheof willow yearning over a brook her slender figure curved to the task. Very scintillatingly the afternoon light seemed to brighten suddenlyacross her lap. _You'll Be a Long Time Dead!_ glinted the motto throughits sun-dazzled glass. 

Still panting with excitement, still bristling with resentment, RaeMalgregor stood surveying the intrusion and the intruder. A dozenimpertinent speeches were rioting in her mind. Twice her mouth openedand shut before she finally achieved the particular opprobrium thatcompletely satisfied her. 

"Bah! You look like a--Trained Nurse!" she blurted forth at last withhysterical triumph. 

"So do you!" said the newcomer amiably. 

With a little gasp of dismay Rae Malgregor sprang suddenly forward. Hereyes were flooded with tears. 

"Why, that's just exactly what's the matter with me!" she cried. "Myface is all worn out trying to look like a Trained Nurse! Oh, Zillah, how do you know you were meant to be a Trained Nurse? How does anybodyknow? Oh, Zillah! Save me! Save me!"

Languorously Zillah Forsyth looked up from her work, and laughed. Herlaugh was like the accidental tinkle of sleighbells in mid-summer, vaguely disquieting, a shiver of frost across the face of a lily. 

"Save you from what, you great big overgrown, tow-headed doll-baby?" shequestioned blandly. "For Heaven's sake, the only thing you need is to goback to whatever toy-shop you came from and get a new head. What inCreation's the matter with you lately, anyway? Oh, of course, you've hadrotten luck this past month, but what of it? That's the trouble with youcountry girls. You haven't got any stamina. "

With slow, shuffling-footed astonishment Rae Malgregor stepped out intothe center of the room. "Country girls, " she repeated blankly. "Why, you're a country girl yourself!"

"I _am_ not!" snapped Zillah Forsyth. "I'll have you understand thatthere are nine thousand people in the town I come from--and not a rubeamong them. Why I tended soda fountain in the swellest drug-store therea whole year before I even thought of taking up nursing. And I wasn't asgreen--when I was six months old--as you are now!"

Slowly with a soft-snuggling sigh of contentment she raised her slimwhite fingers to coax her dusky hair a little looser, a little fartherdown, a little more madonna-like across her sweet, mild forehead, thensnatching out abruptly at a convenient shirt-waist began withextraordinary skill to apply its dangly lace sleeves as a protectivebandage for the delicate glass-faced motto still in her lap, placed thecompleted parcel with inordinate scientific precision in the exactcorner of her packing-box, and then went on very diligently, veryzealously, to strip the men's photographs from the mirror on her bureau. There were twenty-seven photographs in all, and for each one she hadalready cut and prepared a small square of perfectly fresh, perfectlyimmaculate white tissue wrapping-paper. No one so transcendentlyfastidious, so exquisitely neat, in all her personal habits had evertrained in that particular hospital before. 

Very soberly the doll-faced girl stood watching the men's pleasantpaper countenances smooth away one by one into their chaste whiteveilings, until at last quite without warning she poked an accusing, inquisitive finger directly across Zillah Forsyth's shoulder. 

"Zillah!" she demanded peremptorily. "All the year I've wanted to know!All the year every other girl in our class has wanted to know! Where didyou ever get that picture of the Senior Surgeon? He never gave it to youin the world! He didn't! He didn't! He's not that kind!"

Deeply into Zillah Forsyth's pale, ascetic cheek dawned a most amazingdimple. "Sort of jarred you girls some, didn't it, " she queried, "to seeme strutting round with a photo of the Senior Surgeon?" The little cleftin her chin showed suddenly with almost startling distinctness. "Well, seeing it's you, " she grinned, "and the year's all over, and there'snobody left that I can worry about it any more, I don't mind telling youin the least that I--bought it out of a photographer's show-case!There! Are you satisfied now?"

With easy nonchalance she picked up the picture in question andscrutinized it shrewdly. 

"Lord! What a face!" she attested. "Nothing but granite! Hack him with aknife and he wouldn't bleed but just chip off into pebbles!" Withexaggerated contempt she shrugged her supple shoulders. "Bah! How I hatea man like that! There's no fun in him!" A little abruptly she turnedand thrust the photograph into Rae Malgregor's hand. "You can have it ifyou want to, " she said. "I'll trade it to you for that lace corset-coverof yours!"

Like water dripping through a sieve the photograph slid through RaeMalgregor's frightened fingers. With nervous apology she stooped andpicked it up again and held it gingerly by one remotest corner. Her eyeswere quite wide with horror. 

"Oh, of course I'd like the--picture, well enough, " she stammered. "Butit wouldn't seem--exactly respectful to--to trade it for acorset-cover. "

"Oh, very well, " drawled Zillah Forsyth. "Tear it up then!"

Expeditiously with frank, non-sentimental fingers Rae Malgregor tore thetough cardboard across, and again across, and once again across, andthrew the conglomerate fragments into the waste-basket. And herexpression all the time was no more, no less, than the expression of aperson who would infinitely rather execute his own pet dog or cat thanrisk the possible bungling of an outsider. Then like a small childtrotting with infinite relief to its own doll-house she trotted over toher bureau, extracted the lace corset-cover, and came back with it inher hand to lean across Zillah Forsyth's shoulder again and watch themen's faces go slipping off into oblivion. Once again, abruptly withoutwarning, she halted the process with a breathless exclamation. 

"Oh, of course this waist is the only one I've got with ribbons in it, "she asserted irrelevantly. "But I'm perfectly willing to trade it forthat picture!" she pointed out with unmistakably explicit finger-tip. 

Chucklingly Zillah Forsyth withdrew the special photograph from itshalf-completed wrappings. 

"Oh! Him?" she said. "Oh, that's a chap I met on the train last summer. He's a brakeman or something. He's a--"

Perfectly unreluctantly Rae Malgregor dropped the fluff of lace andribbons into Zillah's lap and reached out with cheerful voraciousness toannex the young man's picture to her somewhat bleak possessions. "Oh, Idon't care a rap who he is, " she interrupted briskly. "But he's sort ofcute-looking, and I've got an empty frame at home just that odd size, and Mother's crazy for a new picture to stick up over the kitchenmantelpiece. She gets so tired of seeing nothing but the faces of peopleshe knows all about. "

Sharply Zillah Forsyth turned and stared up into the younger girl'sface, and found no guile to whet her stare against. 

"Well of all the ridiculous--unmitigated greenhorns!" she began. "Well--is that all you wanted him for? Why, I supposed you wanted towrite to him! Why, I supposed--"

For the first time an expression not altogether dollish darkened acrossRae Malgregor's garishly juvenile blondeness. 

"Maybe I'm not quite as green as you think I am!" she flared upstormily. With this sharp flaring-up every single individual pulse inher body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity againlike the soft, plushy pound-pound-pound of a whole stocking-footedregiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hystericalundoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give mecredit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you--I tell youI've been engaged!" she blurted forth with a bitter sort of triumph. 

With a palpable flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back acrossher shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she asked quite bluntly. 

As though the whole monogamous groundwork of civilization was threatenedby the question, Rae Malgregor's hands went clutching at her breast. "Why, once!" she gasped. "Why, once!"

Convulsively Zillah Forsyth began to rock herself to and fro. "OhLordy!" she chuckled. "Oh Lordy, Lordy! Why I've been engaged four timesjust this past year!" In a sudden passion of fastidiousness she bentdown over the particular photograph in her hand and snatching at ahandkerchief began to rub diligently at a small smouch of dust in onecorner of the cardboard. Something in the effort of rubbing seemed tojerk her small round chin into almost angular prominence. "And beforeI'm through, " she added, at least two notes below her usual alto tones, "And before I'm through--I'm going to get engaged to--every professionthat there is on the surface of the globe!" Quite helplessly the thinpaper skin of the photograph peeled off in company with the smouch ofdust. "And when I marry, " she ejaculated fiercely, "and when Imarry--I'm going to marry a man who will take me to every place thatthere is--on the surface of the globe! And after that--!"

"After what?" interrogated a brand new voice from the doorway. 

CHAPTER II

It was the other room-mate this time. The only real aristocrat inthe whole graduating class, high-browed, high-cheekboned, --eyes likesome far-sighted young prophet, --mouth even yet faintly arrogantwith the ineradicable consciousness of caste, --a plain, eager, stripped-for-a-long-journey type of face, --this was Helene Churchill. There was certainly no innocuous bloom of country hills and pastures inthis girl's face, nor any seething small-town passion poundingindiscriminately at all the doors of experience. The men and women whohad bred Helene Churchill had been the breeders also of brick andgranite cities since the world was new. 

Like one infinitely more accustomed to treading on Persian carpets thanon painted floors she came forward into the room. 

"Hello, children!" she said casually, and began at once without furtherparleying to take down the motto that graced her own bureau-top. 

It was the era when almost everybody in the world had a motto over hisbureau. Helene Churchill's motto was: _Inasmuch As Ye Have Done It UntoOne Of The Least Of These Ye Have Done It Unto Me_. On a scroll ofalmost priceless parchment the text was illuminated with inimitableFlorentine skill and color. A little carelessly, after the manner ofpeople quite accustomed to priceless things, she proceeded now to rollthe parchment into its smallest possible circumference, hummingexclusively to herself all the while an intricate little air from anItalian opera. 

So the three faces foiled each other, sober city girl, pert town girl, bucolic country girl, --a hundred fundamental differences rampant betweenthem, yet each fervid, adolescent young mouth tamed to the samemonotonous, drolly exaggerated expression of complacency thatcharacterizes the faces of all people who, in a distinctive uniform, fora reasonably satisfactory living wage, make an actual profession ofrighteous deeds. 

Indeed among all the thirty or more varieties of noble expression whichan indomitable Superintendent had finally succeeded in inculcating intoher graduating class, no other physiognomies had responded moreplastically perhaps than these three to the merciless imprint of thegreat _hospital machine_ which, in pursuance of its one repetitivedesign, _discipline_, had coaxed Zillah Forsyth into the semblance of alady, snubbed Helene Churchill into the substance of plain womanhood, and, still uncertain just what to do with Rae Malgregor's rollickingrural immaturity, had frozen her face temporarily into the smuglydimpled likeness of a fancy French doll rigged out as a nurse for somegilt-edged hospital fair. 

With characteristic desire to keep up in every way with her more mature, better educated classmates, to do everything, in fact, so fast, so well, that no one should possibly guess that she hadn't yet figured out justwhy she was doing it at all, Rae Malgregor now with quickly readjustedcap and collar began to hurl herself into the task of her own packing. From her open bureau drawer, with a sudden impish impulse towardsworldly wisdom, she extracted first of all the photograph of the youngbrakeman. 

"See, Helene! My new beau!" she giggled experimentally. 

In mild-eyed surprise Helene Churchill glanced up from her work. "_Your_beau?" she corrected. "Why, that's Zillah's picture. "

"Well, it's mine now!" snapped Rae Malgregor with unexpected edginess. "It's mine now all right. Zillah said I could have him! Zillah said Icould--write to him--if I wanted to!" she finished a bit breathlessly. 

Wider and wider Helene Churchill's eyes dilated. "Write to a man--whomyou don't know?" she gasped. "Why, Rae! Why, it isn't even--verynice--to have a picture of a man you don't know!"

Mockingly to the edge of her strong white teeth Rae Malgregor's tonguecrept out in pink derision. "Bah!" she taunted. "What's 'nice'? That'sthe whole matter with you, Helene Churchill! You never stop to considerwhether anything's fun or not; all you care is whether it's 'nice'!"Excitedly she turned to meet the cheap little wink from Zillah'ssainted eyes. "Bah! What's 'nice'?" she persisted a little lamely. Thensuddenly all the pertness within her crumbled into nothingness. "That's--the--whole trouble with you, Zillah Forsyth!" she stammered. "You never give a hang whether anything's nice or not; all you care iswhether it's fun!" Quite helplessly she began to wring her hands. "Oh, how do I know which one of you girls to follow?" she demanded wildly. "How do I know anything? How does anybody know anything?"

Like a smoldering fuse the rambling query crept back into the innerrecesses of her brain and fired once more the one great question thatlay dormant there. Impetuously she ran forward and stared into HeleneChurchill's face. "How do you know you were meant to be a Trained Nurse, Helene Churchill?" she began all over again. "How does anybody know shewas really meant to be one? How can anybody, I mean, be perfectly sure?"Like a drowning man clutching out at the proverbial straw, she clutchedat the parchment in Helene Churchill's hand. "I mean--where did you getyour motto, Helene Churchill?" she persisted with increasingirritability. "If--you don't tell me--I'll tear the whole thing topieces!"

With a startled frown Helene Churchill jerked back out of reach. "What'sthe matter with you, Rae?" she quizzed sharply, and then turning roundquite casually to her book-case began to draw from the shelves one by oneher beloved Marcus Aurelius, Wordsworth, Robert Browning. "Oh, I did sowant to go to China, " she confided irrelevantly. "But my family havejust written me that they won't stand for it. So I suppose I'll have togo into tenement work here in the city instead. " With a visible effortshe jerked her mind back again to the feverish question in RaeMalgregor's eyes. "Oh, you want to know where I got my motto?" sheasked. A flash of intuition brightened suddenly across herabsent-mindedness. "Oh!" she smiled, "you mean you want to know--justwhat the incident was that first made me decide to--devote my lifeto--to humanity?"

"Yes!" snapped Rae Malgregor. 

A little shyly Helene Churchill picked up her copy of Marcus Aureliusand cuddled her cheek against its tender Morocco cover. "Really?" shequestioned with palpable hesitation. "Really you want to know? Why, why--it's rather a--sacred little story to me. I wouldn't exactly wantto have anybody--laugh about it. "

"I'll laugh if I want to!" attested Zillah Forsyth forcibly from theother side of the room. 

Like a pugnacious boy, Rae Malgregor's fluent fingers doubled up intotwo firm fists. 

"I'll punch her if she even looks as though she wanted to!" she signaledsurreptitiously to Helene. 

Shrewdly for an instant the city girl's narrowing eyes challenged andappraised the country girl's desperate sincerity. Then quite abruptlyshe began her little story. 

"Why, it was on an Easter Sunday--Oh, ages and ages ago, " she faltered. "Why, I couldn't have been more than nine years old at the time. " Atrifle self-consciously she turned her face away from Zillah Forsyth'ssupercilious smile. "And I was coming home from a Sunday school festivalin my best white muslin dress with a big pot of purple pansies in myhand, " she hastened somewhat nervously to explain. "And just at the edgeof the gutter there was a dreadful drunken man lying in the mud with agreat crowd of cruel people teasing and tormenting him. And, because--because I couldn't think of anything else to do about it, I--I walked right up to the poor old creature, --scared as I couldbe--and--and I presented him with my pot of purple pansies. Andeverybody of course began to laugh, to scream, I mean, and shout withamusement. And I, of course, began to cry. And the old drunken manstraightened up very oddly for an instant, with his battered hat in onehand and the pot of pansies in the other, --and he raised the pot ofpansies very high, as though it had been a glass of rarest wine--andbowed to me as--reverently as though he had been toasting me at myfather's table at some very grand dinner. And 'Inasmuch!' he said. Justthat, --'Inasmuch!' So that's how I happened to go into nursing!" shefinished as abruptly as she had begun. Like some wonderfulphosphorescent manifestation her whole shining soul seemed to flareforth suddenly through her plain face. 

With honest perplexity Zillah Forsyth looked up from her work. 

"So that's--how you happened to go into nursing?" she quizzedimpatiently. Her long, straight nose was all puckered tight withinterrogation. Her dove-like eyes were fairly dilated with slow-dawningastonishment. "You--don't--mean?" she gasped. "You don't mean that--justfor that--?" Incredulously she jumped to her feet and stood staringblankly into the city girl's strangely illuminated features. 

"Well, if I were a swell--like you!" she scoffed, "it would take a heapsight more than a drunken man munching pansies and rum and Bible-textsto--to jolt me out of my limousines and steam yachts and Adirondackbungalows!"

Quite against all intention Helene Churchill laughed. She did not oftenlaugh. Just for an instant her eyes and Zillah Forsyth's clashedtogether in the irremediable antagonism of caste, --the Plebeian'sscornful impatience with the Aristocrat, equaled only by theAristocrat's condescending patience with the Plebeian. 

It was no more than right that the Aristocrat should recover herself-possession first. "Never mind about your understanding. Zillahdear, " she said softly. "Your hair is the most beautiful thing I eversaw in my life!"

Along Zillah Forsyth's ivory cheek an incongruous little flush of redbegan to show. With much more nonchalance than was really necessary shepointed towards her half-packed trunk. 

"It wasn't--Sunday school--I was coming home from--when I got my motto!"she remarked dryly, with a wink at no one in particular. "And, so far asI know, " she proceeded with increasing sarcasm, "the man who inspired mynoble life was not in any way--particularly addicted to the use ofalcoholic beverages!" As though her collar was suddenly too tight sherammed her finger down between her stiff white neck-band and her softwhite throat. "He was a--New York doctor!" she hastened somewhat airilyto explain. "Gee! But he was a swell! And he was spending his summerholiday up in the same Maine town where I was tending soda fountain. And he used to drop into the drug-store, nights, after cigars andthings. And he used to tell me stories about the drugs and things, sitting up there on the counter swinging his legs and pointing out thisand that, --quinine, ipecac, opium, hasheesh, --all the silly patentmedicines, every sloppy soothing syrup! Lordy! He knew 'em as thoughthey were people! Where they come from! Where they're going to! Yarnsabout the tropics that would kink the hair along the nape of your neck!Jokes about your own town's soup-kettle pharmacology that would make youyell for joy! Gee! But the things that man had seen and known! Gee! Butthe things that man could make you see and know! And he had anautomobile, " she confided proudly. "It was one of those billion dollarFrench cars. And I lived just round the corner from the drug-store. Butwe used to ride home by way of--New Hampshire!"

Almost imperceptibly her breath began to quicken. "Gee! Those nights!"she muttered. "Rain or shine, moon or thunder, --tearing down thosecountry roads at forty miles an hour, singing, hollering, whispering!It was him that taught me to do my hair like this--instead of all thecheap rats and pompadours every other kid in town was wearing, " sheasserted, quite irrelevantly; then stopped with a quick, furtive glanceof suspicion towards both her listeners and mouthed her way delicatelyback to the beginning of her sentence again. "It was _he_ that taught meto do my hair like this, " she repeated with the faintest possiblesuggestion of hauteur. 

For one reason or another along the exquisitely chaste curve of hercheek a narrow streak of red began to show again. 

"And he went away very sudden at the last, " she finished hurriedly. "Itseems he was married all the time. " Blandly she turned her wonderfulface to the caressing light. "And--I hope he goes to Hell!" she addedperfectly simply. 

With a little gasp of astonishment, shock, suspicion, distaste, HeleneChurchill reached out an immediate conscientious hand to her. 

"Oh, Zillah!" she began. "Oh, poor Zillah dear! I'm so--sorry! I'm so--"

Absolutely serenely, through a mask of insolence and ice, ZillahForsyth ignored the proffered hand. 

"I don't know what particular call you've got to be sorry for me, HeleneChurchill, " she drawled languidly. "I've got my character, same asyou've got yours. And just about nine times as many good looks. And whenit comes to nursing--" Like an alto song pierced suddenly by one shrilltreble note, the girl's immobile face sharpened transiently with asingle jagged flash of emotion. "And when it comes to nursing? Ha!Helene Churchill! You can lead your class all you want to with yoursilk-lined manners and your fuddy-duddy book-talk! But when genteelpeople like you are moping round all ready to fold your patients' handson their breasts and murmur 'Thy will be done, '--why, that's the timethat little 'yours truly' is just beginning to roll up her sleeves andget to work!"

With real passion her slender fingers went clutching again at her harshlinen collar. "It isn't you, Helene Churchill, " she taunted, "that'sever been to the Superintendent on your bended knees and begged for therabies cases--and the small-pox! Gee! You like nursing because youthink it's pious to like it! But I like it--_because I like it!"_ Frombrow to chin as though fairly stricken with sincerity her whole blandface furrowed startlingly with crude expressiveness. "The smell ofether!" she stammered. "It's like wine to me! The clang of the ambulancegong? I'd rather hear it than fire-engines! I'd crawl on my hands andknees a hundred miles to watch a major operation! I wish there was awar! I'd give my life to see a cholera epidemic!"

Abruptly as it came the passion faded from her face, leaving everyfeature tranquil again, demure, exaggeratedly innocent. With saccharinesweetness she turned to Rae Malgregor. 

"Now, Little One, " she mocked, "tell us the story of your lovely life. Having heard me coyly confess that I went into nursing because I hadsuch a crush on this world, --and Helene here brazenly affirm that shewent into nursing because she had such a crush on the world tocome, --it's up to you now to confide to us just how you happened to takeup so noble an endeavor! Had you seen some of the young house doctors'beautiful, smiling faces depicted in the hospital catalogue? Or was itfor the sake of the Senior Surgeon's grim, gray mug that you jilted yourpoor plow-boy lover way up in the Annapolis Valley?"

"Why, Zillah!" gasped the country girl. "Why, I think you 're perfectlyawful! Why, Zillah Forsyth! Don't you ever say a thing like that again!You can joke all you want to about the flirty young Internes. They'renothing but fellows. But it isn't--it isn't respectful--for you to talklike that about the Senior Surgeon. He's too--too terrifying!" shefinished in an utter panic of consternation. 

"Oh, now I know it was the Senior Surgeon that made you jilt yourcountry beau!" taunted Zillah Forsyth with soft alto sarcasm. 

"I didn't, either, jilt Joe Hazeltine!" stormed Rae Malgregorexplosively. Backed up against her bureau, eyes flaming, breast heaving, little candy-box cap all tossed askew over her left ear, she stooddefying her tormentor. "I didn't, either, jilt Joe Hazeltine!" shereasserted passionately. "It was Joe Hazeltine that jilted me! And we'd been going together since we were kids! And now he's married thedominie's daughter and they've got a kid of their own most as old as heand I were when we first began courting each other. And it's all becauseI insisted on being a trained nurse, " she finished shrilly. 

With an expression of real shock Helene Churchill peered up from herlowly seat on the floor. 

"You mean?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "You mean that he didn't wantyou to be a trained nurse? You mean that he wasn't big enough, --wasn'tfine enough to appreciate the nobility of the profession?"

"Nobility nothing!" snapped Rae Malgregor. "It was me scrubbing strangemen with alcohol that he couldn't stand for! And I don't know as Iexactly blame him, " she added huskily. "It certainly is a good deal of aliberty when you stop to think about it. "

Quite incongruously her big, childish, blue eyes narrowed suddenly intotwo dark, calculating slits. "It's comic, " she mused, "how there isn't aman in the world who would stand letting his wife or daughter or sisterhave a male nurse. But look at the jobs we girls get sent out on! It'svery confusing!"

With sincere appeal she turned to Zillah Forsyth. "And yet--and yet, "she stammered. "And yet--when everything scary that's in you has oncebeen scared out of you, --why, there's nothing left in you to be scared_with_ any more, is there?"

"What? What?" pleaded Helene Churchill. "Say it again! What?"

"That's what Joe and I quarreled about my first vacation home!"persisted Rae Malgregor. "It was a traveling salesman's thigh. It wasbroken bad. Somebody had to take care of it. So I did! Joe thought itwasn't modest to be so willing. " With a perplexed sort of defiance sheraised her square little chin. "But you see I was willing!" she said. "I was perfectly willing. Just one single solitary year of hospitaltraining had made me perfectly willing. And you can't _un_-willing awilling--even to please your beau, no matter how hard you try!" With adroll admixture of shyness and disdain she tossed her curly blonde heada trifle higher. "Shucks!" she attested. "What's a traveling salesman'sthigh?"

"Shucks yourself!" scoffed Zillah Forsyth. "What's a silly beau or twoup in Nova Scotia to a girl with looks like you? You could have marriedthat typhoid case a dozen times last winter if you'd crooked your littlefinger! Why, the fellow was crazy about you. And he was richer thanCroesus. What queered it?" she demanded bluntly. "Did his mother hateyou?"

Like one fairly cramped with astonishment Rae Malgregor doubled up verysuddenly at the waist-line, and thrusting her neck oddly forward afterthe manner of a startled crane, stood peering sharply round the cornerof the rocking-chair at Zillah Forsyth. 

"Did his mother hate me?" she gasped. "Did--his--mother--hate--me? Well, what do you think? With me who never even saw plumbing till I came downhere, setting out to explain to her with twenty tiled bathrooms how tobe hygienic though rich? Did his mother hate me? Well, what do youthink? With her who bore him, her who _bore_ him, mind you, keptwaiting down stairs in the hospital ante-room--half an hour everyday--on the raw edge of a rattan chair--waiting--worrying--all old andgray and scared--while little young, perky, pink and white _me_ isupstairs--brushing her own son's hair and washing her own son'sface--and altogether getting her own son ready to see his own mother!And then me obliged to turn her out again in ten minutes, flip as youplease, for fear she'd stayed too long, --while I stay on the rest of thenight? _Did his mother hate me!"_

Stealthily as an assassin she crept around the corner of therocking-chair and grabbed Zillah Forsyth by her astonished linenshoulder. 

"Did his mother hate me?" she persisted mockingly. "Did his mother hateme? Well rather! Is there any woman from here to Kamchatka who doesn'thate us? Is there any woman from here to Kamchatka who doesn't look upona trained nurse as her natural born enemy? I don't blame 'em!" she addedchokingly. "Look at the impudent jobs we get sent out on! Quarantinedupstairs for weeks at a time with their inflammable, diphtheriticbridegrooms--while they sit down stairs--brooding over their weddingteaspoons! Hiked off indefinitely to Atlantic City with their goutybachelor uncles! Hearing their own innocent little sisters'blood-curdling deathbed deliriums! Snatching their own new-born babiesaway from their breasts and showing them, virgin-handed, how to nursethem better! The impudence of it, I say! The disgusting, confoundedimpudence! Doing things perfectly--flippantly--_right_--for twenty-fivedollars a week--and washing--that all the achin' love in the world don'tknow how to do right--just for love!"

Furiously she began to jerk her victim's shoulder. "I tell you it'sawful, Zillah Forsyth!" she insisted. "I tell you I just won't standit!"

With muscles like steel wire Zillah Forsyth scrambled to her feet, andpushed Rae Malgregor back against the bureau. 

"For Heaven's sake, Rae, shut up!" she said. "What in Creation's thematter with you to-day? I never saw you act so before!" With realconcern she stared into the girl's turbid eyes. "If you feel like thatabout it, what in thunder did you go into nursing for?" she demanded notunkindly. 

Very slowly Helene Churchill rose from her lowly seat by her preciousbook-case and came round and looked at Rae Malgregor rather oddly. "Yes, " faltered Helene Churchill. "What did you go into nursing for?"The faintest possible taint of asperity was in her voice. 

Quite dumbly for an instant Rae Malgregor's natural timidity stoodbattling the almost fanatic professional fervor in Helene Churchill'sfrankly open face, the raw, scientific passion, of very differentcaliber, but no less intensity, hidden so craftily behind ZillahForsyth's plastic features. Then suddenly her own hands went clutchingback at the bureau for support, and all the flaming, raging red wentebbing out of her cheeks, leaving her lips with hardly blood enough leftto work them. 

"I went into nursing, " she mumbled, "and it's God's own truth, --I wentinto nursing because--because I thought the uniforms were so cute. "

Furiously, the instant the words were gone from her mouth, she turnedand snarled at Zillah's hooting laughter. 

"Well, I had to do something!" she attested. The defense was like a flatblade slapping the air. 

Desperately she turned to Helene Churchill's goading, faintlysupercilious smile, and her voice edged suddenly like a twisted sword. "Well, the uniforms _are_ cute!" she parried. "They are! They are! I betyou there's more than one girl standing high in the graduating classto-day who never would have stuck out her first year's bossin' and slopsand worry and death--if she'd had to stick it out in the unimportantlooking clothes she came from home in! Even you, Helene Churchill, withall your pious talk, --the day they put your coachman's son in as newInterne and you got called down from the office for failing to standwhen Mr. Young Coachman came into the room, you bawled all night, --youdid, --and swore you'd chuck your whole job and go home the next day--ifit wasn't that you'd just had a life-size photo taken in full nursingcostume to send to your brother's chum at Yale! So there!"

With a gasp of ineffable satisfaction she turned from Helene Churchill. 

"Sure the uniforms are cute!" she slashed back at ZillahForsyth. "That's the whole trouble with 'em. They're soawfully--masqueradishly--cute! Sure, I could have got engaged to theTyphoid Boy. It would have been as easy as robbing a babe! But lots ofgirls, I notice, get engaged in their uniforms, feeding a patientperfectly scientifically out of his own silver spoon, who don't seemto stay engaged so especially long in their own street clothes, bunglingjust plain naturally with their own knives and forks! Even you, ZillahForsyth, " she hacked, "even you who trot round like the Lord's Anointedin your pure white togs, you're just as Dutchy looking as anybody else, come to put you in a red hat and a tan coat and a blue skirt!"

Mechanically she raised her hands to her head as though with some sillythought of keeping the horrid pain in her temples from slipping to herthroat, her breast, her feet. 

"Sure the uniforms are cute, " she persisted a bit thickly. "Sure theTyphoid Boy was crazy about me! He called me his 'Holy Chorus Girl, ' Iheard him--raving in his sleep. Lord save us! What are we to any man butjust that?" she questioned hotly with renewed venom. "Parson, actor, young sinner, old saint--I ask you frankly, girls, on your word ofhonor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your handswho didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him?Mawking about your 'sweet eyes' while you're wrecking your optic nervestrying to decipher the dose on a poison bottle! Mooning over yourwonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they--never had! Trying tokiss your finger tips when you're struggling to brush their teeth!Teasin' you to smoke cigarettes with 'em--when they know it would costyou your job!"

Impishly, without any warning, she crooked her knee and pointed at onehomely square-toed shoe in a mincy dancing step. Hoydenishly she threwout her arms and tried to gather Helene and Zillah both into theircompass. 

"Oh, you Holy Chorus Girls!" she chuckled with maniacal delight. "Everybody, all together, now! Kick your little kicks! Smile your littlesmiles! Tinkle your little thermometers! Steady, --there!One--two--three--One--two--three!"

Laughingly Zillah Forsyth slipped from the grasp. "Don't you dare 'holy'me!" she threatened. 

In real irritation Helene released herself. "I'm no chorus girl, " shesaid coldly. 

With a little shrill scream of pain Rae Malgregor's hands went flyingback to her temples. Like a person giving orders in a great panic sheturned authoritatively to her two room-mates, her fingers all the whileboring frenziedly into her temples. 

"Now, girls, " she warned, "stand well back! If my head bursts, you know, it's going to burst all to slivers and splinters--like a boiler!"

"Rae, you're crazy!" hooted Zillah. 

"Just plain vulgar--looney, " faltered Helene. 

Both girls reached out simultaneously to push her aside. 

Somewhere in the dusty, indifferent street a bird's note rang out inone wild, delirious ecstasy of untrammeled springtime. To all intentsand purposes the sound might have been the one final signal that RaeMalgregor's jangled nerves were waiting for. 

"Oh, I _am_ crazy, am I?" she cried with a new, fierce joy. "Oh, I _am_crazy, am I? Well, I'll go ask the Superintendent and see if I am! Oh, surely they wouldn't try and make me graduate if I really was crazy!"

Madly she bolted for her bureau, and snatching her own motto down, crumpled its face securely against her skirt and started for the door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling inpaint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brownwrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed facedown to the wall for three tantalizing years. 

"No you don't!" cried Zillah now, as she saw the mystery threatening someanly to escape her. 

"No you don't!" cried Helene. "You've seen our mottoes--and now we'regoing to see yours!"

Almost crazed with new terror Rae Malgregor went dodging to theright, --to the left, --to the right again, --cleared the rocking-chair, --ascuffle with padded hands, --climbed the trunk, --a race with paddedfeet, --reached the door-handle at last, yanked the door open, and withlungs and temper fairly bursting with momentum, shot down thehall, --down some stairs, --down some more hall, --down some more stairs, to the Superintendent's office where, with her precious motto stillclutched securely in one hand, she broke upon that dignitary's startled, near-sighted vision like a young whirl-wind of linen and starch andflapping brown paper. Breathlessly, without prelude or preamble, shehurled her grievance into the older woman's grievance-dulled ears. 

"Give me back my own face!" she demanded peremptorily. "Give me back myown face, I say! And my own hands! I tell you I want my own hands!Helene and Zillah say I'm insane! And I want to go home!"

CHAPTER III

Like a short-necked animal elongated suddenly to the cervicalproportions of a giraffe, the Superintendent of Nurses reared upfrom her stoop-shouldered desk-work and stared forth in speechlessastonishment across the top of her spectacles. 

Exuberantly impertinent, ecstatically self-conscious, Rae Malgregorrepeated her demand. To her parched mouth the very taste of her ownbabbling impudence refreshed her like the shock and prickle of crackedice. 

"I tell you I want my own face again! And my own hands!" she reiteratedglibly. "I mean the face with the mortgage in it, and the cinders--andthe other human expressions!" she explained. "And the nice grubbycountry hands that go with that sort of a face!"

Very accusingly she raised her finger and shook it at theSuperintendent's perfectly livid countenance. 

"Oh, of course I know I wasn't very much to look at. But at least Imatched! What my hands knew, I mean, my face knew! Pies or plowing orMay-baskets, what my hands knew my face knew! That's the way hands andfaces ought to work together! But you? you with all your rules and yourbossing and your everlasting 'S--sh! S--sh!' you've snubbed all theknow-anything out of my face--and made my hands nothing but twodisconnected machines--for somebody else to run! And I hate you! You'rea Monster! You're a ----, everybody hates you!"

Mutely then she shut her eyes, bowed her head, and waited for theSuperintendent to smite her dead. The smite she felt quite sure would bea noisy one. First of all, she reasoned it would fracture her skull. Naturally then of course it would splinter her spine. Later in allprobability it would telescope her knee-joints. And never indeed nowthat she came to think of it had the arches of her feet felt lesscapable of resisting so terrible an impact. Quite unconsciously shegroped out a little with one hand to steady herself against the edge ofthe desk. 

But the blow when it came was nothing but a cool finger tapping herpulse. 

"There! There!" crooned the Superintendent's voice with a most amazingtolerance. 

"But I won't 'there--there'!" snapped Rae Malgregor. Her eyes were wideopen again now, and extravagantly dilated. 

The cool fingers on her pulse seemed to tighten a little. "S--sh!S--sh!" admonished the Superintendent's mumbling lips. 

"But I won't 'S--sh--S--sh'!" stormed Rae Malgregor. Never before inher three years' hospital training had she seen her arch-enemy, theSuperintendent, so utterly disarmed of irascible temper and arrogantdignity, and the sight perplexed and maddened her at one and the samemoment. "But I won't 'S--sh--S--sh'!" Desperately she jerked her curlyblonde head in the direction of the clock on the wall. "Here it's fouro'clock now!" she cried. "And in less than four hours you're going totry and make me graduate--and go out into the world--God knowswhere--and charge innocent people twenty-five dollars a week andwashing, likelier than not, mind you, for these hands, " she gestured, "that don't co-ordinate at all with this face, " she grimaced, "but withthe face of one of the House Doctors--or the Senior Surgeon--or evenyou--who may be way off in Kamchatka--when I need him most!" shefinished with a confused jumble of accusation and despair. 

Still with unexplainable amiability the Superintendent whirled back intoplace in her pivot-chair and with her left hand which had all this timebeen rummaging busily in a lower desk drawer proffered Rae Malgregor asmall fold of paper. 

"Here, my dear, " she said. "Here's a sedative for you. Take it at once. It will quiet you perfectly. We all know you've had very hard luck thispast month, but you mustn't worry so about the future. " The slightestpossible tinge of purely professional manner crept back into the olderwoman's voice. "Certainly, Miss Malgregor, with your judgment--"

"With my judgment?" cried Rae Malgregor. The phrase was like a red ragto her. "With my judgment? Great Heavens! That's the whole trouble! Ihaven't got any judgment! I've never been allowed to have any judgment!All I've ever been allowed to have is the judgment of some flirty youngmedical student--or the House Doctor!--or the Senior Surgeon!--or you!"

Her eyes were fairly piteous with terror. 

"Don't you see that my face doesn't know anything?" she faltered, "except just to smile and smile and smile and say 'Yes, sir--No, sir--Yes, sir'?" From curly blonde head to square-toed, commonsenseshoes her little body began to quiver suddenly like the advent of achill. "Oh, what am I going to do, " she begged, "when I'm way offalone--somewhere--in the mountains--or a tenement--or a palace--andsomething happens--and there isn't any judgment round to tell me whatI ought to do?"

Abruptly in the doorway as though summoned by some purely casual flickerof the Superintendent's thin fingers another nurse appeared. 

"Yes, I rang, " said the Superintendent. "Go and ask the Senior Surgeonif he can come to me here a moment, immediately. "

"The Senior Surgeon?" gasped Rae Malgregor. "The Senior Surgeon?" Withher hands clutching at her throat she reeled back against the wall forsupport. Like a shore bereft in one second of its tide, like a treestripped in one second of its leafage, she stood there, utterly strickenof temper or passion or any animating human emotion whatsoever. 

"Oh, now I'm going to be expelled! Oh, now I know I'm going tobe--expelled!" she moaned listlessly. 

Very vaguely into the farthest radiation of her vision she sensed theapproach of a man. Gray-haired, gray-bearded, gray-suited, graylydogmatic as a block of granite, the Senior Surgeon loomed up at last inthe doorway. 

"I'm in a hurry, " he growled. "What's the matter?"

Precipitously Rae Malgregor collapsed into the breach. 

"Oh, there's--nothing at all the matter, sir, " she stammered. "It'sonly--it's only that I've just decided that I don't want to be a trainednurse. "

With a gesture of ill-concealed impatience the Superintendent shruggedthe absurd speech aside. 

"Dr. Faber, " she said, "won't you just please assure Miss Malgregor oncemore that the little Italian boy's death last week was in no conceivableway her fault, --that nobody blames her in the slightest, or holds her inany possible way responsible. "

"Why, what nonsense!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "What--!"

"And the Portuguese woman the week before that, " interrupted RaeMalgregor dully. 

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Senior Surgeon. "It's nothing butcoincidence! Pure coincidence! It might have happened to anybody!"

"And she hasn't slept for almost a fortnight. " the Superintendentconfided, "nor touched a drop of food or drink, as far as I can makeout, except just black coffee. I've been expecting this break-down forsome days. "

"And-the-young-drug-store-clerk-the-week-before-that, " Rae Malgregorresumed with sing-song monotony. 

Brusquely the Senior Surgeon stepped forward and taking the girl by hershoulders, jerked her sharply round to the light, and, with firm, authoritative fingers, rolled one of her eyelids deftly back from itsinordinately dilated pupil. Equally brusquely he turned away again. 

"Nothing but moonshine!" he muttered. "Nothing in the world but too muchcoffee dope taken on an empty stomach, --'empty brain, ' I'd better havesaid! When will you girls ever learn any sense?" With searchlightshrewdness his eyes flashed back for an instant over the haggard graylines that slashed along the corners of her quivering, childish mouth. Abit temperishly he began to put on his gloves. "Next time you set out tohave a 'brain-storm, ' Miss Malgregor, " he suggested satirically, "try tohave it about something more sensible than imagining that anybody istrying to hold you personally responsible for the existence of death inthe world. Bah!" he ejaculated fiercely. "If you are going to fuss likethis over cases hopelessly moribund from the start, what in thunder areyou going to do some fine day when out of a perfectly clear and cleansky Security itself turns septic and you lose the President of theUnited States--or a mother of nine children--with a hang-nail?"

"But I wasn't fussing, sir!" protested Rae Malgregor with a timid sortof dignity. "Why, it never had occurred to me for a moment that anybodyblamed me for--anything!" Just from sheer astonishment her hands took anew clutch into the torn flapping corner of the motto that she stillclung desperately to even at this moment. 

"For Heaven's sake stop crackling that brown paper!" stormed the SeniorSurgeon. 

"But I wasn't crackling the brown paper, sir! It's crackling itself, "persisted Rae Malgregor very softly. The great blue eyes that lifted tohis were brimming full of misery. "Oh, can't I make you understand, sir?" she stammered. Appealingly she turned to the Superintendent. "Oh, can't I make anybody understand? All I was trying to say, --all I wastrying to explain, was--that I _don't want to be a trained nurse--afterall_!"

"Why not?" demanded the Senior Surgeon with a rather noisy click of hisglove fasteners. 

"Because--my--face--is--tired, " said the girl quite simply. 

The explosive wrath on the Senior Surgeon's countenance seemed to bedirected suddenly at the Superintendent. 

"Is this an afternoon tea?" he asked tartly. "With six major operationsthis morning and a probable meningitis diagnosis ahead of me thisafternoon I think I might be spared the babblings of an hystericalnurse!" Casually over his shoulder he nodded at the girl. "You're afool!" he said, and started for the door. 

Just on the threshold he turned abruptly and looked back. His foreheadwas furrowed like a corduroy road and the one rampant question in hismind at the moment seemed to be mired hopelessly between his bushyeyebrows. 

"Lord!" he exclaimed a bit flounderingly. "Are _you_ the nurse thathelped me last week on that fractured skull?"

"Yes, sir, " said Rae Malgregor. 

Jerkily the Senior Surgeon retraced his footsteps into the office andstood facing her as though with some really terrible accusation. 

"And the freak abdominal?" he quizzed sharply. "Was it _you_ whothreaded that needle for me so blamed slowly--and calmly--and surely, while all the rest of us were jumping up and down and cursing you--forno brighter reason than that we couldn't have threaded it ourselves ifwe'd had all eternity before us and--all creation bleeding to death?"

"Y-e-s, sir, " said Rae Malgregor. 

Quite bluntly the Senior Surgeon reached out and lifted one of her handsto his scowling professional scrutiny. 

"Gad!" he attested. "What a hand! You're a wonder! Under properdirection you're a wonder! It was like myself working with twentyfingers and no thumbs! I never saw anything like it!"

Almost boyishly the embarrassed flush mounted to his cheeks as he jerkedaway again. "Excuse me for not recognizing you, " he apologized gruffly. "But you girls all look so much alike!"

As though the eloquence of Heaven itself had suddenly descended upon aperson hitherto hopelessly tongue-tied, Rae Malgregor lifted an utterlytransfigured face to the Senior Surgeon's grimly astonished gaze. 

"Yes! Yes, sir!" she cried joyously. "That's just exactly what thetrouble is! That's just exactly what I was trying to express, sir! Myface is all worn out trying to 'look alike'! My cheeks are almost sprungwith artificial smiles! My eyes are fairly bulging with unshed tears! Mynose aches like a toothache trying never to turn up at anything! I'msmothered with the discipline of it! I'm choked with the affectation! Itell you--I just can't breathe through a trained nurse's face any more!I tell you, sir, I'm sick to death of being nothing but a type. I wantto look like _myself_! I want to see what Life could do to a silly facelike mine--if it ever got a chance! When other women are crying, I wantthe fun of crying! When other women look scared to death, I want the funof looking scared to death!" Hysterically again with shrewish emphasisshe began to repeat: "I won't be a nurse! I tell you, I won't! I_won't_!"

"Pray what brought you so suddenly to this remarkable decision?"scoffed the Senior Surgeon. 

"A letter from my father, sir, " she confided more quietly. "A letterabout some dogs. "

"Dogs?" hooted the Senior Surgeon. 

"Yes, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse. A trifle speculatively for aninstant she glanced at the Superintendent's face and then back again tothe Senior Surgeon's. "Yes, sir, " she repeated with increasingconfidence. "Up in Nova Scotia my father raises hunting-dogs. Oh, nospecial fancy kind, sir, " she hastened in all honesty to explain. "Justdogs, you know, --just mixed dogs, --pointers with curly tails, --andshaggy-coated hounds, --and brindled spaniels, and all that sort ofthing, --just mongrels, you know, but very clever; and people, sir, comeall the way from Boston to buy dogs of him, and once a man came way fromLondon to learn the secret of his training. "

"Well, what is the secret of his training?" quizzed the Senior Surgeonwith the sudden eager interest of a sportsman. "I should think it wouldbe pretty hard, " he acknowledged, "in a mixed gang like that to decidejust which particular dog was suited to what particular game!"

"Yes, that's just it, sir, " beamed the White Linen Nurse. "A dog, ofcourse, will chase anything that runs, --that's just dog, --but when a dogreally begins to _care_ for what he's chasing he--wags! That's hunting!Father doesn't calculate, he says, on training a dog on anything hedoesn't wag on!"

"Yes, but what's that got to do with you?" asked the Senior Surgeon abit impatiently. 

With ill-concealed dismay the White Linen Nurse stood staring blankly atthe Senior Surgeon's gross stupidity. 

"Why, don't you see?" she faltered. "I've been chasing this nursing jobthree whole years now--and there's no wag to it!"

"Oh Hell!" said the Senior Surgeon. If he hadn't said "Oh Hell!" hewould have grinned. And it hadn't been a grinning day, and he certainlydidn't intend to begin grinning at any such late hour as that in theafternoon. With his dignity once reassured he relaxed then a trifle. "For Heaven's sake, what _do_ you want to be?" he asked not unkindly. 

With an abrupt effort at self-control Rae Malgregor jerked her head intoat least the outer semblance of a person lost in almost fathomlessthought. 

"Why I'm sure I don't know, sir, " she acknowledged worriedly. "But itwould be a great pity, I suppose, to waste all the grand training that'sgone into my hands. " With sudden conviction her limp shoulders stiffeneda trifle. "My oldest sister, " she stammered, "bosses the laundry in oneof the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school inMoncton. But I'm so strong, you know, and I like to move things roundso, --and everything, --maybe--I could get a position somewhere as generalhousework girl. "

With a roar of amusement as astonishing to himself as to his listeners, the Senior Surgeon's chin jerked suddenly upward. 

"You're crazy as a loon!" he confided cordially. "Great Scott! If youcan work up a condition like this on coffee, --what would you do on, " hehesitated grimly, "malted milk?" As unheralded as his amusement, grossirritability overtook him again. "Will--you--stop--rattling that brownpaper?" he thundered at her. 

Innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored thetemper. 

"But I'm not rattling it, sir!" she protested. "I'm simply trying tohide what's on the other side of it. "

"What is on the other side of it?" demanded the Senior Surgeon bluntly. 

With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around. 

From behind her desk the austere Superintendent twisted herneck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics. "_Don't--Ever--Be_--_bumptious_!" she read forth jerkily with aquestioning, incredulous sort of emphasis. 

"Don't ever be bumptious?" squinted the Senior Surgeon perplexedlythrough his glasses. 

"Yes, " said Rae Malgregor very timidly. "It's my--motto. "

"Your motto?" sniffed the Superintendent. 

"Your motto?" chuckled the Senior Surgeon. 

"Yes, my motto, " repeated Rae Malgregor with the slightest perceptibletinge of resentment. "And it's a perfectly good motto, too! Only, ofcourse, it hasn't got any style to it. That's why I didn't want thegirls to see it, " she confided a bit drearily. Then palpably beforetheir eyes they saw her spirit leap into ineffable pride. "My Fathergave it to me, " she announced briskly. "And my Father said that, whenI came home in June, if I could honestly say that I'd never once beenbumptious--all my three years here, --he'd give me a--heifer! And--"

"Well I guess you've lost your heifer!" said the Senior Surgeon bluntly. 

"Lost my heifer?" gasped the girl. Big-eyed and incredulous she stoodfor an instant staring back and forth from the Superintendent's face tothe Senior Surgeon's. "You mean?" she stammered, "you mean--thatI've--been--bumptious--just now? You mean--that after all these yearsof--meachin' meekness--I've lost--?"

Plainly even to the Senior Surgeon and the Superintendent the bones inher knees weakened suddenly like knots of tissue paper. No power onearth could have made her break discipline by taking a chair while theSenior Surgeon stood, so she sank limply down to the floor instead, withtwo great solemn tears welling slowly through the fingers with which shetried vainly to cover her face. 

"And the heifer was brown, with one white ear; it was awful cunning, "she confided mumblingly. "And it ate from my hand--all warm and sticky, like--loving sandpaper. " There was no protest in her voice, nor anywhine of complaint, but merely the abject submission to Fate of one whofrom earliest infancy had seen other crops blighted by other frosts. Then tremulously with the air of one who, just as a matter of spiritualtidiness, would purge her soul of all sad secrets, she lifted herentrancing, tear-flushed face from her strong, sturdy, utterlyunemotional fingers and stared with amazing blueness, amazing blandnessinto the Senior Surgeon's scowling scrutiny. 

"And I'd named her--for you!" she said. "I'd named her--Patience--foryou!"

Instantly then she scrambled to her knees to try and assuage by somemiraculous apology the horrible shock which she read in the SeniorSurgeon's face. 

"Oh, of course, sir, I know it isn't scientific!" she pleadeddesperately. "Oh, of course, sir, I know it isn't scientific at all! Butup where I live, you know, instead of praying for anybody, we--we name ayoung animal--for the virtue that that person--seems to need the most. And if you tend the young animal carefully--and train it right--!Why--it's just a superstition, of course, but--Oh, sir!" she flounderedhopelessly, "the virtue you needed most in your business was what Imeant! Oh, really, sir, I never thought of criticizing your character!"

Gruffly the Senior Surgeon laughed. Embarrassment was in the laugh, andanger, and a fierce, fiery sort of resentment against both theembarrassment and the anger, --but no possible trace of amusement. Impatiently he glanced up at the fast speeding clock. 

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "I'm an hour late now!" Scowling like apirate he clicked the cover of his watch open and shut for an uncertaininstant. Then suddenly he laughed again, and there was nothingwhatsoever in his laugh this time except just amusement. 

"See here, Miss--Bossy Tamer, " he said. "If the Superintendent iswilling, go get your hat and coat, and I'll take you out on thatmeningitis case with me. It's a thirty mile run if it's a block, and Iguess if you sit on the front seat it will blow the cobwebs out of yourbrain--if anything will, " he finished not unkindly. 

Like a white hen sensing the approach of some utterly unseen danger theSuperintendent seemed to bristle suddenly in every direction. 

"It's a bit--irregular, " she protested in her most even tone. 

"Bah! So are some of the most useful of the French verbs!" snapped theSenior Surgeon. In the midst of authority his voice could be inestimablysoft and reassuring, but sometimes on the brink of asserting saidauthority he had a tone that was distinctly unpleasant. 

"Oh, very well, " conceded the Superintendent with some waspishness. 

Hazily for an instant Rae Malgregor stood staring into theSuperintendent's uncordial face. "I'd--I'd apologize, " she faltered, "but I--don't even know what I said. It just blew up!"

Perfectly coldly and perfectly civilly the Superintendent received theoverture. "It was quite evident, Miss Malgregor, that you were notaltogether responsible at the moment, " she conceded in common justice. 

Heavily then, like a person walking in her sleep the girl trailed out ofthe room to get her coat and hat. 

Slamming one desk-drawer after another the Superintendent drowned thesluggish sound of her retreating footsteps. 

"There goes my best nurse!" she said grimly. "My very best nurse! Oh no, not the most brilliant one, I didn't mean that, but the most reliable!The most nearly perfect human machine that it has ever been my privilegeto see turned out, --the one girl that week in, week out, month aftermonth, and year after year, has always done what she's told, --when shewas told, --and the exact way she was told, --without questioninganything, without protesting anything, without supplementing anythingwith some disastrous original conviction of her own--_and look at hernow_!" Tragically the Superintendent rubbed her hand across her worriedbrow. "Coffee, you said it was?" she asked skeptically. "Are there anyspecial antidotes for coffee?"

With a queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff Senior Surgeon jerkedhis glance back from the open window where with the gleam of a slimtorn-boyish ankle the frisky young Spring went scurrying through thetree-tops. 

"What's that you asked?" he quizzed sharply. "Any antidotes for coffee?Yes. Dozens of them. But none for Spring. "

"Spring?" sniffed the Superintendent. A little shiveringly she reachedout and gathered a white knitted shawl around her shoulders. "Spring? Idon't see what Spring's got to do with Rae Malgregor or any other youngoutlaw in my graduating class. If graduation came in November it wouldbe just the same! They're a set of ingrates, every one of them!"Vehemently she turned aside to her card-index of names and slapped thecards through one by one without finding one single soothing exception. "Yes, sir, a set of ingrates!" she repeated accusingly. "Spend your lifetrying to teach them what to do and how to do it! Cram ideas into thosethat haven't got any, and yank ideas out of those who have got too many!Refine them, toughen them, scold them, coax them, everlastingly drilland discipline them! And then, just as you get them to a place wherethey move like clock-work, and you actually believe you can trust them, then graduation day comes round, and they think they're all safe, --andevery single individual member of the class breaks out and runs a-muckwith the one dare-devil deed she's been itching to do every day the pastthree years! Why this very morning I caught the President of the SeniorClass with a breakfast tray in her hands--stealing the cherry out of herpatient's grape fruit. And three of the girls reported for duty as boldas brass with their hair frizzed tight as a nigger doll's. And the girlwho's going into a convent next week was trying on the laundryman'sderby hat as I came up from lunch. And now, now--" the Superintendent'svoice went suddenly a little hoarse, "and now--here's MissMalgregor--intriguing--to get an automobile ride with--_you!_"

"Eh?" cried the Senior Surgeon with a jump. "What? Is this an InsaneAsylum? Is it a Nervine?" Madly he started for the door. "Order a ton ofbromides!" he called back over his shoulder. "Order a car-load of them!Saturate the whole place with them! Drown the whole damned place!"

Half way down the lower hall, all his nerves on edge, all his unwontedboyish impulsiveness quenched noxiously like a candle flame, he met andpassed Rae Malgregor without a sign of recognition. 

"God! How I hate women!" he kept mumbling to himself as he struggledclumsily all alone into the torn sleeve lining of his thousand dollarmink coat. 

CHAPTER IV

Like a train-traveler coming out of a long, smoky, smothery tunnelInto the clean-tasting light, the White Linen Nurse came out of theprudish-smelling hospital into the riotous mud-and-posie promise of theyoung April afternoon. 

The God of Hysteria had certainly not deserted her! In all the fulleffervescent reaction of her brain-storm, --fairly bubbling withdimples, fairly foaming with curls, --light-footed, light-hearted, mostecstatically light-headed, she tripped down into the sunshine as thoughthe great, harsh, granite steps that marked her descent were nothingmore nor less than a gigantic, old, horny-fingered hand passing herblithely out to some deliciously unknown Lilliputian adventure. 

As she pranced across the soggy April sidewalk to what she supposed wasthe Senior Surgeon's perfectly empty automobile she became conscioussuddenly that the rear seat of the car was already occupied. 

Out from an unseasonable snuggle of sable furs and flaming red hair asmall, peevish face peered forth at her with frank curiosity. 

"Why, hello!" beamed the White Linen Nurse. "Who are you?"

With unmistakable hostility the haughty little face retreated into itsfurs and its red hair. "Hush!" commanded a shrill childish voice. "Hush, I say! I'm a cripple--and very bad-tempered. Don't speak to me!"

"Oh, my Glory!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Oh my Glory, Glory, Glory!" Without any warning whatsoever she felt suddenly likeNothing-At-All, rigged out in an exceedingly shabby old ulster and anexcessively homely black slouch hat. In a desperate attempt at tangibletom-boyish nonchalance she tossed her head and thrust her hands downdeep into her big ulster pockets. That the bleak hat reflected no decentfeatherish consciousness of being tossed, that the big threadbarepockets had no bottoms to them, merely completed her startled sense ofhaving been in some way blotted right out of existence. 

Behind her back the Senior Surgeon's huge fur-coated approach dawnedblissfully like the thud of a rescue party. 

But if the Senior Surgeon's blunt, wholesome invitation to ride had beenperfectly sweet when he prescribed it for her in the Superintendent'soffice, the invitation had certainly soured most amazingly in thesucceeding ten minutes. Abruptly now, without any greeting, he reachedout and opened the rear door of the car, and nodded curtly for her toenter there. 

Instantly across the face of the little crippled girl already ensconcedin the tonneau a single flash of light went zig-zagging crookedly frombrow to chin, --and was gone again. "Hello, Fat Father!" piped the shrilllittle voice. "Hello, --Fat Father!" Yet so subtly was the phrasemouthed, to save your soul you could not have proved just where thegreeting ended and the taunt began. 

There was nothing subtle however about the way in which the SeniorSurgeon's hand shot out and slammed the tonneau door bang-bang again onits original passenger. His face was crimson with anger. Brusquely hepointed to the front seat. 

"You may sit in there, with me, Miss Malgregor!" he thundered. 

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

Meek as an oiled machine she scuttled to her appointed place. OnceMore in smothered giggle and unprotesting acquiescence she sensed theresumption of eternal discipline. Already in just this trice of timeshe felt her rampant young mouth resettle tamely into lines of smug, determinate serenity. Already across her idle lap she felt her claspedfingers begin to frost and tingle again like a cheerfully non-concernedbunch of live wires waiting the one authoritative signal to connectsomebody, --anybody, --with this world or the next. Already the facile tipof her tongue seemed fairly loaded and cocked like a revolver with allthe approximate "Yes, sirs, " "No, sirs, " that she thought she shouldprobably need. 

But the only immediate remarks that the Senior Surgeon addressed to anyone were addressed distinctly to the crank of his automobile. 

"Damn having a chauffeur who gets drunk the one day of the year whenyou need him most!" he muttered under his breath, as with the sameexquisitely sensitive fingers that could have dissected like a caressthe nervous system of a humming bird, or re-set unbruisingly the brokenwing of a butterfly, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds ofinfuriate brute-strength against the calm, chronic, mechanicalstubbornness of that auto crank. "Damn!" he swore on the upward pull. "Damn!" he gasped on the downward push. "Damn!" he cursed and sputteredand spluttered. Purple with effort, bulging-eyed with strain, reekingwith sweat, his frenzied outburst would have terrorized the entirehospital staff. 

With an odd little twinge of homesickness, the White Linen Nurse slidcautiously out to the edge of her seat so that she might watch thestruggle better. For thus, with dripping foreheads and knottedneck-muscles and breaking backs and rankly tempestuous language, didthe untutored men-folk of her own beloved home-land hurl their greatstrength against bulls and boulders and refractory forest trees. Verystartlingly as she watched, a brand new thought went zig-zagging throughher consciousness. Was it possible, --was it even so much as remotelypossible--that the great Senior Surgeon, --the great, wonderful, altogether formidable, altogether unapproachable Senior Surgeon, --wasjust a--was just a--? Stripped ruthlessly of all his socialsuperiority, --of all his professional halo, --of all his scientificachievement, the Senior Surgeon stood suddenly forth before her--a mereman--just like other men! _Just exactly_ like other men? Like the sickdrug-clerk? Like the new-born millionaire baby? Like the doddering oldDutch gaffer? The very delicacy of such a thought drove the bloodpanic-stricken from her face. It was the indelicacy of the thought thatbrought the blood surging back again to brow, to cheeks, to lips, evento the tips of her ears. 

Glancing up casually from the roar and rumble of his abruptly repentantengine the Senior Surgeon swore once more under his breath to think thatany female sitting perfectly idle and non-concerned in a seven thousanddollar car should have the nerve to flaunt such a furiously strenuouscolor. 

Bristling with resentment and mink furs he strode around the fender andstumbled with increasing irritation across the White Linen Nurse's kneesto his seat. Just for an instant his famous fingers seemed to flash withapparent inconsequence towards one bit of mechanism and another. Thenlike a huge, portentous pill floated on smoothest syrup the car sliddown the yawning street into the congested city. 

Altogether monotonously in terms of pain and dirt and drug and diseasethe city wafted itself in and out of the White Linen Nurse'swell-grooved consciousness. From every filthy street corner sodden ageor starved babyhood reached out its fluttering pulse to her. Then, suddenly sweet as a draught through a fever-tainted room, the squalidcity freshened into jocund, luxuriant suburbs with rollicking tenniscourts, and flaming yellow forsythia blossoms, and green velvet lawnsprematurely posied with pale exotic hyacinths and great scarletsplotches of lusty tulips. 

Beyond this hectic horticultural outburst the leisurely Spring faded outagain into April's naturally sallow colors. 

Glossy and black as an endless typewriter ribbon, the narrow, tenseState Road seemed to wind itself everlastingly in--and in--andin--on some hidden spool of the car's mysterious mechanism. Clickety-Click-Click-Clack, --faster than any human mind couldthink, --faster than any human hand could finger, --hurtling up hazardoushills of thought, --sliding down facile valleys of fancy, --roaring withemphasis, --shrieking with punctuation, --the great car yielded itselfperforce to Fate's dictation. 

Robbed successively of the city's humanitarian pang, of the suburb'sesthetic pleasure, the White Linen Nurse found herself precipitatedsuddenly into a mere blur of sight, a mere chaos of sound. In whizzingspeed and crashing breeze, --houses--fences--meadows--people--slappedacross her eyeballs like pictures on a fan. On and on and on throughkaleidoscopic yellows and rushing grays the great car sped, a purelymechanical factor in a purely mechanical landscape. 

Rigid with concentration the Senior Surgeon stared like a dead man intothe intrepid, on-coming road. 

Intermittently from her green, plushy laprobes the little crippled girlstruggled to her feet, and sprawling clumsily across whose-ever shouldersuited her best, raised a brazenly innocent voice, deliberately flatted, in a shrill and maddeningly repetitive chant of her own making, to theeffect that

All the birds were thereWith yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumble bees crocheted in the trees--And bumble bees crocheted in the trees--And all the birds were there--And--And--

Intermittently from the front seat the Senior Surgeon's wooden facerelaxed to the extent of a grim mouth twisting distractedly sideways inone furious bellow. 

"Will--you--stop--your--_noise_--and--go--back--to--your--seat!"

Nothing else happened at all until at last, out of unbroken stretches ofwinter-staled stubble, a high, formal hemlock hedge and a neat, pebbleddriveway proclaimed the Senior Surgeon's ultimate destination. 

Cautiously now, with an almost tender skill, the big car circled a tiny, venturesome clump of highway violets and crept through a prancing, leaping fluff of yellow collie dogs to the door of the big stone house. 

Instantly from inestimable resources a liveried serving man appeared tohelp the Surgeon from his car; another, to take the Surgeon's coat;another, to carry his bag. 

Lingering for an instant to stretch his muscles and shake his greatshoulders, the Senior Surgeon breathed into his cramped lungs a friendlyimpulse as well as a scent of budding cherry trees. 

"You may come in with me, if you want to, Miss Malgregor. " he conceded. "It's an extraordinary case. You will hardly see another one like it. "Palpably he lowered his already almost indistinguishable voice. "The boyis young, " he confided, "about your age, I should guess, a collegefoot-ball hero, the most superbly perfect specimen of young manhood ithas ever been my privilege to behold. It will be a long case. They havetwo nurses already, but would like another. The work ought not to behard. Now if they should happen to--fancy you!" In speechlessexpressiveness his eyes swept estimatingly over sun-parlors, stables, garages, Italian gardens, rapturous blue-shadowed mountain views--everylast intimate detail of the mansion's wonderful equipment. 

Like a drowning man feeling his last floating spar wrenched away fromhim, the White Linen Nurse dug her finger-nails frantically into everyreachable wrinkle and crevice of the heavily upholstered seat. 

"Oh, but sir, I don't want to go in!" she protested passionately. "Itell you, sir, I'm quite done with all that sort of thing! It wouldbreak my heart! It would! Oh, sir, this worrying about people for whomyou've got no affection, --it's like sledding without any snow! It gritsright down on your naked nerves. It--"

Before the Senior Surgeon's glowering, incredulous stare her heart beganto plunge and pound again, but it plunged and pounded no harder, sherealized suddenly, than when in the calm, white hospital precincts shewas obliged to pass his terrifying presence in the corridor and murmuran inaudible "Good Morning" or "Good Evening. " "After all, he's nothingbut a man--nothing but a man--nothing but a mere--ordinary--two-leggedman, " she reasoned over and over to herself. With a really desperateeffort she smoothed her frightened face into an expression of utterguilelessness and peace and smiled unflinchingly right into the SeniorSurgeon's rousing anger as she had once seen an animal-trainer smileinto the snarl of a crouching tiger. 

"Th--ank you very much!" she said. "But I think I won't go in, sir, --thank you! My--my face is still pretty tired!"

"Idiot!" snapped the Senior Surgeon as he turned on his heel and startedup the steps. 

From the green plushy robes on the back seat the White Linen Nurse couldhave sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!"piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply roundto make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently completeabsorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumbof one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He lovesme--Loves me not--Loves me--Loves me not. "

Bristling with unutterable contempt for all femininity, the SeniorSurgeon proceeded up the steps between two solemn-faced lackeys. 

"Father!" wailed a feeble little voice. "Father!" There was noshrillness in the tone now, nor malice, nor any mischievous thing, --justdesolation, the impulsive, panic-stricken desolation of a little childleft suddenly alone with a stranger. "Father!" the frightened voiceventured forth a tiny bit louder. But the unheeding Senior Surgeon hadalready reached the piazza. "Fat Father!" screamed the little voice. Barbed now like a shark-hook the phrase ripped through the SeniorSurgeon's dormant sensibilities. As one fairly yanked out of histhoughts he whirled around in his tracks. 

"What do you want?" he thundered. 

Helplessly the little girl sat staring from a lackey's ill-concealedgrin to her Father's smoldering fury. Quite palpably she began toswallow with considerable difficulty. Then quick as a flash adiminutively crafty smile crooked across one corner of her mouth. 

"Father?" she improvised dulcetly. "Father? May--may I--sit--in theWhite Linen Nurse's lap?"

Just for an instant the Senior Surgeon's narrowing eyes probedmercilessly into the reekingly false little smile. Then altogetherbrutally he shrugged his shoulders. 

"I don't care where in blazes you sit!" he muttered, and went on intothe house. 

With an air of unalterable finality the massive oak door closed afterhim. In the resonant click of its latch the great wrought-iron lockseemed to smack its lips with ineffable satisfaction. 

Wringing suddenly round with a whish of starched skirts the White LinenNurse knelt up in her seat and grinned at the Little Crippled Girl. 

"'Ha'--yourself!" she said. 

Against all possible expectancy the Little Crippled Girl burst outlaughing. The laugh was wild, ecstatic, extravagantly boisterous, yetawkward withal, and indescribably bumpy, like the first flight of acage-cramped bird. 

Quite abruptly the White Linen Nurse sat down again, and commencednervously with the wrist of her chamois glove to polish the slightlytarnished brass lamp at her elbow. Equally abruptly after a minute shestopped polishing and looked back at the Little Crippled Girl. 

"Would--you--like--to sit in my lap?" she queried conscientiously. 

Insolent with astonishment the Little Girl parried the question. "Why inblazes--should I want to sit in your lap?" she quizzed harshly. Everyaccent of her voice, every remotest intonation, was like the SeniorSurgeon's at his worst. The suddenly forked eyebrow, the snarling twitchof the upper lip, turned the whole delicate little face into a grotesquebut desperately unconscious caricature of the grim-jawed father. 

As though the father himself had snubbed her for some unimaginablefamiliarity the White Linen Nurse winced back in hopeless confusion. Just for sheer shock, short-circuited with fatigue, a big tear rolledslowly down one pink cheek. 

Instantly to the edge of her seat the Little Girl jerked herselfforward. "Don't cry, Pretty!" she whispered. "Don't cry! It's my legs. I've got fat iron braces on my legs. And people don't like to hold me!"

Half the professional smile came flashing back to the White LinenNurse's mouth. 

"Oh, I just adore holding people with iron braces on their legs, " sheaffirmed, and, leaning over the back of the seat, proceeded withabsolutely perfect mechanical tenderness to gather the poor, puny, surprised little body into her own strong, shapely arms. Then dutifullysnuggling her shoulder to meet the stubborn little shoulder that refusedto snuggle, to it, and dutifully easing her knees to suit the stubbornlittle knees that refused to be eased, she settled down resignedly inher seat again to await the return of the Senior Surgeon. "There! There!There!" she began quite instinctively to croon and pat. 

"Don't say 'There! There!'" wailed the Little Girl peevishly. Her bodywas suddenly stiff as a ram-rod. "Don't say 'There! There!' If you'vegot to make any noise at all, say 'Here! Here!'"

"Here! Here!" droned the White Linen Nurse. "Here! Here! Here! Here!" Onand on and interminably on, "Here! Here! Here! Here!"

At the end of about the three-hundred-and-forty-seventh "Here!" theLittle Girl's body relaxed, and she reached up two fragile fingers toclose the White Linen Nurse's mouth. "There! That will do, " she sighedcontentedly. "I feel better now. Father does tire me so. "

"Father tires--_you_?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. The giggle thatfollowed the gasp was not in the remotest degree professional. "Fathertires _you_?" she repeated accusingly. "Why, you silly Little Girl!Can't you see it's you that makes Father so everlastingly tired?"Impulsively with her one free hand she turned the Little Girl's listlessface to the light. "What makes you call your nice father 'Fat Father'?"she asked with real curiosity. "What makes you? He isn't fat at all. He's just big. Why, what ever possesses you to call him 'Fat Father, ' Isay? Can't you see how mad it makes him?"

"Why, of course it made him mad!" said the Little Girl with plainlyreviving interest. Thrilled with astonishment at the White Linen Nurse'sapparent stupidity she straightened up perkily with inordinatelysparkling eyes. "Why, of course it makes him mad!" she explainedbriskly. "That's why I do it! Why, my Parpa--never even looks atme--unless I make him mad!"

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

Jerking bumpily back against the White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulderthe Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse'svivid cheek. "Silly--Pink and White--Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't youknow there _isn't_ any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her ownsuperior knowledge she folded her little arms and began to rock herselfconvulsively to and fro. 

"Why, stop!" cried the White Linen Nurse. "Now you stop! Why, you wickedlittle 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 staredperplexedly into the White Linen Nurse's shocked eyes. Her own littleface 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! Iheard Cook telling the Ice Man once when I wasn't more than ten minutesold!"

Desperately with one straining hand the White Linen Nurse stretched herfingers across the Little Girl's babbling mouth. Equally desperately, with the other hand, she sought to divert the Little Girl's mind bypushing the fur cap back from her frizzly red hair, and loosening hersumptuous coat, and jerking down vainly across two painfully obtrusivewhite ruffles, the awkwardly short, hideously bright little purpledress. 

"I think your cap is too hot, " she began casually, and then proceededwith increasing vivacity and conviction to the objects that worried hermost. "And those--those ruffles, " she protested, "they don't look a bitnice being so long!" Resentfully she rubbed an edge of the purple dressbetween her fingers. "And a little girl like you, --with such bright redhair, --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 intoexplanations 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 boastedwith a bitter sort of triumph. "Why when I wear purple and frizz my hairhard enough, --no matter who's there, or anything, --he'll stop right offshort in the middle of whatever he's doing--and rear right up soperfectly beautiful and mad and glorious--and holler right out 'ForHeaven'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 LinenNurse's ear close down to her own snuggling lips. 

"Damned nervous!" she confided laconically. 

Quite against all intention the White Linen Nurse giggled. Flounderingto recover her dignity she plunged into a new error. "Poor littledev--, " she began. 

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

"Why, you naughty little thing!" scolded the White Linen Nurse with anunmistakable catch in her voice. "Why, you--naughty--naughty--littlething!"

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

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

Very palpably her eyelids began to droop. "Where was I?" she askedsharply. "Oh, yes, 'the green, grassy club. ' Well, when I die, " shefaltered, "I'm going to die specially on some Sunday when there's a biggolf game, --so he'll just naturally have to give it up and stay homeand--amuse me--and help arrange the flowers. The Parpa's crazy aboutflowers. So am I, " she added broodingly. "I raised almost a geraniumonce. But the Parpa threw it out. It was a good geranium, too. All itdid was just to drip the tiniest-teeniest bit over a book and a writingand somebody's brains in a dish. He threw it at a cat. It was a goodcat, 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'ssilence her lips began moving dumbly like one at silent devotions. "I'mmaking a little poem, now, " she confided at last. "It's about--you andme. It's a sort of a little prayer. " Very, very softly she began torepeat. 

Now I sit me down to napAll curled up in a Nursie's lap, If _she_ should die before I wake--

Abruptly she stopped and stared up suspiciously into the White LinenNurse's eyes. "Ha!" she mocked, "you thought I was going to say 'If Ishould 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 generousenough--when it's all done!" she said severely. "And I'll thankyou, --Miss Malgregor, --not to interrupt me again!" With excessivedeliberateness she went back to the first line of her poem and beganall 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 caughther first. But now in the middle of the yawn it was a great deal easierto repeat the "very cunning" than to force her lips into any newexpression. "Very cunning--very cunning, " she kept crooningconscientiously. 

Modestly like some other successful authors the Little Girl flapped hereyelids languidly open and shut for three or four times before sheacknowledged the compliment. "Oh, cunning as any of 'em, " she admittedoff-handishly. Only once again did she open either mouth or eyes, andthis time it was merely one eye and half a mouth. "Do my fat ironbraces--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 beingheld, and the girl who didn't particularly care about holding her, werefast asleep in each other's arms, --a naughty, nagging, restive littlehornet 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 rearedback aghast at the sight. 

"Well--I'll be hanged!" he muttered. "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonderwhat they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk aboutfiddling while Rome burns!"

Awkwardly, on the top step, he struggled alone into his cumbersome coat. Every tingling nerve in his body, every shuddering sensibility, wasracked to its utmost capacity over the distressing scenes he had leftbehind him in the big house. Back in that luxuriant sickroom, YouthIncarnate lay stripped, root, branch, leaf, bud, blossom, fruit, ofAll its manhood's promise. Back in that erudite library, CulturePersonified, robbed of all its fine philosophy, sat babbling illiteratestreet-curses into its quivering hands. Back in that exquisite pink andgold boudoir, Blonded Fashion, ravished for once of all its artistry, ran stumbling round and round in interminable circles like a disheveledhag. In shrill crescendos and discordant basses, with heartpiercingjaggedness, with blood-curdling raspishness, each one, boy, father, mother, meddlesome relative, competent or incompetent assistant, indiscriminate servant, filing his separate sorrow into the SeniorSurgeon's tortured ears!

With one of those sudden revulsions to materialism which is liableto overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutallyunconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped downinto the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greedin his body clamoring for expression--before it, too, should be hurtledinto oblivion. "Eat, you fool, and drink, you fool, and be merry, --youfool, --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 havebudded and bloomed in a single hour smote him stingingly across hischeek. "Laggard!" taunted the lilac branch. 

With the first crunching grit of gravel under his feet, somethingtranscendently naked and unashamed that was neither Brazen Sorrow norBrazen Pain thrilled across his startled consciousness. Over therolling, marshy meadow, beyond the succulent willow-hedge that hid thewinding river, up from some fluent, slim canoe, out from a chorus ofvirile young tenor voices, a little passionate Love Song--divinelytender--most incomparably innocent--came stealing palpitantly forth intothat inflammable Spring world without a single vestige of accompanimenton 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 hereAnd Love is Lord of you--and me!"

Wrenched like a sob out of his own lost youth the Senior Surgeon'sfaltering 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 themselvespoignantly into his brain, --dingy, uncontrovertible old recitationrooms where young ideas flashed bright and futile as paradeswords, --elm-shaded slopes where lithe young bodies lolled on greenvelvet grasses to expound their harshest cynicisms! Book-history, book-science, book-economics, book-love, --all the paper passion of allthe paper poets swaggering imperiously on boyish lips that would havedied a thousand bashful deaths before the threatening imminence of areal girl's kiss! Magic days, with Youth the one glittering, positivetreasure on the Tree of Life--and Woman still a mystery!

"Woman a mystery?" Harshly the phrase ripped through the SeniorSurgeon's brain. Croakingly in that instant all the grim gray scientificyears re-overtook him, swamped him, strangled him. "Woman a _mystery_?Oh ye Gods! And Youth? Bah! Youth, --a mere tinsel tinkle on a rottingChristmas tree!"

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

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

"Don't--jerk--it--so!" she admonished hazily, "You'll wake the LittleGirl!"

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

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

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

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

Adroitly for a man of his bulk he ran around the radiator and jumpedinto his seat. Joggled unmercifully into wakefulness, the Little Girlgreeted his return with a generous if distinctly non-tactfuldemonstration of affection. Grabbing the unwitting fingers of hismomentarily free hand she tapped them proudly against the White LinenNurse's plump pink cheek. 

"See! I call her 'Peach'!" she boasted joyously with all the triumphantair of one who felt assured that mental discrimination such as thiscould not possibly fail to impress even a person so naturally obtuseas--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 laterafter interminable miles of absolute silence--and dingy yellowfield-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 tosay careless, not to say out and out incendiary, for any girl to goblushing her way like a fire-brand through a world so palpably populatedby 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 mostvital musings concerning Spinal Meningitis he scowled his way savagelyback again into his own grimly established trend of thought. 

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

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

Fathoms deep in abstraction the Senior Surgeon stared unheeding into thewhizzing black road. Pulses and temperatures and blood-pressures wereseething in his mind; and sharp sticks and jagged stones and the generalpossibilities of a puncture; and murmurs of the heart and râles of thelungs; and a most unaccountable knock-knock-knocking in the engine; andthe probable relation of middle-ear disease; and the perfectly positivesymptoms of optic neuritis; and a damned funny squeak in the steeringgear!

"Father?" the Little Girl persisted valiantly. 

To add to his original concentration the Senior Surgeon's linen collarbegan to chafe him maddeningly under his chin. The annoyance added twoscowls to his already blackly furrowed face, and at least ten miles anhour to his running time; but nothing whatsoever to his conversationalability. 

"Father!" the Little Girl whimpered with faltering courage. Thenpanic-stricken, as wiser people have been before her, over the dreadfulspookish remoteness of a perfectly normal human being who refuses eitherto answer or even to notice your wildest efforts at communication, sheraised her waspish voice in its shrillest, harshest war-cry. "FatFather! _Fat Father! F-a-t F-a-t-h-e-r!_" she screeched out frenziedlyat the top of her lungs. 

The gun-shot agony of a wounded rabbit was in the cry, the last gurglinggasp of strangulation under a murderer's reeking fingers, --catastropheunspeakable, --disaster now irrevocable!

Clamping down his brakes with a wrench that almost tore the insides outof his engine the Senior Surgeon brought the great car to a staggeringstandstill. 

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

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

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

Helplessly the child lifted her turbid eyes to his. With unmistakableappeal her tiny hand went clutching out at one of the big buttons on hiscoat. Desperately for an instant she rummaged through her brain for someremotely adequate answer to this most thunderous question, --and thenretreated precipitously as usual to the sacristy of her ownimagination. 

"All the birds _were_ there, Father!" she confided guilelessly. "All thebirds _were_ there, --with yellow feathers instead of hair! Andbumblebees--crocheted in the trees. And--"

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

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

All the birds were thereWith yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumblebees crocheted in the treesAnd--and--all the birds were there, With yellow feathers instead of hair, And--

Frenziedly as a runaway horse trying to escape from its own pursuingharness and carriage the Senior Surgeon poured increasing speed intoboth his own pace and the pace of his tormentor. Up hill, --downdale, --screeching through rocky echoes, --swishing through blue-greenspruce-lands, --dodging indomitable boulders, --grazing lax, treacherousembankments, --the great car scuttled homeward. Huddled behind hissteering wheel like a warrior behind his shield, every body-muscle tautwith strain, every facial muscle diabolically calm, the Senior Surgeonmet and parried successively each fresh onslaught of yard, rod, mile. 

Then suddenly in the first precipitous descent of a mighty hill thewhole earth seemed to drop out from under the car. Down-down-down withincredible swiftness and smoothness the great machine went divingtowards 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 Nursesaw his grim mouth yank round abruptly in her direction as it yankedsometimes in the operating-room with some sharp, incisive order of lifeor death. Instinctively she leaned forward for the message. 

Not over-loud but strangely distinct the words slapped back into herstraining 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 Surgeonsardonically across the roar of the wind. 

The phrase excited the White Linen Nurse but it did not remotelyfrighten her. She was not in the habit of seeing the Senior Surgeon losecontrol of any situation. Merely intoxicated with speed, delirious withozone, 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 swervedfrom the bottom of the hill into a soft rolling meadow. Instantly fromevery conceivable direction, like foes in ambush, trees, stumps, rocksreared up in threatening defiance. 

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

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

In that first over-whelming, nerve-numbing, heart-crunching terror ofhis whole life as the great car tilted up against a stone, --plowed downinto the mushy edge of a marsh, --and skidded completely round, _crash-bang--_ into a tree, it was the last sound that the SeniorSurgeon heard, --the sound of a woman and child screeching their lungsout in diabolical exultancy!

CHAPTER V

When the White Linen Nurse found anything again she found herself lyingperfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of grass andleaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought she noticed aslight black and blue discoloration towards the west, but more thanthat, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be seriouslyinjured. The earth, she feared had not escaped so easily. Even way offsomewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as sore--assore--as could be--under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy eyes thehot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she should haveto jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might arise thereseemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek. Not until the Little CrippledGirl's dirt-smouched face intervened between her own staring eyes andthe 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 screamedso loud I couldn't hear the bump!"

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

It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field, --acres and acres of mild oldgrass tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets andbluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up thefield? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into herincredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great emptyautomobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of thestone-wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably evidentthat the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before itsfailing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of theback-sliders. 

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

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

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

"Yes, I know, " said the White Linen Nurse. "But what has become of--yourFather?"

Worriedly for an instant the Little Girl sat scanning the remotestcorners of the field. Then abruptly with a gasp of real relief she beganto explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her blackeye. 

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

"Yes--I know, " mused the White Linen Nurse. "But it doesn'tseem--probable. "

"Probable?" mocked the Little Girl most disagreeably. Then suddenly herlittle 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. Desperatelyshe tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizzinessround her temples. 

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

Then with a really herculean effort, --both mental and physical, shestaggered to her feet, and started for the automobile. 

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

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

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

When they reached the car both woman and child were too utterlyexhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on theground and--stare. 

Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the SeniorSurgeon'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--awfullydead--to me!" Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second ortwo for her little mind to make any particularly personal application ofsuch excitement. "I hadn't--exactly--planned--on having him dead!" shebegan with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional collapsezig-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 hertrembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring atthe Senior Surgeon's prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to andfro 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 theedge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellowwheel-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 kneesand 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 thathad never yet failed to rouse him. 

Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon's horridly quiet shoulders alittle 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 franticallyreaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm's lengthshe began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weightof 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 burstforth 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 voicetook 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 hismud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneousspeech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one twostones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of stalegolden-rod. 

"Blankety-blank-blank--BLANK!" he announced in due time, "Blankety-blank-blank-blank--BLANK! Maybe when youtwo--blankety-blank--imbeciles have got through your blankety-blankcackling you'll have the--blankety-blank decency to save my--myblankety-blank-blank--blank--_blank-blank_ life!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" persisted the poor helpless White Linen Nurse with thetears 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 SeniorSurgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt quitesure, could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer theapoplectic, blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through histight-closed eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. Hethought it was the fires of Hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate likea man he found himself staring impudently close instead into the WhiteLinen Nurse's furiously flushed face that lay cuddled on one plump cheekstaring impudently close at him. 

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

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

"Yes, I know, " she protested. "But I'm all through giggling now. I'msorry--I'm--"

In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon's features crinkledwincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat fromthe 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'shurt? 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 nothurt, --I'm just--squashed! I'm paralyzed! If I can't get this car offme--"

"Yes, that's just it, " beamed the White Linen Nurse's face. "That's justwhat I crawled in here to find out, --how to get the car off you. That'sjust what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course, --only Icouldn't run, 'cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take hours--andthe car might start or burn up or something while I was gone. But youdon't seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery, " she added morebrightly, "it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could only getthe 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 Icould 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'sface. "All the same, " she asserted stubbornly, "if some one would onlytell me what to do--I know I could do it!"

Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming littletremor 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--whatto do!"

Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical grayeyes 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 SeniorSurgeon. "Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you followthem--explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to herown 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 seemingdiagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions. 

"Then get out of here--quick--for God's sake--and get to work!" heordered. 

Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom andcrawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the wheel-spokesagain. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical problem hismental 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 thecar. 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. "Youdon't--_mind_?" he groaned. "You don't--_mind_? Why, you've got tolearn--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 SeniorSurgeon did not stop to argue any further. 

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

Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees andbegan to grin at him. "Oh, no, sir, " she said. "I couldn't do it thatway, --not 'one thing at a time. ' Oh, no indeed, sir! No!" Absolutefinality was in her voice, --the inviolable stubbornness of the perfectlygood-natured person. 

"You'll do it the way I tell you to!" roared the Senior Surgeonstruggling 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 thatway--one thing at a time, " she persisted hurriedly. "Why, you mightfaint away or something might happen--right in the middle of it--rightbetween one direction and another--and I wouldn't know at all--what toturn 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 stretchhimself. 

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

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

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

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

"Steady! Steady there!" said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a suddenodd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectlyserene. "Now begin at the beginning, " she begged. "Quick! Tell meeverything--just the way I must do it! Quick--quick--quick!"

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

"But you can't do it, " he began all over again. "It isn't possible. Youhaven'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 downbehind the wheel!" he shouted after her flying footsteps. "Are youthere? For God's sake--are you there? Do you see those two little leverswhere your right hand comes? For God's sake--don't you know what alever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!"

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

Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly the White Linen Nursevisualized 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'tstart--anyway--and--!" Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl ofdespair. 

"Don't be a--blight!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "I've neverforgotten anything yet, sir!"

Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expressionwas no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuantnostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepenedsuddenly into sheer dilating terror. 

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

"No! _Right_ foot!--_right_ foot!" corrected the Little Girlblunderingly from somewhere close in the grass. 

"Inside lever--pull--way--back!" persisted the White Linen Nurseresolutely 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 onthe throttle as she tried the self starter. 

Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the carthe 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 lifesnatched 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 undermore than two tons' weight of unaccountable mechanism, with a novice infull command. 

Up in her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the WhiteLinen 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 herchattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers onthe vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that hoveredover the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal. "Shortlever--spark--long lever--gas!" she persisted resolutely. "It must beright! It must!"

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

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

Half propped up on one elbow, --still dizzy with mental chaos, stillparalyzed with physical inertia, --the Senior Surgeon lay staring blanklyall around him. Indifferently for an instant his stare included theWhite 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 vestigeof self-control stripped from him, --horror unspeakable racking himsobbingly from head to toe. 

Whimperingly the Little Girl came crawling to him, and settling downclose at his feet began with her tiny lace handkerchief to make futiledabs 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 aminute, 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 blazingcar. His unrelinquished clutch on the White Linen Nurse's skirt broughther sinking softly down beside him like a collapsed balloon. Togetherthey 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 everburn up?"

"_Eh?_" gasped the Senior Surgeon. Brutally the harsh, shuddering sobsbegan to rack and tear again through his great chest. 

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

Again the Senior Surgeon's unrelinquished clutch on her skirt jerked herback 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!" Painfullythe red blood mounted to his cheeks. "Me--of all people!" Bluntly heforced the White Linen Nurse's reluctant gaze to meet his own. "Onlyyesterday, " he persisted, "I did a laparotomy on a man who had only onechance in a hundred of pulling through--and I--I scolded him forfighting 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 haveto, --but with no kick coming! Why, I've been wrecked in a typhoon in theGulf of Mexico. And I didn't care! And I've lain for nine days more deadthan alive in an Asiatic cholera camp. And I didn't care! And I've beenlocked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and a dynamitebomb. And I didn't care! And twice in a Pennsylvania mine disaster I'vebeen the first man down the shaft. And I didn't care! And I've beenshot, I tell you, --and I've been horse-trampled, --and I've beenwolf-bitten. And I've never cared! But to-day--to-day--" Piteously allthe pride and vigor wilted from his great shoulders, leaving him allhuddled 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 meget 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 atthis strange fatherish person who sounded so suddenly small and scaredlike herself. Jealous instantly of her own prerogatives she dropped herfutile labors on the mud-stained silk stockings and scrambledprecipitously for the White Linen Nurse's lap where she nestled downfinally after many gyrations, and sat glowering forth at all possibleinterlopers. 

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

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

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

"Let go of your skirt? Who's touching your skirt?" gasped the SeniorSurgeon 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 SeniorSurgeon sat suddenly down again. "I sha'n't get up till I'm good andready!" he attested. 

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

Very slowly, very complacently, all the while she kept right onrenovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkledstocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging downparsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobblybutton. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off tosleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly outbefore 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 SeniorSurgeon. "It's just about the crudest case of complete muscular atrophythat I've ever seen!"

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

"Eh?" jumped the Senior Surgeon. 

"Poor little legs--poor little legs--poor little legs, " resumed theWhite Linen Nurse droningly. 

Very slowly, very complacently, all around them April kept righton--being April. 

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

Nothing brisk, nothing breathless, nothing even remotely hurried wasthere in all the landscape except just the brook, --and the flash of abird, --and the blaze of the crackling automobile. 

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

The Senior Surgeon's nostrils were all puckered up with the stench ofburning varnish. The Senior Surgeon's mind was full of the horridthought that he'd forgotten to renew his automobile fire-insurance, --andthat he had a sprained back, --and that his rival colleague had told himhe didn't know how to run an auto anyway--and that the cook had givennotice that morning, --and that he had a sprained back, --and that themoths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress suit, --and that theSuperintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch ofpink roses for his birthday, --and that the boiler in the kitchenleaked, --and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read apaper on "Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo, "--and he hadn'teven begun the paper yet, --and that he had a sprained back, --and thatthe wall-paper on his library hung in shreds and tatters waiting forhim to decide between a French fresco effect and an early Englishpaneling, --and that his little daughter was growing up in wantonugliness under the care of coarse, indifferent hirelings, --and that thelaundry robbed him weekly of at least five socks, --and that it wouldcost him fully seven thousand dollars to replace this car, --and that hehad 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 andreverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning thegloomy, black-walnut shadowed entrance hall of his great house, and howmany yards of imported linoleum at $3. 45 a yard it would take torecarpet the "damned hole, "--and how it would have seemed anyway if--ifhe hadn't gone home--as usual to the horrid black-walnut shadows thatnight--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 theywouldn't even know where to lay him--but might put him by mistake inthat--in that--in his dead wife's dead--bed!

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

"I don't care how long we have to sit here and wait for help, " sheannounced cheerfully, "because to-morrow, of course, I'll have to get upand 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!" saidthe 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 butdenial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for aninstant. "Why, for Heaven's sake, should I want to hold on to yourskirt?" he demanded peremptorily. "What the deuce--?" he beganblusteringly. "Why in--?"

Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the WhiteLinen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw everyvestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded outsometimes in the operating-room when in the midst of some ghastly, unforeseen emergency that left all his assistants blinking helplesslyaround them, his whole wonderful scientific mind seemed to break up likesome chemical compound into all its meek component parts, --only toreorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action thatfairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers--but was pretty apt toknock 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 theparticular type of explosion that had taken place than any other personcould possibly have been. 

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

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

A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation. "Yourfrank and immediate--enthusiasm, " he murmured, "is more, perhaps, than Ihad dared to expect. "

"But it would be grand!" said the White Linen Nurse. Before the oddlittle smile in the Senior Surgeon's eyes her white forehead puckeredall up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened, her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horsewhose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of anunwonted footfall. "What--did--you--say?" she repeated worriedly. "Justexactly what was it that you said? I guess--maybe--I didn't understandjust 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 'generalheartwork' in a family of two, --myself and the Little Girl here beingthe 'two. ' 'Heartwork' was what I said. Yes, --'Heartwork, '--nothousework!"

"_Heartwork?_" faltered the White Linen Nurse. "_ Heartwork?_ I don'tknow what you mean, sir. " Like two falling rose-petals her eyelidsfluttered 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 somesort of a joke. But when I look right at you--I--don't know--what itis!"

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

Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged eachother. 

"'Heartwork' was what I said, " persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpablyhis 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 hervoice, --distaste, --unmitigable shock, as though the high gods themselveshad fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments. 

"Oh--not _marry_ you, sir?" she kept right on protesting. "Notbe--_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 intoincalculable weariness. 

"Oh--no--no! I couldn't!" she protested. "Oh, no, --really!" Appealinglyshe lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurredwith tears. "I've--I've been engaged--once--you know, " she explainedfalteringly. "Why--I was engaged, sir, almost as soon as I was born, andI stayed engaged till two years ago. That's almost twenty years. That'sa long time, sir. You don't get over it--easy. " Very, very gravely shebegan to shake her head. "Oh--no--sir! No! Thank you--very much--butI--I just simply couldn't begin at the beginning and go all through itagain! 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 schoolpicnics--"

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

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

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

"You don't mean for a second that you--that you love me?" she askedincredulously. 

"No, I don't suppose I do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equalbluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhatnervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddiehere--loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it thatwe both--need you!"

"What you mean is--" corrected the White Linen Nurse, "that needingsomebody--very badly, you've just suddenly decided that that somebodymight as well be me?"

"Well--if you choose to put it--like that!" said the Senior Surgeon abit sulkily. 

"And if there hadn't been an auto accident?" argued the White LinenNurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, "if there hadn't been justthis particular kind of an auto accident--at this particular hour--ofthis particular day--of this particular month--with marigoldsand--everything, you probably never would have realized that you didneed anybody?"

"Maybe not, " admitted the Senior Surgeon. 

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

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

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

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

"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 happeneda year from next February in a Chinese junk off the coast of--NovaZembla--to a Methodist preacher--and a--and a militant suffragette! WhatI'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 therehas been an accident! And out of that accident--and everything that'sgone with it--I have come out--thinking of something that I neverthought of before! And there were marigolds!" he added with unexpectedwhimsicality. "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 closeragainst the sleeping child's tangled hair. "Why--yes--thank you verymuch--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. Thensuddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. "Whatdo you want?" she asked. 

Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands. "My goodness!" hesaid. "What do you suppose I want? _I want some one to take care ofus!_"

Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate theshifting 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 deliveredthe little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon'sastonished 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 LinenNurse. 

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

"You're trying to hire--_me_?" she prompted him nudgingly with hervoice. "Hire me--for money?"

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

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

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

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

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

"For Heaven's sake, Miss Malgregor, " he pleaded. "Here's a man and ahouse and a child all going to--rack and ruin! If you're really andtruly tired of nursing--and are looking for a new job, --what's thematter 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 nodemureness whatsoever. 

CHAPTER VII

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

"What is there about my offer--that you don't like?" he demandedearnestly. "Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I putit? 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two?' What is the matter withthat? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage proposal? Oris it that it's just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere plainbusiness 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 abruptlyeven the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his faceastonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, MissMalgregor, " he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffermarriage to a--to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditionsdirectly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purelyromantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and business-like asours, there's got to be some vestige of affection in it, --some vestigeat least of the _intelligence_ of affection, --else what gain is therefor my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic servicethat 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 SeniorSurgeon gravely, "my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as Iam, --cynic--scientist, --any harsh thing you choose to call me, --marriagein some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as beingthe mutual sharing of a--mutually original experience. Certainlywhether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness, --whetherit eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, totwo people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is anemotion 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 notyears shadowed suddenly and was gone again. 

"Even so, Miss Malgregor, " he argued, "even so--without any glitteringromance whatsoever, no woman I believe is very grossly unhappy inany--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 brainfrom heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactlywhat place it is that he is offering her in his love, --or hisfriendship, --or his mere desperate need. No woman can ever hope to stepsuccessfully into a second-hand home who does not know from her man'sown lips the measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead isa selfish thing compared to the mercy we owe the living. In my owncase--"

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

"In my own case, " said the Senior Surgeon bluntly, "in my own case, MissMalgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I--did not love mywife. And my wife did not love me. " Only the muscular twitch in histhroat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. "The detailsof that marriage are unnecessary, " he continued with equal bluntness. "It is enough perhaps to say that she was the daughter of an eminentsurgeon 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 strongpersonal ambitions was one of those so-called 'marriages of convenience'which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such direinconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we livedtogether in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship. For two years welived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste. For threeyears we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity. At the last, Iam thankful to remember, that we had one year together again that was atleast an--armed truce. "

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

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

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

"And the child is the living physical image of her, " he stammered. "Theviolent hair, --the ghost-white skin, --the facile mouth, --the arroganteyes, --staring--staring--maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing. My own stubborn will, --my own hideous temper, --all my own ill-favoredmannerisms--mocked back at me eternally in her mother's--unlovedfeatures. " Mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon's mouthtwisted up a little at one corner. "Maybe I could have borne it betterif she'd been a boy, " he acknowledged grimly. "But to see all yourvirile--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 hisgreat chest. 

"There! That's done!" he said tersely. "So much for the Past! Now forthe Present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself! A man anda very little girl, --not guaranteed, --not even recommended, --offeredmerely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase of the day, --offered franklyin 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 usclosely, I ask, and--decide for yourself! I am forty-eight years old. Iam inexcusably bad-tempered, --very quick to anger, and not, I fear, ofgreat mercy. I am moody. I am selfish. I am most distinctly unsocial. But I am not, I believe, stingy, --nor ever intentionally unfair. Mychild is a cripple, --and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but amercenary has ever coped with her. And she shows it. We have lived alonefor six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending. Iam not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, Itrust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with alla man's needs, --mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all achild's needs, --mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full ofcobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be agreat deal of work to do! And it is not my intention, you see, that youshould misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature orthe exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you tocome 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 anyidea you would want me to do _that!_ And I certainly don't see why youshould expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break yourback!'"

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

"Really, Miss Malgregor, " he affirmed, "I'm afraid there isn't much ofanything that you won't be expected to do! And as to your 'Thursdaysout'? Ha! If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of yourobligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discoveredsomething that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering! And asto 'wages'? Yes! I want to talk everything quite frankly! In additionto my average yearly earnings, --which are by no means small, --I have areasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is noluxury I think that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of theindependent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should bevery glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherishconcerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also, --though the offer lookssmall and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty largeto you later, --also, I will personally guarantee to you--at some timeevery year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two months' holiday. So the offer stands, --my 'name and fame, '--if those mean anything toyou, --financial independence, --an assured 'breathing spell' for at leasttwo months out of twelve, --and at last but not least, --my eternalgratitude! 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'! _There!_ Have I madethe task perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you know. But immediately where necessity urges it, --gradually asconfidence inspires it, --ultimately if affection justifies it, --everywomanish thing that needs to be done in a man's and a child's neglectedlives? Do you understand?"

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

"Oh, and there's one thing more, " confided the Senior Surgeon. "It'ssomething, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first thingof all!" Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and loweredhis voice to a mumbling monotone. "As regards my actual morals you havenaturally a right to know that I've led a pretty decent sort oflife, --though I probably don't deserve any special credit for that. Aman who knows enough to be a doctor isn't particularly apt to lead anyother 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 littledefiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied hisheart of its last tragic secret. "Through all the male line of myfamily, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, myfather, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gonedown as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' graves. ' In myown case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil. Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively, but out of theagony and humiliation of--several less successful methods. " Hard as arock, his face grooved into its granite-like furrows again. "Naturally, under these existing conditions, " he warned her almost threateningly, "Iam not peculiarly susceptible to the mawkishly ignorant and sentimentalprotests of--people whose strongest passions are an appetitefor--chocolate candy! For eleven months of the year, " he hurried on abit huskily, "for eleven months of the year, --eleven months, --each dayreeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutelyabstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed teaor coffee. In the twelfth month, --June always, --I go way, way up intoCanada, --way, way off in the woods to a little log camp I ownthere, --with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years. Andlive like a--wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping, salmon-fighting, --whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperancefriends would call a--'spree. ' To be quite frank, I suppose it iswhat--anybody would call a 'spree. ' Then the first of July, --three orfour days past the first of July perhaps, --I come out of thewoods--quite tame again. A little emotionally nervous, perhaps, --alittle temperishly irritable, --a little unduly sensitive about beinggreeted as a returned jail-bird, --but most miraculously purged of allmorbid craving for liquor, and with every digital muscle as coollysteady as yours, and every conscious mental process clamoring cleanlyfor its own work again. "

Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the WhiteLinen Nurse's imperturbable face. "It's an--established custom, youunderstand, " he rewarned her. "I'm not advocating it, youunderstand, --I'm not defending it. I'm simply calling your attention tothe 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--tohave some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tellme--what a low beast I am--till I go down the steps again--the followingJune. "

"No, of course not, " conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she liftedher lovely eyes to his. "Father's like that!" she confided amiably. "Once a year, --just Easter Sunday only, --he always buys him a brand newsuit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to him, --Idon't know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk, --ohmad, fighting drunk is what I mean, and goes out and tries to tear upthe whole county. " Worriedly two black thoughts puckered between hereyebrows. "And always, " she said, "he makes Mother and me go up toHalifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It's pretty hardsometimes, " 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 againlike 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 thegrass. "Thank you very much!" she persisted courteously. "It's been veryinteresting! 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 telllike that--just between one eye-wink and another what he wanted aboutanything, --let alone marrying a perfect stranger. "

Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled. "I assure you, my dear younglady, " he retorted, "that I am entirely and completely accustomed todeciding between 'one wink and another' just exactly what it is that Iwant. Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people livingto-day who wouldn't be living, if it had taken me even as long as a winkand 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 SeniorSurgeon a bit grumpily. "And that's quite as much as most people have, Iassure you! 'A High School education or its equivalent, '--that is thehospital requirement, I believe?" he questioned tartly. 

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

"I don't mean at all to belittle your brains, " grinned the SeniorSurgeon in spite of himself. "Oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor! But yousee it isn't especially brains that I'm looking for! Really what I needmost, " he acknowledged frankly, "is an extra pair of hands to go withthe--brains I already possess!"

"Yes, I know, sir, " persisted the White Linen Nurse. "Yes, ofcourse, sir, " she conceded. "Yes, of course, sir, my handswork--awfully--well--with your face. But all the same, " she kindledsuddenly, "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--myfolks aren't like your folks! Oh, we're just as good as you--ofcourse--but we aren't as nice! Oh, we're not nice at all! Really andtruly we're not!" Desperately through her mind she rummaged up and downfor some one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argumentfor all time. "Why--my father--eats with his knife, " she assertedtriumphantly. 

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

Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of herfather'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 neverbe--cheeky! Oh, no, sir! No!"

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

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

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

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

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

"But I was engaged so long!" protested the White Linen Nurse. "Almostever 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 seemdecent. Not after being engaged--twenty years!" With a little helplessgesture of appeal she threw out her hands. "Oh, can't I make youunderstand, sir?"

"Why, of course, I understand, " said the Senior Surgeon briskly. "Youmean that you and John--"

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

With astonishing amiability the Senior Surgeon acknowledged thecorrection. "You mean, " he said, "you mean that you and--Joe--have beencradled together so familiarly all your babyhood that on your weddingnight you could most naturally have said 'Let me see--Joe, --it's twopillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double-fold of blanket atthe foot?' You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbedtogether so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identifyJoe's headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar acrosshis back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together sofamiliarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls calledJoe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory, --until a year orso ago, --Life has never once been just You and Life, but always You andLife and Joe? You and Spring and Joe, --You and Summer and Joe, --You andAutumn and Joe, --You and Winter and Joe, --till every conscious nerve inyour body has been so everlastingly Joed with Joe's Joeness that youdon't believe there 's any experience left in life powerful enough toeradicate 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 youseem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offermarriage to. Good, I say! I'm glad of it!"

"Even so--I don't want to, " said the White Linen Nurse. "Thank you verymuch, 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 marryanybody?"

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

An odd flicker twitched across the Senior Surgeon's face like a sob inthe 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'tmind, sir, " she cried, "I'll run down to the brook and get myself adrink of water!"

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

"No you don't!" he laughed, "till you've given me my definiteanswer--yes or no!"

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

Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon's jolted arms the Little Girl woke fromher feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk intoher 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. "Youdon't hold her right, sir!" she expostulated. Deftly with little soft, darting touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into her owntears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a buckle orthe dragging weight on a little cramped hip. 

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

"All the birds _were_ there, Father, " she droned forth feebly from hersweltering mink-fur nest. 

All the birds _were_ thereWith 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'sshoulder. "And bumble bees?--And bumble bees--?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake--'buzzed' in the trees!" interpolated the SeniorSurgeon. 

Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffenedsuddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time sweptaway by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the LittleGirl stared up agonizingly into her father's face. "Oh, I don'tthink--'buzzed' was the word!" she began convulsively. "Oh, I don'tthink--!"

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

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

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

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

Precipitously the White Linen Nurse sank back on her heels and began toclap 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 towring them nervously in her lap instead. "Why--will--will!" sheconfessed demurely. 

"Oh!" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "_Oh!"_ Then equally jerkily he beganto pucker his eyebrows. "But for Heaven's sake--what's the 'crochetedin the trees' got to do with it?" he asked perplexedly. 

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

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

"Well, I never thought I should marry a--trained nurse!" he acknowledgedwith somewhat hectic blitheness. 

Impulsively the White Linen Nurse reached for her watch and lifted itclose to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace creptsuddenly 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 auspiciousmonth. 

Indeed it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of Junethat the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardousadventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little crippleddaughter. 

The wedding was at noon in some kind of a gray granite church. And theSenior Surgeon was there, of course, --and the necessary witnesses. Butthe Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing--it provedlater, --to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressedher, concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-coloredstockings 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 veryhuge and distinguished, --and no more strikingly unhappy than anybridegroom looks in a gray granite church. 

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

Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom wentto a wonderful green and gold café all built of marble and lined withmusic, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is thatthey 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 WhiteLinen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy houseto find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoisecolored stockings. 

And the Senior Surgeon in a Canadian-bound train, just exactly like anyother Canadian-bound train, started off alone, --as usual, on his annualJune "spree. "

Please don't think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who wasresponsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding day. No indeed! The Senior Surgeon didn't _want_ to be married the first dayof June! He _said_ he didn't! He _growled_ he didn't! He _snarled_ hedidn't! He _swore_ he didn't! And when he finished saying and growlingand snarling and swearing, --and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for aconfirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectlyamiably and said, "Yes, sir!"

Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp of relief and announcedresonantly, "Well, it's all settled then? We'll be married some time inJuly, --after I get home from Canada?" And when the White Linen Nursekept on smiling perfectly amiably and said, "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, thankyou, sir! It wouldn't seem exactly legal to me to be married any othermonth but June!" Then the Senior Surgeon went absolutely dumb with ragethat this mere chit of a girl, --and a trained nurse, too, --should dareto thwart his personal and professional convenience. But the White LinenNurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed andblushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to--accommodateyou--sir, --and if June doesn't accommodate you--I'd rather go to Japanwith that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And itsails June second. " Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulismcase'!" the Senior Surgeon would protest. 

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

"But you can't get ready so soon!" he suggested at last with realtriumph. "You've no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to bemarried! 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 theWhite Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves themost--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 tohis. "Yes, sir, " she said, "and she looked as sick as a youngundertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her. "

"Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now, " he hastened tocontend. "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 bythe first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough tomake it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!"

A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through thepages of her memorandum book. "I've always had money enough to 'go slowand make things perfectly right, '" she confided a bit wistfully. "Neverin all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren't guaranteed, or adress that wouldn't wash, or a hat that wasn't worth at least threere-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going tohave enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if Iwanted to, --so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here's thiswall-paper now, "--tragically she pointed to some figuring in hernote-book--"it's got peacocks on it--life size--in a queen's garden--andI wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade! Maybe we'd gettired of it! Maybe it would poison us! Slam it on one week--and slash itoff the next! I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir! I thoughtmaybe--while you were way off in Canada--"

Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer tohis--fiancée'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 ofhis cuffs. 

"All this talk of yours--about wanting to be married the same day Istart off on my--Canadian trip!" he contended. "Why, it's all damnednonsense!"

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

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

"Why my--my dear girl, " he persisted. "It's absurd! It's outrageous! Whypeople 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 Iunderstand perfectly well the purely formal, business-like conditions ofour marriage, we must at least for sheer decency's sake keep up acertain semblance of marital conventionality--before the world! Why, ifwe were married at noon the first day of June--as you suggest, --and Ishould go right off alone as usual--on my Canadian trip--and you shouldcome back alone to the house--why, people would think--would think thatI 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 weretrying your--darndest--to get rid of me!"

"I am, " said the White Linen Nurse complacently. 

With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet andstood glaring down at her. 

Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare. 

"A gentleman--and a red-haired kiddie--and a great walloping house--allat once! It's too much!" she confided genially. "Thank you just thesame, but I'd rather take them gradually. First of all, sir, you see, I've got to teach the little kiddie to like me! And then there's agreen-tiled paper with floppity sea gulls on it--that I want to try forthe bath-room! And--and--" Ecstatically she clapped her hands together. "Oh, sir! There are such loads and loads of experiments I want to trywhile you are off on your spree!"

"S--h--h!" cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenlyblanched, --his mouth, twitching like the mouth of one stricken withalmost insupportable pain. "For God's sake, Miss Malgregor!" he pleaded, "can't you call it my--Canadian trip?"

Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him. 

"But it is a 'spree, ' sir!" she attested resolutely. "And my fathersays--" Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its originalassertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little bluesmile crept softly out. "When my father's got a lame trotting horse, sir, that he's trying to shuck off his hands, " she faltered, "he doesn'tever go round mournful-like with his head hanging--telling folks abouthis wonderful trotter that's just 'the littlest, teeniest, tiniestbit--lame. ' Oh no! What father does is to call up every one he knowswithin twenty miles and tell 'em, 'Say Tom, --Bill, --Harry, '--or whateverhis name is--'what in the deuce do you suppose I've got over here in mybarn? A lame horse--that wants to trot! Lamer than the deuce, you know!But can do a mile in 2. 40. '" Faintly the little blue smile quickenedagain in the White Linen Nurse's eyes. "And the barn will be full of menin half an hour!" she said. "Somehow nobody wants a trotter that's lame!But almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse--that's pluckyenough to trot!"

"What's the 'lame trotting horse' got to do with--me?" snarled theSenior Surgeon incisively. 

Darkly the White Linen Nurse's lashes fringed down across her cheeks. 

"Nothing much, " she said, "Only--"

"Only what?" demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than herealized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by hershoulders, and jerked her sharply round to the light. "Only _what?_" heinsisted peremptorily. 

Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his. "Only--my father says, "she confided obediently, "my father says if you've got a worsefoot--for Heaven's sake put it forward--and get it over with!

"So--I've _got_ to call it a 'spree'!" smiled the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause when I think of marrying a--_surgeon_--that goes off and getsdrunk every June--it--it scares me almost to my death! But--" Abruptlythe red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes. "But--when I think of marrying a--June drunk--that's got the grit topull up absolutely straight as a die and be a _surgeon_--all the other'leven months in the year--" Dartingly she bent down and kissed theSenior Surgeon's astonished wrist. "Oh, then I think you're perfectly_grand_!" she sobbed. 

Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor. 

"You're a--good little girl, Rae Malgregor, " he mumbled huskily. "A goodlittle girl. I truly believe you're the kind that will--see me through. "Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely inits turn resentment overtook the humiliation. "But I won't be married inJune!" he reasserted bombastically. "I won't! I won't! I won't! I tellyou I positively refuse to have a lot of damn fools speculating about myprivate affairs! Wondering why I didn't take you! Wondering why I didn'tstay home with you! I tell you I won't! I simply won't!"

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

With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal pacingof the floor. 

"Bully for you!" he said. "You mean then we'll be married some time inJuly after I get back from my--trip?"

"Oh, no, sir, " stammered the White Linen Nurse. 

"But Great Heavens!" shouted the Senior Surgeon. 

"Yes, sir, " the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamilyplanning out her wedding gown, her lips without the slightest consciouseffort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate"No, sir. "

"You're an idiot!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. 

A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of herreverie. "Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?" sheasked, with real concern. 

"Eh? What?" said the Senior Surgeon. 

"I mean--does Japan spot?" queried the White Linen Nurse. "Would it spota serge, I mean?"

"Oh, Hell with Japan!" jerked the Senior Surgeon. 

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

Now perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that theSenior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse _were_ married on the first dayof June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon wentoff alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how ithappened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the SeniorSurgeon's great, gloomy house, to find her brand new step-daughter stillscreaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now isperfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings. Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings!

But even a little child could explain the ensuing June! Oh, June wasperfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, bird-song, breeze, --riotingheadlong through the Land. Warm days sweet and lush as a green-housevapor! Crisp nights faintly metallic like the scent of stars!Hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street-corner! Even the Ash-Manflushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones!

Like two fairies who had sublet a giant's cave the White Linen Nurse andthe Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the SeniorSurgeon's gloomy old house. 

It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal, --square andbrown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brickwalls. Except for dusting the lilac bushes with the hose, and weeding afew rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three or fourscraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two bay-treeboxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But the house?Oh ye gods! All day long from morning till night, --but most particularlyfrom the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled back andforth till nary a guilty piece of black walnut furniture had escaped. All day long from morning till night, --but most particularly fromceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down step-laddersstripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings. 

When the White Linen Nurse wasn't busy renovating the big house--or thelittle step-daughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrotetwice. 

"Dear Dr. Faber, " the first letter said. 

 * * * * *

DEAR DR. FABER, How do you do? Thank you very much, for saying you didn't care what inthunder I did to the house. It looks _sweet_. I've put white flutterymuslin curtains most everywhere. And you've got a new solid-gold-lookingbed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have fixed up the mostscrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in the ell. Pink was wrongfor the front hall, but it cost me only $29. 00 to find out. And nowthat's settled for all time. 

I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happensevery day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of theladies was just selling soap, but I didn't buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies, --a silk one and a velvet one. Thesilk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I wasmore of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told her I was sorryfor that as you'd had one "lady" and it didn't work. Was that all right?But the other lady was nice. And I took her out in the kitchen with mewhile I was painting the woodwork, and right there in her white kidgloves she laughed and showed me how to mix the paint pearl gray. _She_was nice. It was your sister-in-law. 

I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I thought Iwould. It's fun being the biggest person in the house. Respectfullyyours, RAE MALGREGOR, --AS WAS. 

P. S. Oh, I hope it wasn't wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I wentto put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelt as though ithad been forgotten. --I threw it out. 

 * * * * *

It was this letter that drew the only definite message from theitinerant bridegroom. 

"Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets, " wrote the SeniorSurgeon quite briefly. "The 'thing' you threw out happened to be thecerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English Theologian!"

"Even so, --it was sour, " telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfectagony of remorse and humiliation. 

The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, andcost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars. Just impulsively the SeniorSurgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs, --atthat particular range. 

Very fortunately for this impulse the White Linen Nurse's second letterconcerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous to thehome. 

"Dear Dr. Faber, " the second letter ran. 

 * * * * *

DEAR DR. FABER, Somehow I don't seem to care so much just now about being the biggestperson in the house. Something awful has happened. Zillah Forsyth isdead. Really dead, I mean. And she died in great heroism. You rememberZillah Forsyth, don't you? She was one of my room-mates, --not the gooderone, you know, --not the swell, --that was Helene Churchill. But Zillah?Oh you know! Zillah was the one you sent out on that Fractured Elbowcase. It was a Yale student, you remember? And there was some troubleabout kissing, --and she got sent home? And now everybody's cryingbecause Zillah _can't_ kiss anybody any more! Isn't everything thelimit? Well, it wasn't a fractured Yale student she got sent out on thistime. If it had been, she might have been living yet. What they sent herout on this time was a Senile Dementia, --an old lady more than eightyyears old. And they were in a sanitarium or something like that. Andthere was a fire in the night. And the old lady just up and positivelyrefused to escape. And Zillah had to push her and shove her and yank herand carry her--out the window--along the gutters--round the chimneys. And the old lady bit Zillah right through the hand, --but Zillah wouldn'tlet go. And the old lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted watertank, --but Zillah wouldn't let go. And everybody hollered to Zillah tocut loose and save herself, --but Zillah wouldn't let go. And a wallfell, and everything, and oh, it was awful, --but Zillah never let go. And the old lady that wasn't any good to any one, --not even herself, gotsaved of course. But Zillah? Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir! We saw her atthe hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something. Oh, it wasawful! Not a thing about her that you'd know except just her greatsolemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white cotton, and herred mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a bandage. Oh it wasawful! But Zillah didn't seem to care so much. There was a new Internethere, --a Japanese, and I guess she was sort of taken with him. "Butmy God, Zillah, " I said, "_your_ life was worth more than that olddame's!"

"Shut your noise!" says Zillah. "It was my job. And there's no kickcoming. " Helene burst right out crying, she did. "Shut _your_ noise, too!" says Zillah, just as cool as you please. "Bah! There's other livesand other chances!"

"Oh, you do believe that now?" cries Helene. "Oh, you do believe thatnow, --what the Bible promises you?" That was when Zillah shrugged hershoulders so funny, --the little way she had. Gee, but her eyes were big!"I don't pretend to know--what--your old Bible says, " she choked. "Itwas--the Yale feller--who was tellin' me. "

That's all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny thatbrought on the hemorrhage. 

Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage, --Helene andI. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but after we gotthrough crying for that, Helene kept right on crying because shecouldn't understand why a brave girl like Zillah _had_ to be dead. Gee!But Helene takes things hard. Ladies do, I guess. 

I hope you're having a pleasant spree. 

Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living here atthe house with us just now. We use him so much it's truly a good dealmore convenient. And he's a real nice young fellow, and he plays thepiano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it seemed more neighborlyanyway. It's so large in the house at night, just now, and so creaky inthe garden. 

With kindest regards, good-by for now, from RAE. 

P. S. 

Don't tell your guide or _any one!_ But Helene sent Zillah's mother acheck for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own eyes. And allZillah asked for that day was just a little blue serge suit. It seemsshe'd promised her kid sister a little blue serge suit for July. And itsort of worried her. 

Helene sent the little blue serge suit too! And a hat! The hat hadbluebells on it. Do you think when you come home--if I haven't spent toomuch money on wall-papers--that I could have a blue hat with bluebellson it? Excuse me for bothering you--but you forgot to leave me enoughmoney. 

 * * * * *

It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth ofJune, that the Senior Surgeon received this second letter. 

It was Friday the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the SeniorSurgeon started homeward. 

Nobody looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon didn't. Heavily as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled out of hiscabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes appallingshadows circled. Behind his sunburn, --deeper than his tan, somethingsinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul. 

Yet the Senior Surgeon had been most blamelessly abed and asleep sincegriddle-cake time the previous evening. 

Only the mountains and the forest and the lake had been out all night. For seventy miles of Canadian wilderness only the mountains and theforest and the lake stood actually convicted of having been out allnight. Dank and white with its vaporous vigil the listless lake kindledwanly to the new day's breeze. Blue with cold a precipitous mountainpeak lurched craggedly home through a rift in the fog. Drenched withmist, bedraggled with dew, a green-feathered pine tree lay guzzlinginsatiably at a leaf-brown pool. Monotonous as a sob the waiting birchcanoe slosh-sloshed against the beach. 

There was no romantic smell of red roses in this June landscape. Justtobacco smoke, and the faint reminiscent fragrance of fried trout, andthe mournful, sizzling, pungent consciousness of a camp-fire quenchedfor a whole year with a tinful of wet coffee grounds. 

Gliding out cautiously into the lake as though the mere splash of apaddle might shatter the whole glassy surface, the Indian Guidepropounded the question that was uppermost in his mind. 

"Cutting your trip a bit short this year, --ain't you, Boss?" quizzed theIndian guide. 

Out from his muffling mackinaw collar the Senior Surgeon parried thequestion with an amazingly novel sense of embarrassment. 

"Oh, I don't know, " he answered with studied lightness. "There are oneor two things at home that are bothering me a little. "

"A woman, eh?" said the Indian Guide laconically. 

"A woman?" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "A--woman? Oh, ye gods! No!It's wall paper!"

Then suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of his passionate refutationthe Senior Surgeon burst out laughing, --boisterously, hilariously like acrazy school-boy. Bluntly from an overhanging ledge of rock the echo ofhis laugh came mocking back at him. Down from some unvisioned mountainfastness the echo of that echo came wafting faintly to him. 

The Senior Surgeon's laugh was made of teeth and tongue and palate and apurely convulsive physical impulse. But the echo's laugh was a phantasyof mist and dawn and inestimable balsam-scented spaces where littlegreen ferns and little brown beasties and soft-breasted birdlingsfrolicked eternally in pristine sweetness. 

Seven miles further down the lake, at the beginning of the rapids, theIndian Guide spoke again. Racking the canoe between tworocks, --paddling, panting, pushing, sweating, the Indian Guide liftedhis voice high, --piercing, above the swirling roar of waters. 

"Eh, Boss!" shouted the Indian Guide. "I ain't never heard you laughbefore!"

Neither man spoke again more than once or twice during the long, strenuous hours that were left to them. 

The Indian Guide was very busy in his stolid mind trying to figure outjust how many rows of potatoes could be planted fruitfully between hisfront door and his cow-shed. I don't know what the Senior Surgeon wastrying to figure out. 

It was just four days later from a rolling, musty-cushioned hack thatthe Senior Surgeon disembarked at his own front gate. 

Even though a man likes home no better than he likes--tea, few men woulddeny the soothing effect of home at the end of a long fussy railroadjourney. Five o'clock, also, of a late June afternoon is a peculiarlywonderful time to be arriving home, --especially if that home has agarden around it so that you are thereby not rushed precipitously uponthe house itself, as upon a cup without a saucer, but can toy visuallywith the whole effect before you quench your thirst with the actualdraught. 

Very, very deliberately, with his clumsy rod-case in one hand, and hisheavy grip in the other, the Senior Surgeon started up the long, broadgravel path to the house. For a man walking as slow as he was, his heartwas beating most extraordinarily fast. He was not accustomed toheart-palpitation. The symptom worried him a trifle. Incidentally alsohis lungs felt strangely stifled with the scent of June. Close at hisright an effulgent white and gold syringa bush flaunted its cloyingsweetness into his senses. Close at his left a riotous bloom of phloxclamored red-blue-purple-lavender-pink into his dazzled vision. Multi-colored pansies tiptoed velvet-footed across the grass. In softmurky mystery a flame-tinted smoke tree loomed up here and there like afaintly rouged ghost. Over everything, under everything, througheverything, lurked a certain strange, novel, vibrating consciousness of_occupancy_. Bees in the rose bushes! Bobolinks in the trees! A woman'swork-basket in the curve of the hammock! A doll's tea set sprawlingcheerfully in the middle of the broad gravel path!

It was not until the Senior Surgeon had actually stepped into the tinycream pitcher that he noticed the presence of the doll's tea set. 

It was what the Senior Surgeon said as he stepped out of the creampitcher that summoned the amazing apparition from a ragged green hole inthe privet hedge. Startlingly white, startlingly professional, --dress, cap, apron and all, --a miniature white linen nurse sprang suddenly outat him like a tricky dwarf in a moving picture show. Just at thatparticular moment the Senior Surgeon's nerves were in no condition towrestle with apparitions. Simultaneously as the clumsy rod-case droppedfrom his hand, the expression of enthusiasm dropped from the face of theminiature white linen nurse. 

"Oh, dear--oh, dear--oh, dear! Have _you_ come home?" wailed thefamiliar, shrill little voice. 

Sheepishly the Senior Surgeon picked up his rod-case. The noises in hishead were crashing like cracked bells. Desperately with a boisterousirritability he sought to cover also the lurching pound-pound-pound ofhis heart. 

"What in Hell are you rigged out like that for?" he demanded stormily. 

With equal storminess the Little Girl protested the question. 

"Peach said I could!" she attested passionately. "Peach said I could!She did! She did! I tell you I didn't want her to marry us--that day! Iwas afraid, I was! I cried, I did! I had a convulsion! They thought itwas stockings! So Peach said if it would make me feel any gooderer, Icould be the cruel new step-mother. And she'd be the unlovedoffspring--with her hair braided all yellow fluffikins down her back!"

"Where _is_--Miss Malgregor?" asked the Senior Surgeon sharply. 

Irrelevantly the Little Girl sank down on the gravel walk and began togather up her scattered dishes. 

"And it's fun to go to bed--now, " she confided amiably. "'Cause everynight I put Peach to bed at eight o'clock and she's so naughty always Ihave to stay with her! And then all of a sudden it's morning--like goingthrough a black room without knowing it!"

"I said--where _is_ Miss Malgregor?" repeated the Senior Surgeon withincreasing sharpness. 

Thriftily the Little Girl bent down to lap a bubble of cream from thebroken pitcher. 

"Oh, she's out in the summer house with the Wall Paper Man, " she mumbledindifferently. 

CHAPTER IX

Altogether jerkily the Senior Surgeon started up the walk for his ownperfectly formal and respectable brown stone mansion. Deep down in hislurching heart he felt a sudden most inordinate desire to reach thatbrown stone mansion just as quickly as possible. But abruptly even tohimself he swerved off instead at the yellow sassafras tree and plungedquite wildly through a mass of broken sods towards the rickety, no-account cedar summer house. 

Startled by the crackle and thud of his approach the two young figuresin the summer house jumped precipitously to their feet, and limplyuntwining their arms from each other's necks stood surveying the SeniorSurgeon in unspeakable consternation, --the White Linen Nurse and a blueoveralled lad most unconscionably mated in radiant youth and agonizedconfusion. 

"Oh, my Lord, Sir!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Oh, my Lord, Sir! Iwasn't looking for _you_--for another week!"

"Evidently not!" said the Senior Surgeon incisively. "This is the secondtime this evening that I've been led to infer that my home-coming wasdistinctly inopportune!"

Very slowly, very methodically, he put down first his precious rod-caseand then his grip. His brain seemed fairly foaming with blood andconfusion. Along the swelling veins of his arms a dozen primitiveinstincts went surging to his fists. 

Then quite brazenly before his eyes the White Linen Nurse reached outand took the lad's hand again. 

"Oh, forgive me, Dr. Faber!" she faltered. "This is my brother!"

"Your _brother?--what?--eh?_" choked the Senior Surgeon. Bluntly hereached out and crushed the young fellow's fingers in his own. "Glad tosee you, Son!" he muttered with a sickish sort of grin, and turningabruptly, picked up his baggage again and started for the big house. 

Half a step behind him his White Linen Bride followed softly. 

At the edge of the piazza he turned for an instant and eyed her a bitquizzically. With her big credulous blue eyes, and her great mop ofyellow hair braided childishly down her back, she looked inestimablymore juvenile and innocent than his own little shrewd-faced six-year-oldwhom he had just left domestically ensconced in the middle of the broadgravel path. 

"For Heaven's sake, Miss Malgregor, " he asked. "For Heaven's sake--whydidn't you tell me that the Wall Paper Man was your--brother?"

Very contritely the White Linen Nurse's chin went burrowing down intothe soft collar of her dress and as bashfully as a child one fingercame stealing up to the edge of her red, red lips. 

"I was afraid you'd think I was--cheeky--having any of my family comeand live with us--so soon, " she murmured almost inaudibly. 

"Well, what did you think I'd think you were--if he wasn't yourbrother?" asked the Senior Surgeon sardonically. 

"Very--economical, I hoped!" beamed the White Linen Nurse. 

"All the same!" snapped the Senior Surgeon, with an irrelevancesurprising even to himself. "All the same do you think it sounds quiteright and proper for a child to call her--step-mother--'Peach'?"

Again the White Linen Nurse's chin went burrowing down into thesoft collar of her dress. "I don't suppose it is--usual, " sheadmitted reluctantly. "The children next door, I notice, calltheirs--'Cross-Patch. '"

With a gesture of impatience the Senior Surgeon proceeded up thesteps, --yanked open the old-fashioned shuttered door, and burst quitebreathlessly and unprepared upon his most amazingly reconstructedhouse. All in one single second chintzes, --muslins, --pale blondemaples, --riotous canary birds, --stormed revolutionary upon his outragedeyes. Reeling back utterly aghast before the sight, he stood therestaring dumbly for an instant at what he considered, --and rightlytoo, --the absolute wreck of his black walnut home. 

"It looks like--Hell!" he muttered feebly. 

"Yes, _isn't_ it sweet?" conceded the White Linen Nurse withunmistakable joyousness. "And your library--" Triumphantly she threwback the door to his grim work-shop. 

"Good God!" stammered the Senior Surgeon. "You've made it--pink!"

Rapturously the White Linen Nurse began to clasp and unclasp her hands. "I knew you'd love it!" she said. 

Half dazed with bewilderment the Senior Surgeon started to brush animaginary haze from his eyes but paused mid-way in the gesture andpointed back instead to a dapper little hall-table that seemed to beexhausting its entire blonde strength in holding up a slender green vasewith a single pink rose in it. Like a caged animal buffeting for escapeagainst each successive bar that incased it, the man's frenziedirritation hurled itself hopefully against this one more chance forexplosive exit. 

"What--have--you--done--with the big--black--escritoire thatstood--there?" he demanded accusingly. 

"Escritoire?--Escritoire?" worried the White Linen Nurse. "Why--why--I'mafraid I must have mislaid it. "

"Mislaid it?" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "Mislaid it? It weighedthree hundred pounds!"

"Oh, it did?" questioned the White Linen Nurse with great, blue-eyedinterest. Still mulling apparently over the fascinating weight of theescritoire she climbed up suddenly into a chair and with the fluffybroom-shaped end of her extraordinarily long braid of hair went anglingwildy off into space after an illusive cobweb. 

Faster and faster the Senior Surgeon's temper began to search for a newpoint of exit. 

"What do you suppose the--servants think of you?" he stormed. "Runninground like that with your hair in a pig-tail like a--kid?"

"Servants?" cooed the White Linen Nurse. "Servants?" Very quietly shejumped down from the chair and came and stood looking up into the SeniorSurgeon's hectic face. "Why, there aren't any servants, " she explainedpatiently. "I've dismissed every one of them. We're doing our own worknow!"

"Doing 'our own work'?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. 

Quite worriedly the White Linen Nurse stepped back a little. "Why, wasn't that right?" she pleaded. "Wasn't it right? Why, I thought peoplealways did their own work when they were first married!" With suddenapprehensiveness she glanced round over her shoulder at the hall clock, and darting out through a side door, returned almost instantly with afierce-looking knife. 

"I'm so late now and everything, " she confided. "Could you peel thepotatoes for me?"

"No, I couldn't!" said the Senior Surgeon shortly. Equally shortly heturned on his heel, and reaching out once more for his rod-case and gripwent on up the stairs to his own room. 

One of the pleasantest things about arriving home very late in theafternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room whileother people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the wholetwenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as thesound of other people getting supper. 

Stretched out full length in a big easy chair by his bed-room window, with his favorite pipe bubbling rhythmically between his gleamingwhite teeth, the Senior Surgeon studied his new "solid gold bed" andhis new sage green wall-paper and his new dust-colored rug, to thefaint, far-away accompaniment of soft thudding feet, and a girl'slaugh, and a child's prattle, and the tink-tink-tinkle ofglass, --china, --silver, --all scurrying consciously to the serviceof one man, --and that man, --_himself_. 

Very, very slowly, in that special half hour an inscrutable little smileprinted itself experimentally across the right hand corner of theSenior Surgeon's upper lip. 

While that smile was still in its infancy he jumped up suddenly andforced his way across the hall to his dead wife's room, --the oneghost-room of his house and his life, --and there with his hand on theturning door knob, --tense with reluctance, --goose-fleshed withstrain, --his breath gasped out of him whether or no with the oneword--"Alice!"

And behold! There was no room there!

Lurching back from the threshold, as from the brink of an elevator well, the Senior Surgeon found himself staring foolishly into a most sumptuouslinen closet, tiered like an Aztec cliff with home after home forpleasant prosy blankets, and gaily fringed towels, and cheerful whitesheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender. Tiptoeingcautiously into the mystery he sensed at one astonished, grateful glancehow the change of a partition, the re-adjustment of a proportion, hadpurged like a draft of fresh air the stale gloom of an ill-favoredmemory. Yet so inevitable did it suddenly seem for a linen closet to bebuilt right there, --so inevitable did it suddenly seem for the child'smeager play-room to be enlarged just there, that to save his soul hecould not estimate whether the happy plan had originated in a purelypractical brain or a purely compassionate heart. 

Half proud of the brain, half touched by the heart, he passed onexploringly through the new play-room out into the hall again. 

Quite distinctly now through the aperture of the back stairs the kitchenvoices came wafting up to him. 

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" wailed his Little Girl's peevish voice. "Nowthat--that Man's come back again--I suppose we'll have to eat in thedining-room--all the time!"

"'That Man' happens to be your darling father!" admonished the WhiteLinen Nurse's laughing voice. 

"Even so, " wailed the Little Girl, "I love you best. "

"Even so, " laughed the White Linen Nurse, "I love _you_ best!"

"Just the same, " cried the Little Girl shrilly, "just the same--let'sput the cream pitcher way up high somewhere--so he can't step in it!"

As though from a head tilted suddenly backward the White Linen Nurse'slaugh rang out in joyous abandon. 

Impulsively the Senior Surgeon started to grin. Then equally impulsivelythe grin soured on his lips. So they thought he was clumsy? Eh?Resentfully he stared down at his hands, --those wonderfullydexterous, --yes, ambidexterous hands that were the aching envy of allhis colleagues. Interruptingly as he stared the voice of the young WallPaper Man rose buoyantly from the lower hallway. 

"Supper's all ready, sir!" called the cordial voice. 

For some inexplainable reason, at that particular moment, almost nothingin the world could have irritated the Senior Surgeon more keenly than tobe invited to his own supper, --in his own house, --by a stranger. Fumingwith a new sense of injury and injustice he started heavily down thestairs to the dining-room. 

Standing patiently behind the Senior Surgeon's chair with a laudabledesire to assist his carving in any possible emergency that might occur, the White Linen Nurse experienced her first direct marital rebuff. 

"What do you think this is? An autopsy?" demanded the Senior Surgeontartly. "For Heaven's sake--sit down!"

Quite meekly the White Linen Nurse subsided into her place. 

The meal that ensued could hardly have been called a success though theroom was entrancing, --the cloth, snow-white--the silver, radiant, --theguinea chicken beyond reproach. 

Swept and garnished to an alarming degree the young Wall Paper Manpresided over the gravy and did his uttermost, innocent country-best tomake the Senior Surgeon feel perfectly at home. 

Conscientiously, as in the presence of a distinguished stranger, theLittle Crippled Girl most palpably from time to time repressed herinsatiable desire to build a towering pyramid out of all the salt andpepper shakers she could reach. 

Once when the young Wall Paper Man forgot himself to the extent ofputting his knife in his mouth, the White Linen Nurse jarred the wholetable with the violence of her warning kick. 

Once when the Little Crippled Girl piped out impulsively, "Say, Peach, --what was the name of that bantam your father used to fightagainst the minister's bantam?" the White Linen Nurse choked piteouslyover her food. 

Twice some one spoke about this year's weather. 

Twice some one volunteered an illuminating remark about last year'sweather. 

Except for these four diversions restraint indescribable hung like ahorrid pall over the feast. 

Next to feeling unwelcome in your friend's house, nothing certainly ismore wretchedly disconcerting than to feel unwelcome in your own house!

Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to grab up all the knives within reachand ram them successively into his own mouth just to prove to the youngWall Paper Man what a--what a devil of a good fellow he was himself!Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to tell the White Linen Nurse about thepet bantam of his own boyhood days--that he bet a dollar could lick anybantam her father ever dreamed of owning! Grimly the Senior Surgeonlonged to talk dolls, --dishes, --kittens, --yes, even cream pitchers, tohis Little Daughter, to talk anything in fact--to _any one_, --totalk--sing--shout _anything_--that should make him, at least for thetime being, one at heart, one at head, one at table, with thisastonishingly offish bunch of youngsters!

But grimly instead, --out of his frazzled nerves, --out of his innatespiritual bashfulness, he merely roared forth, "Where are the potatoes?"

"Potatoes?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Potatoes? Oh, potatoes?" shefinished more blithely. "Why, yes, of course! Don't you remember--youdidn't have time to peel them for me? I was so disappointed!"

"You were so disappointed?" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "You?--you?"

Janglingly the Little Crippled Girl knelt right up in her chair andshook her tiny fist right in her father's face. 

"Now, Lendicott Paber!" she screamed. "Don't you start in--sassing--mydarling little Peach!"

"_Peach?_" snorted the Senior Surgeon. With almost supernatural calm heput down his knife and fork and eyed his offspring with an expression ofabsolutely inflexible purpose. "Don't you--ever, " he warned her, "ever--ever--let me hear you call--this woman 'Peach' again!"

A trifle faint-heartedly the Little Crippled Girl reached up andstraightened her absurdly diminutive little white cap, and pursed herlittle mouth as nearly as possible into an expression of ineffablepeace. 

"Why--Lendicott Faber!" she persisted heroically. 

"_Lendicott?_" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "What are_you_--'Lendicotting' _me_ for?"

Hilariously with her own knife and fork the Little Crippled Girl beganto beat upon the table. 

"Why, you dear Silly!" she cried. "Why, if I'm the new Marma, I've gotto call you 'Lendicott'! And Peach has got to call you 'Fat Father'!"

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair, and jumped to hisfeet. The expression on his face was neither smile nor frown, nor warnor peace, nor any other human expression that had ever puckered therebefore. 

"God!" he said. "This gives me the _willies_!" and strode tempestuouslyfrom the room. 

Out in his own work-shop fortunately, --whatever the grotesque newpinkness, --whatever the grotesque new perkiness--his great freewalking-spaces had not been interfered with. Slamming his doortriumphantly behind him, he resumed once more the monotonouspace-pace-pace that had characterized for eighteen years his firstnight's return to--the obligations of civilization. 

Sharply around the corner of his old battered desk the little pathstarted, --wanly along the edge of his dingy book-shelves the little pathfurrowed, --wistfully at the deep bay-window where his favorite lilacbush budded whitely for his departure, and rusted brownly for hisreturn, the little path faltered, --and went on again, --on and on andon, --into the alcove where his instruments glistened, --up to thefireplace where his college trophy-cups tarnished! Listlessly the SeniorSurgeon re-commenced his yearly vigil. Up and down, --up and down, --roundand round, --on and on and on, --through interminable dusks tounattainable dawns, --a glutted, bacchanalian Soul sweating its own wayback to sanctity and leanness! Nerves always were in that vigil, --raw, rattling nerves clamoring vociferously to be repacked in theirsedatives. Thirst also was in that vigil, --no mere whimpering tickle ofthe palate, but a drought of the tissues, --a consuming fire of thebones! Hurt pride was also there, and festering humiliation!

But more rasping, this particular night, than nerves, more poignant thanthirst, more dangerously excitative even than remorse, hunger rioted inhim, --hunger, the one worst enemy of the Senior Surgeon's cause, --thesimple, silly, no-account, --gnawing, --drink-provocative hunger of anempty stomach. And 'one other hunger was also there, --a sudden fiercenew lust for Life and Living, --a passion bare of love yet pure ofwantonness, --a passion primitive, --protective, --inexorablyproprietary, --engendered strangely in that one mad, suspicious moment atthe edge of the summer house when every outraged male instinct in himhad leaped to prove that--love or no love--the woman was--_his_. Up anddown, --up and down, --round and round, --eight o'clock found the SeniorSurgeon still pacing. 

At half past eight the young Wall Paper Man came to say good-by to him. 

"As long as Sister won't be alone any more, I guess I'll be moving on, "beamed the Wall Paper Man. "There's a dance at home Saturday night. AndI've got a girl of my own!" he confided genially. 

"Come again, " urged the Senior Surgeon. "Come again when you can staylonger!"

With one honest prayer in stock, and at least two purely automaticsocial speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder altogetherhopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. Thus with nomore mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the SeniorSurgeon then resumed his bitter-thoughted pacing. 

At nine o'clock, however, --patroling his long rangy book-shelves, hesensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, thesoft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter'stemperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse'sfervid pleading, "Oh, you must, --you must!" and the Little Girl'smumbled ultimatum, "Well, I won't unless _you_ do!"

Irascibly he crossed the room and yanked the door open abruptly upontheir surprise and confusion. His nerves were very sore. 

"What in thunder do you want?" he snarled. 

Nervously for an instant the White Linen Nurse tugged at the LittleGirl's hand. Nervously for an instant the Little Girl tugged at theWhite Linen Nurse's hand. Then with a swallow like a sob the White LinenNurse lifted her glowing face to his. 

"K--kiss us good night!" said the White Linen Nurse. 

Telescopically all in that startling second, vision after vision beatdown like blows upon the Senior Surgeon's senses! The pink, pink flushof the girl! The lure of her! The amazing sweetness! The physicaldocility! Oh ye gods, --the docility! Every trend of her birth, --of heryouth, --of her training, --forcing her now--if he chose it--tounquestioning submission to his will and his judgment! Faster and fasterthe temptation surged through his pulses! The path from her lips to herear was such a little path, --the plea so quick to make, so short, --"Iwant you _now!_"

"K--kiss us good night!" urged the Big Girl's unsuspecting lips. "Kissus good night!" mocked the Little Girl's tremulous echo. 

Then explosively with the noblest rudeness of his life, "No, I _won't!_"said the Senior Surgeon, and slammed the door in their faces. 

Falteringly up the stairs he heard the two ascending, --speechless withsurprise, perhaps, --stunned by his roughness, --still hand in hand, probably, --still climbing slowly bed-ward, --the soft, smooth, patientfootfall of the White Linen Nurse and the jerky, laboriousclang-clang-clang of a little dragging iron-braced leg. 

Up and down, --round and round, --on and on and on, --the Senior Surgeonresumed his pacing. Under his eyes great shadows darkened. Along thecorners of his mouth the lines furrowed like gray scars. Up anddown, --round and round, --on and on and on--and on!

At ten o'clock, sitting bolt upright in her bed with her worried eyesstraining bluely out across the Little Girl's somnolent form intounfathomable darkness, the White Linen Nurse in the throb of her ownheart began to keep pace with that faint, horrid thud-thud-thud in theroom below. Was he passing the book-case now? Had he reached thebay-window? Was he dawdling over those glistening scalpels? Would hisnerves remember the flask in that upper desk drawer? Up and down, --roundand round, --on and on, --the harrowing sound continued. 

Resolutely at last she scrambled out of her snug nest, and hurrying intoher great warm, pussy-gray wrapper began at once very practically, veryunemotionally, with matches and alcohol and a shiny glass jar to preparea huge steaming cup of malted milk. Beef-steak was infinitely better, she knew, or eggs, of course, but if she should venture forth to thekitchen for real substantiate the Senior Surgeon, she felt quitepositive, would almost certainly hear her and stop her. So verystealthily thus like the proverbial assassin she crept down the frontstairs with the innocent malted milk cup in her hand, and then with herknuckles just on the verge of rapping against the grimly inhospitabledoor, went suddenly paralyzed with uncertainty whether to advance orretreat. 

Once again through the sombre inert wainscoting, exactly as if a soulhad creaked, the Senior Surgeon sensed the threatening, intrusivepresence of an unseen personality. Once again he strode across the roomand jerked the door open with terrifying anger and resentment. 

As though frozen there on his threshold by Her own little bare feet, --asthough strangled there in his doorway by her own great mop of goldenhair, --stolid and dumb as a pink-cheeked graven image the White LinenNurse thrust the cup out awkwardly at him. 

Absolutely without comment, as though she trotted on purely professionalbusiness and the case involved was of mutual concern to them both, theSenior Surgeon took the cup from her hand and closed the door again inher face. 

At eleven o'clock she came again, --just as pink, --just as blue, --just asgray, --just as golden. And the cup of malted milk she brought with herwas just as huge, --just as hot, --just as steaming, --only this time shehad smuggled two raw eggs into it. 

Once more the Senior Surgeon took the cup without comment and shut thedoor in her face. 

At twelve o'clock she came again. The Senior Surgeon was unusuallyloquacious this time. 

"Have you any more malted milk?" he asked tersely. 

"Oh, yes, sir!" beamed the White Linen Nurse. 

"Go and get it!" said the Senior Surgeon. 

Obediently the White Linen Nurse pattered up the stairs and returnedwith the half depleted bottle. Frankly interested she recrossed thethreshold of the room and delivered her glass treasure into the hands ofthe Senior Surgeon as he stood by his desk. Raising herself to hertiptoes she noted with eminent satisfaction that the three big cups onthe other side of the desk had all been drained to their dregs. 

Then very bluntly before her eyes the Senior Surgeon took the maltedmilk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly intohis waste basket. Then equally bluntly he took the White Linen Nurse bythe shoulders and marched her out of the room. 

"For God's sake!" he said, "get out of this room! And stay out!"

_Bang_! the big door slammed behind her. Like a snarling fang the lockbit into its catch. 

"Yes, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse. Even just to herself--all alonethere in the big black hall, she was perfectly polite. "Y-e-s, sir, " sherepeated softly. 

With a slightly sardonic grin on his face the Senior Surgeon resumed hispacing. Up and down, --round and round, --on and on and on!

At one o'clock in the dull, clammy chill of earliest morning he stoppedlong enough to light his hearthfire. 

At two o'clock he stopped again to pile on a trifle more wood. 

At three o'clock he dallied for an instant to close a window. The newday seemed strangely cold. 

At four o'clock, dawn the wonder, --the miracle, --the long despairedof, --quickened wanly across the East. Then suddenly, --more like aphosphorescent breeze than a glow, the pale, pale yellow sunshine camewafting through the green gloom of the garden. The vigil was over!

Stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the newbeginning, the Senior Surgeon almost tripped and fell over the WhiteLinen Nurse sitting all huddled up and drowsy-eyed in a little gray heapon his outer threshold. The sensation of stepping upon a human body isnot a pleasant one. It smote the Senior Surgeon nauseously through thenerves of his stomach. 

"What are you doing here?" he fairly screamed at her. 

"Just keeping you company, sir, " yawned the White Linen Nurse. Beforeher hand could reach her mouth again another great childish yawnoverwhelmed her. "Just--watching with you, sir, " she finished more orless inarticulately. 

"Watching with--me?" snarled the Senior Surgeon resentfully. "Why--should--you--watch--with--me?"

Like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping downacross the pink cheeks and lifted as suddenly again. "Because you'remy--_man!_" yawned the White Linen Nurse. 

Almost roughly the Senior Surgeon reached down and pulled the WhiteLinen Nurse to her feet. 

"God!" said the Senior Surgeon. In his strained, husky voice the wordsounded like an oath. Grotesquely a little smile went scudding zig-zagacross his haggard face. With an impulse absolutely alien to him hereached out abruptly again and raised the White Linen Nurse's hand tohis lips. "_'Good_ God' was what I meant--Miss Malgregor!" he grinned abit sheepishly. 

Quite bruskly then he turned and looked at his watch. 

"I'd like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it!" heordered peremptorily, --in his own morbid pathological emergency no morestopping to consider the White Linen Nurse's purely normal fatigue, thanhe in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to considerhis own comfort, --safety, --or even perhaps, life!

Joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose, he went swinging up thestairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great, splashing, cold shower-bath. 

Only one thing seemed to really trouble him now. At the top of thestairs he stopped for an instant and cocked his head a bit worriedlytowards the drawing-room where from some slow-brightening alcovebird-carol after bird-carol went fluting shrilly up into the morning. 

"Is that--those blasted canaries?" he asked briefly. 

Very companionably the White Linen Nurse cocked her own towsled head onone side and listened with him for half a moment. 

"Only four of them are blasted canaries, " she corrected very gently. "The fifth one is a paroquet that I got at a mark-down because it was awidowed bird and wouldn't mate again. "

"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. 

"Yes, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse and started for the kitchen. 

No one but the Senior Surgeon himself breakfasted in state at fiveo'clock that morning. Snug and safe in her crib upstairs the LittleCrippled Girl slumbered peacefully on through the general disturbance. And as for the White Linen Nurse herself, --what with chilling andrechilling melons, --and broiling and unbroiling steaks, --and making andremaking coffee, --and hunting frantically for a different-sized waterglass, --or a prettier colored plate, there was no time for anythingexcept an occasional hurried surreptitious nibble half way between thestove and the table. 

Yet in all that raucous early morning hour together neither man nor girlsuffered towards the other the slightest personal sense of contrition orresentment, for each mind was trained equally fairly, --whether reactingon its own case or another's--to differentiate pretty readily betweenmean nerves and a--mean spirit. 

Only once in fact across the intervening chasm of crankiness did theSenior Surgeon hurl a smile that was even remotely self-conscious orconciliatory. Glancing up suddenly from a particularly sharp anddisagreeable speech, he noted the White Linen Nurse's red lips mumblingsoftly one to the other. 

"Are you specially--religious, --Miss Malgregor?" he grinned quiteabruptly. 

"No, not specially, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse. "Why, sir?"

"Oh, it 's only--" grinned the Senior Surgeon dourly, "it's only thatevery time I'm especially ugly to you, I see your lips moving as thoughin 'silent prayer' as they call it--and I was just wondering--if therewas any special formula you used with me--that kept youso--everlastingly--damned serene. Is there?"

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

"What is it?" demanded the Senior Surgeon quite bluntly. 

"Do I have to tell?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. A little tremulouslyin her hand the empty cup she was carrying rattled against its saucer. "Do I have to tell?" she repeated pleadingly. 

A delirious little thrill of power went fluttering through the SeniorSurgeon's heart. 

"Yes, you have to tell me!" he announced quite seriously. 

In absolute submission to his demand, though with very palpablereluctance, the White Linen Nurse came forward to the table, put downthe cup and saucer, and began to finger a trifle nervously at the cloth. 

"Oh, I'm sure I didn't mean any harm, sir, " she stammered. "But all Isay is, --honest and truly all I say is, --'Bah! He's nothing but aman--nothing but a man--nothing but a man!' over and over andover, --just that, sir!"

Uproariously the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair, and jumped to hisfeet. 

"I guess after all I'll have to let the little kid callyou--'Peach'--one day a week!" he acknowledged jocosely. 

With infinite seriousness then he tossed back his great splendidhead, --shook himself free apparently from all unhappy memories, --andstarted for his work-room, --a great gorgeously vital, extraordinarilytalented, gray-haired _boy_ lusting joyously for his own work and playagain--after a month's distressing illness!

From the edge of the hall he turned round and made a really boyishgrimace at her. 

"Now if I only had the horns or the cloven hoof--that you think I have, "he called, "what an easy time I'd make of it, raking over all theletters and ads. That are stacked up on my desk!"

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

Only once did he come back into the kitchen or dining-room for anything. It was at seven o'clock. And the White Linen Nurse was still washingdishes. 

As radiant as a gray-haired god he towered up in the doorway. The boyishrejuvenation in him was even more startling than before. 

"I'm feeling so much like a fighting cock this morning, " he said, "Ithink I'll tackle that paper on surgical diseases of the pancreas that Ihave to read at Baltimore next month!" A little startlingly the graylines furrowed into his cheeks again. "For Heaven's sake--see that I'mnot disturbed by anything!" he admonished her warningly. 

It must have been almost eight o'clock when the ear-splitting screamfrom upstairs sent the White Linen Nurse plunging out panic-strickeninto the hall. 

"Oh, Peach! Peach!" yelled the Little Girl's frenzied voice. "Come quickand see--what Fat Father's doing _now_--out on the piazza!"

Jerkily the White Linen Nurse swerved off through the French door thatopened directly on the piazza. Had the Senior Surgeon hung himself, shetortured, in some wild, temporary aberration of the "morning after"?

But staunchly and reassuringly from the further end of the _piazza_ theSenior Surgeon's broad back belied her horrid terror. Quite prosily andin apparently perfect health he was standing close to the railing of thepiazza. On a table directly beside him rested four empty bird cages. Just at that particular moment he was inordinately busy releasing thelast canary from the fifth cage. Both hands were smouched with ink andbehind his left ear a fountain pen dallied daringly. 

At the very first sound of the White Linen Nurse's step the SeniorSurgeon turned and faced her with a sheepish sort of defiance. 

"Well, now, I imagine, " he said, "well, now, I imagine I've really madeyou--mad!"

"No, not mad, sir, " faltered the White Linen Nurse. "No, not mad, sir, --but very far from well. " Coaxingly with a perfectly futile handshe tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swayingyellow bush. "Why, they'll die, sir!" she protested. "Savage cats willget them!"

"It's a choice of their lives--or mine!" said the Senior Surgeontersely. 

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

Quite snappishly the Senior Surgeon turned upon her. "For Heaven'ssake--do you think--canary birds are more valuable than I am?" hedemanded stentoriously. 

Most disconcertingly before his glowering eyes a great, sad, round tearrolled suddenly down the White Linen Nurse's flushed cheek. 

"N--o, --not more valuable, " conceded the White Linen Nurse. "Butmore--c-cunning. "

Up to the roots of the Senior Surgeon's hair a flush of real contritionspread hotly. 

"Why--Rae!" he stammered. "Why, what a beast I am! Why--! Why!" Insincere perplexity he began to rack his brains for some adequateexcuse, --some adequate explanation. "Why, I'm sure I didn't mean to makeyou feel badly, " he persisted. "Only I've lived alone so long that Isuppose I've just naturally drifted into the way of having a thing if Iwanted it and--throwing it away if I didn't! And canary birds, now?Well--really--" he began to glower all over again. "Oh, thunder!" hefinished abruptly, "I guess I'll go on down to the hospital where Ibelong!"

A little wistfully the White Linen Nurse stepped forward. "Thehospital?" she said. "Oh, --the hospital? Do you think that perhaps youcould come home a little bit earlier than usual--to-night--and--and helpme catch--just one of the canaries?"

"What?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. Incredulously with a very inky fingerhe pointed at his own breast. "What? I?" he demanded. "I? Comehome--early--from the hospital to help--you--catch a canary?"

Disgustedly without further comment he turned and stalked back againinto the house. 

The disgust was still in his walk as he left the house an hour later. Watching his exit down the long gravel path the Little Crippled Girlcommented audibly on the matter. 

"Peach! Peach!" called the Little Crippled Girl. "What makes Fat Fatherwalk so--surprised?"

People at the hospital also commented upon him. 

"Gee!" giggled the new nurses. "We bet he 's a Tartar! But isn't hishair cute? And say--" gossiped the new nurses, "is it really true thatthat Malgregor girl was pinned down perfectly helpless under the car andhe wouldn't let her out till she'd promised to marry him? Isn't it_awful?_ Isn't it _romantic_?"

"Why! Dr. Faber 's back!" fluttered the senior nurses. "Isn't hewonderful? Isn't he beautiful? But, oh, say, " they worried, "what doyou suppose Rae ever finds to talk with him about? Would she ever daretalk _things_ to him, --just plain every-day _things_, --hats, and goingto the theater, and what to have for breakfast?--breakfast?" theygasped. "Why, yes, of course!" they reasoned more sanely. "Steak? Eggs?Even oatmeal? Why, people had to eat--no matter how wonderful they were!But evenings?" they speculated more darkly. "But evenings?" In the wholerange of human experience--was it even so much as remotely imaginablethat--evenings--the Senior Surgeon and--Rae Malgregor--sat in thehammock and held hands? "Oh, Gee!" blanched the senior nurses. 

"Good-morning, Dr. Faber!" greeted the Superintendent of Nurses frombehind her austere office desk. 

"Good-morning, Miss Hartzen!" said the Senior Surgeon. 

"Have you had a pleasant trip?" quizzed the Superintendent of Nurses. 

"Exceptionally so, thank you!" said the Senior Surgeon. 

"And--Mrs. Faber, --is she well?" persisted the Superintendent of Nursesconscientiously. 

"Mrs. Faber?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Mrs. Faber? Oh, yes! Why, ofcourse! Yes, indeed--she's extraordinarily well! I never saw herbetter!"

"She must have been--very lonely without you--this past month?" raspedthe Superintendent of Nurses--perfectly politely. 

"Yes--she was, " flushed the Senior Surgeon. "She--she suffered--keenly!"

"And you, too?" drawled the Superintendent of Nurses. "It must have beenvery hard for you. "

"Yes, it was!" sweated the Senior Surgeon. "I suffered keenly, too!"

Distractedly he glanced back at the open door. An extraordinarily largenumber of nurses, internes, orderlies, seemed to be having errands upand down the corridor that allowed them a peculiarly generous length ofneck to stretch into the Superintendent's office. 

"Great Heavens!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "What 's the matter witheverybody this morning?" Tempestuously he started for the door. "Hurryup my cases, please, Miss Hartzen!" he ordered. "Send them to theoperating room! And let me get to work!"

At eleven o'clock, absolutely calm, absolutely cool, --pure as a girl inhis fresh, white operating clothes--cleaner, --skin, hair, teeth, hands, --than any girl who ever walked the face of the earth, in a whitetiled room as surgically clean as himself, with three or four small, glistening instruments still boiling, steaming hot--and half a dozenbreathless assistants almost as immaculate as himself, with his gown, cap and mask adjusted, his gloves finally on, and the faintest possiblelittle grin twitching oddly at the corner of his mouth, he "went in" asthey say, to a new born baby's tortured, twisted spine--and tookout--fifty years perhaps of hunched-back pain and shame and morbidpassions flourishing banefully in the dark shades of a disordered life. 

At half-past twelve he did an appendix operation on the only son of hisbest friend. At one o'clock he did another appendix operation. Whom itwas on didn't matter. It couldn't have been worse on--any one. Athalf-past one no one remembered to feed him. At two, in another man'soperation, he saw the richest merchant in the city go wafted out intoeternity on the fumes of ether taken for the lancing of a stye. At threeo'clock, passing the open door of one of the public waiting-rooms, anItalian peasant woman rushed out and spat in his face because hertubercular daughter had just died at the sanitarium where the SeniorSurgeon's money had sent her. Only in this one wild, defiling moment didthe lust for alcohol surge up in him again, surge clamorously, brutally, absolutely mercilessly, as though in all the known cleansants of theworld only interminable raw whisky was hot enough to cauterize apolluted consciousness. At half past three, as soon as he could changehis clothes again, he re-broke and re-set an acrobat's priceless leg. Atfive o'clock, more to rest himself than anything else, he went up to theautopsy amphitheater to look over an exhibit of enlarged hearts, whosetroubles were permanently over. 

At six o'clock just as he was leaving the great building with all itsharrowing sights, sounds, and smells, a peremptory telephone call fromone of the younger surgeons of the city summoned him back into thestuffy office again. 

"Dr. Faber?"

"Yes. "

"This is Merkley!"

"Yes. "

"Can you come immediately and help me with that fractured skull case Iwas telling you about this morning? We'll have to trepan right away!"

"Trepan nothing!" grunted the Senior Surgeon. "I've got to go home earlyto-night--and help catch a canary. "

"Catch a--what?" gasped the younger surgeon. 

"A canary!" grinned the Senior Surgeon mirthlessly. 

"A--_what?_" roared the younger man. 

"Oh, shut up, you damned fool! Of course I'll come!" said the SeniorSurgeon. 

There was no "boy" left in the Senior Surgeon when he reached home thatnight. 

Gray with road-travel, haggard with strain and fatigue, it was long, long after the rosy sunset time, --long, long after the yellow supperlight, that he came dragging up through the sweet-scented dusk of thegarden and threw himself down without greeting of any sort on the topstep of the piazza where the White Linen Nurse's skirts glowed palelythrough the gloom. 

"Well, I put a canary bird back into its cage for you!" he confidedlaconically. "It was a little chap's soul. It sure would have gottenaway before morning. "

"Who was the man that tried to turn it loose--_this_ time?" asked theWhite Linen Nurse. 

"I didn't say that anybody did!" growled the Senior Surgeon. 

"Oh, " said the White Linen Nurse. "Oh. " Quite palpably a little shiverof flesh and starch went rustling through her. "I've had a wonderfulday, too!" she confided softly. "I've cleaned the attic and darned ninepairs of your stockings and bought a sewing-machine--and started to makeyou a white silk negligee shirt for a surprise!"

"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. 

The jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes andthe sound of ice knocking lusciously against a glass. 

"Oh, have you had any supper, sir?" asked the White Linen Nurse. 

With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back againstthe piazza railing and stretched his legs a little further out along thepiazza floor. 

"Supper?" he groaned. "No! Nor dinner! Nor breakfast! Nor anyother--blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember!" Janglinglyin his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like theslammed notes of a piano. "But I wouldn't--move--now, " he snarled, "if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom--were piledblankety-blank-blank high--on all the blankety-blank-blank tables--inthis whole blankety-blank-blank house!"

Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands. "Oh, that's justexactly what I hoped you'd say!" she cried. "'Cause the supper's--righthere!"

"Here?" snapped the Senior Surgeon. Tempestuously he began all overagain. "I--tell--you--I--wouldn't--lift--my--little finger--if all theblankety-blank-blank-blank--"

"Oh, Goody then!" said the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause now I can feedyou! I sort of miss fussing with the canary birds, " she added wistfully. 

"Feed me?" roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump ofice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. "Feed me?" he began all overagain. 

Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenlyunder his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out atit--and nipped the White Linen Nurse's finger instead. 

"Ouch--sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. 

Mumblingly down from an upstairs window, as from a face flattedsmouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued. 

"Peach!--Peach!" called an angry little voice. "If you don't come tobed--now--I'll--I'll say my curses instead of my prayers!"

A trifle nervously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet. 

"Maybe I'd--better go?" she said. 

"Maybe--you had!" said the Senior Surgeon quite definitely. 

At the edge of the threshold the White Linen Nurse turned for aninstant. 

"Good-night, Dr. Faber!" she whispered. 

"Good-night, Rae Malgregor--Faber!" said the Senior Surgeon. 

"Good-night--_what?_" gasped the White Linen Nurse. 

"Good-night, Rae Malgregor--Faber, " repeated the Senior Surgeon. 

Clutching at her skirts as though a mouse were after her, the WhiteLinen Nurse went scuttling up the stairs. 

Very late--on into the night--the Senior Surgeon lay there on his piazzafloor staring out into his garden. Very companionably from time to time, like a tame firefly, a little bright spark hovered and glowed for aninstant above the bowl of his pipe. Puff-puff-puff, doze-doze-doze, throb-throb-throb, --on and on and on and on--into the sweet-scentednight. 

CHAPTER X

So the days passed. And the nights. And more days. And more nights. July--August, --on and on and on. 

Strenuous, nerve-racking, heart-breaking surgical days--broken maritallyonly by the pleasant, soft-worded greeting at the gate, or thepractical, homely appeal of good food cooked with heart as well ashands, or the tingling, inciting masculine consciousness of there beinga woman's--blush in the house!

Strenuous, house-working, child-nursing, home-making, domesticdays--broken maritally only by the jaded, harsh word at the gate, theexplosive criticism of food, the deadening, depressing, feminineconsciousness of there being a man's--vicious temper in the house!

Now and again in one big automobile or another the White Linen Nurse andthe Senior Surgeon rode out together, always and forever with the LittleCrippled Girl sitting between them, --the other woman's little crippledgirl. Now and again in the late summer afternoons the White Linen Nurseand the Senior Surgeon strolled together through the rainbow-coloredgarden, always and forever with the Little Crippled Girl, --the otherwoman's little crippled girl, tagging close behind them with her littlesad, clanking leg. Now and again in the long sweet summer evenings theWhite Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon sat on the clematis-shadowedporch together, always and forever with the Little Crippled Girl, --theother woman's little crippled girl, mocking them querulously from somevague upper window. 

Now and again across the mutually ghost-haunted chasm that separatedthem flashed the incontrovertible signal of sex and sense, as once whena new Interne, grossly bungling, stepped to the hospital window with acolleague to watch the Senior Surgeon's car roll away as usual with itstwo feminine passengers. 

"What makes the Chief so stingy with that big handsome girl of his?"queried the new Interne a bit resentfully. "He won't ever bring her intothe hospital!--won't ever ask any of us young chaps out to his house!And some of us come mighty near to being eligible, too!--Who's he savingher for, anyway?--A saint?--A miracle-worker?--A millionaire medicineman?--They don't exist, you know!"

"I'm saving her for myself!" snapped the Senior Surgeon mostdisconcertingly from the doorway. "She--she happens to be my wife, notmy daughter, --thank you!"

When the Senior Surgeon went home that night he carried a big bunch ofmagazines and a box of candy as large as his head tucked courtinglyunder his arm. 

Now and again across the chasm that separated them flashed theincontrovertible signal of mutual trust and appreciation, as when once, after a particularly violent vocal outburst on the Senior Surgeon'spart, he sobered down very suddenly and said:

"Rae Malgregor, --do you realize that in all the weeks we've beentogether you've never once nagged me about my swearing? Not a word, --nota single word!"

"I'm not very used to--words, " smiled the White Linen Nurse hopefully. "All I know how to nag with is--is raw eggs! If we could only get thosenerves of yours padded just once, sir! The swearing would get well ofitself. "

In August the Senior Surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was muchtoo big for the White Linen Nurse to run all alone, but conceded equallysincerely, under the White Linen Nurse's vehement protest, thatservants, particularly new servants did creak considerably round ahouse, and that maybe "just for the present" at least, until he finishedhis very nervous paper on brain tumors perhaps it would be better tostay "just by ourselves. "

In September the White Linen Nurse wanted very much to go home to NovaScotia to her sister's wedding but the Senior Surgeon was trying a verycomplicated and worrisome new brace on the Little Girl's leg and itdidn't seem quite kind to go. In October she planned her trip all overagain. She was going to take the Little Crippled Girl with her thistime. But with their trunks already packed and waiting in the hall, theSenior Surgeon came home from the hospital with a septic finger--and itdidn't seem quite best to leave him. 

"Well, how do you like being married _now?_" asked the Senior Surgeon abit ironically in his work-room that night, after the White Linen Nursehad stood for an hour with evil-smelling washes, and interminablebandages trying to fix that finger the precise, particular way that hethought it ought to be fixed. "Well--how do you like--being married_now?_" he insisted trenchantly. 

"Oh, I like it all right, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. A little bitwanly this time she smiled her pluck up into the Senior Surgeon'squestioning face. "Oh, I like it all right, sir! Oh, of course, sir, "she confided thoughtfully--"Oh, of course, sir--it isn't quite as fancyas being engaged--or quite as free and easy as being--single. Butstill--" she admitted with desperate honesty--"but still there's a sortof--a sort of a combination importance and--and comfort about it, sir, like a--like a velvet suit--the second year, sir. "

"Is that--all?" quizzed the Senior Surgeon bluntly. 

"That's all--so far, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse. 

In November the White Linen Nurse caught a bit of cold that pulled herdown a little. But the Senior Surgeon didn't notice it specially amongall the virulent ills he lived and worked with from day to day. And thenwhen the cold disappeared, Indian Summer came like a reeking sweat aftera chill! And the house _was_ big! And the Little Crippled Girl _was_pretty difficult to manage now and then! And the Senior Surgeon, nomatter how hard he tried not to, did succeed somehow in creating more orless of a disturbance--at least every other day or two!

And then suddenly, one balmy gold and crimson Indian Summer morning, standing out on the piazza trying to hear what the Little Crippled Girlwas calling from the window and what the Senior Surgeon was calling fromthe gate, the White Linen Nurse fell right down in her tracks, brutally, bulkily, like a worn-out horse, and lay as she fell, a huddled whiteheap across the gray piazza. 

"Oh, Father! Come quick! Come quick! Peach has deaded herself!" yelledthe Little Girl's frantic voice. 

Just with his foot on the step of his car the Senior Surgeon heard thecry and came speeding back up the long walk. Already there before himthe Little Girl knelt raining passionate, agonized kisses on her belovedplaymate's ghastly white face. 

"Leave her alone!" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "Leave her alone, Isay!"

Bruskly he pushed the Little Girl aside and knelt to cradle his own earagainst the White Linen Nurse's heart. 

"Oh, it's all right, " he growled, and gathered the White Linen Nurseright up in his arms--she was startlingly lighter than he hadsupposed--and carried her up the stairs and put her to bed like a childin the great sumptuous guest-room, in a great sumptuous nest of all thebest linens and blankets, with the Little Crippled Girl superintendingthe task with many hysterical suggestions and sharp staccatointerruptions. For once in his life the Senior Surgeon did not stop toquarrel with his daughter. 

Rallying limply from her swoon the White Linen Nurse stared out withhazy perplexity at last from her dimpling white pillows to see theSenior Surgeon standing amazingly at the guest-room bureau with a glassand a medicine-dropper in his hand, and the Little Crippled Girl hangingapparently by her narrow peaked chin across the foot-board of the bed. 

Gazing down worriedly at the lace-ruffled sleeve of her night-dress theWhite Linen Nurse made her first public speech to the--world at large. 

"Who--put--me--to--bed?" whispered the White Linen Nurse. 

Ecstatically the Little Crippled Girl began to pound her fists on thefoot-board of the bed. 

"Father did!" she cried in unmistakable triumph. "All the little hooks!All the little buttons!--_wasn't_ it cunning?"

The Senior Surgeon would hardly have been human if he hadn't glancedback suddenly over his shoulder at the White Linen Nurse's precipitouslychanging color. Quite irrepressibly, as he saw the red, red blood comesurging home again into her cheeks, a little short chuckling laughescaped him. 

"I guess you'll live--now, " he remarked dryly. 

Then because a Senior Surgeon can't stay home on the mere impulse of themoment from a great rushing hospital, just because one member of hishousehold happens to faint perfectly innocently in the morning, hehurried on to his work again. And saved a little boy, and lost a littlegirl, and mended a fractured thigh, and eased a gun-shot wound, and camedashing home at noon in one of his thousand-dollar hours to feel theWhite Linen Nurse's pulse and broil her a bit of tenderloin steak withhis own thousand-dollar hands, --and then went dashing off again to doone major operation or another, telephoned home once or twice during theafternoon to make sure that everything was all right, and finding thatthe White Linen Nurse was comfortably up and about again, went sprintingoff fifty miles somewhere on a meningitis consultation, and camedragging home at last, somewhere near midnight, to a big black housebrightened only by a single light in the kitchen where the White LinenNurse went tiptoeing softly from stove to pantry in deft preparation ofan appetizing supper for him. 

Quite roughly again without smile or appreciation the Senior Surgeontook her by the shoulders and turned her out of the kitchen, and startedher up the stairs. 

"Are you an--idiot?" he said. "Are you an--imbecile?" he came back andcalled up the stairs to her just as she was disappearing from the upperlanding. 

Then up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the Senior Surgeonbegan suddenly to pace again. 

Only, for some unexplainable reason to the White Linen Nurse upstairs, his work-room didn't seem quite large enough for his pacing this nightAlong the broad piazza she heard his footsteps creak. Far, far into themorning, lying warm and snug in her own little bed, she heard hisfootsteps crackling through the wet-leafed garden paths. 

Yet the Senior Surgeon didn't look an atom jaded or forlorn when he camedown to breakfast the next morning. He had on a brand new gray suit thatfitted his big, powerful shoulders to perfection, and the glad glow ofhis shower-bath was still reddening faintly in his cheeks as he swungaround the corner of the table and dropped down into his place with anodd little grin on his lips directed intermittently towards the WhiteLinen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl who already waited him there ateither end of the table. 

"Oh, Father, isn't it lovely to have my darling--darling Peach all wellagain!" beamed the Little Crippled Girl with unusual friendliness. 

"Speaking of your--'darling Peach, '" said the Senior Surgeon quiteabruptly. "Speaking of your 'darling Peach, '--I'm going to--take heraway with me to-day--for a week or so. "

"Eh?" jumped the Little Crippled Girl. 

"What? What, sir?" stammered the White Linen Nurse. 

Quite prosily the Senior Surgeon began to butter a piece of toast. Butthe little twinkle around his eyes belied in some way the utterprosiness of the act. 

"For a little trip, " he confided amiably. "A little holiday!"

A trifle excitedly the White Linen Nurse laid down her knife and forkand stared at him, blue-eyed and wondering as a child. 

"A holiday?" she gasped. "To a--beach, you mean? Would there be a--aroller-coaster? I've never seen a roller-coaster!"

"Eh?" laughed the Senior Surgeon. 

"Oh, I'm going, too! I'm going, too!" piped the Little Crippled Girl. 

Most jerkily the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the tableand swallowed half a cup of coffee at one single gulp. 

"Going _three_, you mean?" he glowered at his little daughter. "Going_three_?" His comment that ensued was distinctly rough as far as dictionwas concerned, but the facial expression of ineffable peace thataccompanied it would have made almost any phrase sound like abenediction. "Not by a--damned sight!" beamed the Senior Surgeon. "Thislittle trip is just for Peach and me!"

"But--sir?" fluttered the White Linen Nurse. Her face was suddenlypinker than any rose that ever bloomed. 

With an impulse absolutely novel to him the Senior Surgeon turned andswung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder. 

"Your Aunt Agnes is coming to stay with _you_--in just about tenminutes!" he affirmed. "That's--what's going to happen to _you!_ Andmaybe there'll be a pony--a white pony. "

"But Peach is so--pleasant!" wailed the Little Crippled Girl. "Peach isso pleasant!" she began to scream and kick. 

"So it seems!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "And she's--dying of it!"

Tearfully the Little Girl wriggled down to the ground, and hobbledaround and thrust her finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's blushiestcheek. 

"I don't want--Peach--to--die, " she admitted worriedly. "But I don'twant anybody to take her away!"

"The pony is--very white, " urged the Senior Surgeon with a diplomacyquite alien to him. 

Abruptly the Little Girl turned and faced him. "What color is AuntAgnes?" she asked vehemently. 

"Aunt Agnes is--pretty white, too, " attested the Senior Surgeon. 

With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girllifted her sharp chin a trifle higher. 

"If it's just a perfectly plain white pony, " she said, "I'd rather havePeach. But if it's a white pony with black blots on it, and if it canpull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if itwill eat sugar-lumps out of my hand, --and if its name is--is--'BeautifulPretty-Thing'--"

"Its name has always been--'Beautiful Pretty-Thing, ' I'm quite sure!"insisted the Senior Surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached outand put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse's shoulder. 

Instantly into the Little Girl's suspicious face flushed a furiouslyuncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned uponher father. 

"You're a liar!" she screamed. "There _is_ no white pony! You're arobber! You're a--a--drunk! You shan't have my darling Peach!" And threwherself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse's lap. 

Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the little clinging arms, and raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet pushed her emphaticallytowards the hall. 

"Go to my work-room, " he said. "Quickly! I want to talk with you!"

A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behindhim. The previous night's loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now, and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that, and of the day before _that_. 

Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his deskchair with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as though shewere nothing but a--white linen nurse. All the splendor was suddenlygone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose. 

"Well, Rae Malgregor, " he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right, though I certainly don't know where she got her information. I _am_ aLiar. The pony's name is not yet 'Beautiful Pretty-Thing'! I _am_a--Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I _am_ a Robber! I have taken youout of your youth--and the love-chances of your youth, --and shut you uphere in this great, gloomy old house of mine--to be my slave--and mychild's slave--and--"

"Pouf!" said the White Linen Nurse. "It would seem--silly--now, sir, --tomarry a boy!"

"And I've been a beast to you!" persisted the Senior Surgeon. "From thevery first day you belonged to me I've been a--beast to you, --ventingbrutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience, --all thework, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress ofmy disordered days--and years, --and I've let my little girl vent also onyou all the pang and pain of _her_ disordered days! And because in thisgreat, gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle fromheaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed, pleasant-hearted, I've let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery, --thecare, --one horrid homely task after another piling up-up-up--till youdropped in your tracks yesterday--still smiling!"

"But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!" protested the WhiteLinen Nurse. "See, sir!" she smiled. "I've got real lines in myface--now--like other women! I'm not a doll any more! I'm not a--"

"Yes!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "And I might just as kindly havecarved those lines with my knife! But I was going to make it all up toyou to-day!" he hurried. "I swear I was! Even in one short little week Icould have done it! You wouldn't have known me! I was going to take youaway, --just you and me! I would have been a Saint! I swear I would! Iwould have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday--asyou never dreamed of in all your unselfish life! A holiday all_you--you--you!_ You could have--dug in the sand if you'd wanted to!Gad! I'd have dug in the sand--if you'd wanted me to! And now it's allgone from me, all the will, all the sheer positive self-assurance that Icould have carried the thing through--absolutely selflessly. That littlegirl's sneering taunt? The ghost of her mother--in that taunt? God! Whenanybody knocks you just in your decency it doesn't harm you specially!But when they knock you in your Wanting-To-Be-Decent it--it underminesyou somewhere. I don't know exactly how! I'm nothing but a managain--now, just a plain, every day, greedy, covetous, physical man--onthe edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years, --that heno longer dares to take!"

A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weightfrom one foot to the other. 

"I'm sorry, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "I'd like to have seen aroller-coaster, sir!"

Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went brightening across theSenior Surgeon's brooding face, and was gone again. 

"Rae Malgregor, come here!" he ordered quite sharply. 

Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has neverknown heels, the White Linen Nurse came forward swiftly and sliding incautiously between the Senior Surgeon and his desk, stood there with herback braced against the desk, her fingers straying idly up and down theedges of the desk, staring up into his face all readiness, allattention, like a soldier waiting further orders. 

So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb ofher, --the little fluttering swallow, --yet by some strange, persistentaloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown, not an edge, not a thread, seemed to even so much as graze his knee, seemed to even so much as shadow his hand, --lest it short-circuitthereby the seething currents of their variant emotions. 

With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon satstaring into the girl's eyes, the blue, blue eyes too full of childishquestioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment. 

"After all, Rae Malgregor, " he smiled at last, faintly--"After all, RaeMalgregor, --Heaven knows when I shall ever get--another holiday!"

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

With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter andbegan bending it dangerously between his adept fingers. 

"How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?" he asked quiteabruptly. 

"Four months--actually with you, sir, " said the White Linen Nurse. 

"Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my--proposal ofmarriage to you?" he asked shrewdly. 

"Oh, yes, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "You called it 'generalheartwork for a family of two'!"

A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon's own eyesfell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and directas hers. 

"Well, " he smiled. "Through the whole four months I seem to have kept mypart of the contract all right--and held you merely as a--drudge in myhome. Have you then decided, once and for all time, --whether you aregoing to stay on with us--or whether you will 'give notice' as otherdrudges have done?"

With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse beganto finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half way roundas though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely theprofile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior Surgeon'squestioning eyes. 

"I shall never--give notice, sir!" fluttered the white throat. 

"Are you perfectly sure?" insisted the Senior Surgeon. 

The pink in the White Linen Nurse's profiled cheek deepened a little. 

"Perfectly sure, sir!" attested the carmine lips. 

Like the crack of a pistol the Senior Surgeon snapped the ivory papercutter in two. 

"All right then!" he said. "Rae Malgregor, look at me! Don't take youreyes from mine, I say! Rae Malgregor, if I should decide in my own mind, here and now, that it was best for you--as well as for me--that youshould come away with me now--for this week, --not as my guest as I hadplanned, --but as my wife, --even if you were not quite ready for it inyour heart, --even if you were not yet remotely ready for it, --would youcome because I told you to come?"

Heavily under her white, white eyelids, heavily under her black, blacklashes, the girl's eyes struggled up to meet his own. 

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

Abruptly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the desk, andstood up. The important decision once made, no further finessing ofwords seemed either necessary or dignified to him. 

"Go and pack your suit-case quickly then!" he ordered. "I want to getaway from here within half an hour!"

But before the girl had half crossed the room he called to her suddenly, his whole bearing and manner miraculously changed, and his face in thatmoment as haggard as if a whole lifetime's struggle was packed into it. 

"Rae Malgregor, " he drawled mockingly. "This thing shall be--barter waythrough to the end, --with the credit always on your side of the account. In exchange for the gift--of yourself--your--wonderful self--and thetrust that goes with it, I will give you, --God help me, --the ugliestthing in my life. And God knows I have broken faith with myself once ortwice but--never have I broken my word to another! From now on, --intoken of your trust in me, --for whatever the bitter gift is worth toyou, --as long as you stay with me, --my Junes shall be yours--to dowith--as you please!"

"What, sir?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "_What_, sir?"

Softly, almost stealthily, she was half way back across the room to him, when she stopped suddenly and threw out her arms with a gesture ofappeal and defiance. 

"All the same, sir!" she cried passionately, "all the same, sir, --theplace is too hard for the small pay I get! Oh, I will do what Ipromised!" she attested with increasing passion. "I will never leaveyou! And I will mother your little girl! And I will servant your bighouse! And I will go with you wherever you say! And I will be to youwhatever you wish! And I will never flinch from any hardship you imposeon me--nor whine over any pain, --on and on and on--all my days--all myyears--till I drop in my tracks again and--die--as you say 'stillsmiling'! All the same!" she reiterated wildly, "the place is too hard!It always was too hard! It always will be too hard--for such small pay!"

"For such small pay?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. 

Around his heart a horrid clammy chill began to settle. Sickeninglythrough his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began torehearse themselves. 

"You mean, Miss Malgregor, " he said a bit brokenly. "You mean--thatI--haven't been generous enough with you?"

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

All the storm and passion died suddenly from her, leaving her just afrightened girl again, flushing pink-white, pink-white, pink-white, before the Senior Surgeon's scathing stare. One step, two steps, three, she advanced towards him. 

"Oh, I mean, sir, " she whispered, "oh, I mean, sir, --that I'm just anordinary, ignorant country girl and you--are further above me than themoon from the sea! I couldn't expect you to--love me, sir! I couldn'teven dream of your loving me! _But I do think you might like me just alittle bit with your heart!_"

"What?" flushed the Senior Surgeon. "_What?_"

Whacketty-bang against the window pane sounded the Little CrippledGirl's knuckled fists! Darkly against the window pane squashed theLittle Crippled Girl's staring face. 

"Father!" screamed the shrill voice. "Father! There's a white lady herewith two black ladies washing the breakfast dishes! Is it Aunt Agnes?"

With a totally unexpected laugh, with a totally unexpected desire tolaugh, the Senior Surgeon strode across the room and unlocked his door. Even then his lips against the White Linen Nurse's ear made just awhisper, not a kiss. 

"God bless you!--_hurry!_" he said. "And let's get out of here beforeany telephone message catches me!"

Then almost calmly he walked out on the piazza, and greeted hissister-in-law. 

"Hello, Agnes!" he said. 

"Hello, yourself!" smiled his sister-in-law. 

"How's everything?" he enquired politely. 

"How's everything with you?" parried his sister-in-law. 

Idly for a few moments the Senior Surgeon threw out stray crumbs ofthought to feed the conversation, while smilingly all the while from herluxuriant East Indian chair his sister-in-law sat studying the generalsituation. The Senior Surgeon's sister-in-law was always studyingsomething. Last year it was archaeology, --the year before, basketry, --this year it happened to be eugenics, or something funny likethat, --next year again it might be book-binding. 

"So you and your pink and white shepherdess are going off on a littletrip together?" she queried banteringly. "The girl's a darling, Lendicott! I haven't had as much sport in a long time as I had thatafternoon last June when I came in my best calling-clothes and--helpedher paint the kitchen woodwork! And I had come prepared to be a bitnasty, Lendicott! In all honesty, Lendicott, I might just as well 'fessup that I had come prepared to be just a little bit nasty!"

"She seems to have a way, " smiled the Senior Surgeon, "she seems to havea way of disarming people's unpleasant intentions. "

A trifle quizzically for an instant the woman turned her face to theSenior Surgeon's. It was a worldly face, a cold-featured, absolutelyworldly face, with a surprisingly humorous mouth that warmed her naturejust about as cheer fully, and just about as effectually, as one openfireplace warms a whole house. Nevertheless one often achieved muchcomfort by keeping close to "Aunt Agnes's" humorous mouth, for AuntAgnes knew a thing or two, --Aunt Agnes did, --and the things that shemade a point of knowing were conscientiously amiable. 

"Why, Lendicott Faber, " she rallied him now. "Why, you're as nervous asa school-boy! Why, I believe--I believe that you're going courting!"

More opportunely than any man could have dared to hope, the White LinenNurse appeared suddenly on the scene in her little blue sergewedding-suit with her traveling-case in her hand. With a gasp of reliefthe Senior Surgeon took her case and his own and went on down the pathto his car and his chauffeur leaving the two women temporarily alone. 

When he returned to the piazza the Woman-of-the-World and theGirl-not-at-all-of-the-World were bidding each other a reallyaffectionate good-by, and the woman's face looked suddenly just a littlebit old but the girl's cheeks were most inordinately blooming. 

In unmistakable friendliness his sister-in-law extended her hand to him. 

"Good-by, Lendicott, old man!" she said. "And good luck to you!" Alittle slyly out of her shrewd gray eyes, she glanced up sideways athim. "You've got the devil's own temper, Lendicott dear, " she teased, "and two or three other vices probably, and if rumor speaks the truthyou've run a-muck more than once in your life, --but there's one thing Iwill say for you, --though it prove you a dear Stupid: you never wereover-quick to suspect that any woman could possibly be in love withyou!"

"To what woman do you particularly refer?" mocked the Senior Surgeonimpatiently. 

Quite brazenly to her own heart which never yet apparently had stirredthe laces that enshrined it, his sister-in-law pointed with persistentbanter. 

"Maybe I refer to--myself, " she laughed, "and maybe to the only--otherlady present!"

"Oh!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. 

"You do me much honor, Agnes, " bowed the Senior Surgeon. Quiteresolutely he held his gaze from following the White Linen Nurse'squickly averted face. 

A little oddly for an instant the older woman's glance hung on his. "More honor perhaps than you think, Lendicott Faber!" she said, and keptright on smiling. 

"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. Restively he turned to the White LinenNurse. 

Very flushingly on the steps the White Linen Nurse knelt arguing withthe Little Crippled Girl. 

"Your father and I are--going away, " she pleaded. "Won'tyou--please--kiss us good-by?"

"I've only got one kiss, " sulked the Little Crippled Girl. 

"Give it to your--father!" pleaded the White Linen Nurse. 

Amazingly all in a second the ugliness vanished from the little face. Dartlingly like a bird the Child swooped down and planted one largeround kiss on the Senior Surgeon's astonished boot. 

"Beautiful Father!" she cried, "I kiss your feet!"

Abruptly the Senior Surgeon plunged from the step and started down thewalk. His cheek-bones were quite crimson. 

Two or three rods behind him the White Linen Nurse followed falteringly. Once she stopped to pick up a tiny stick or a stone. And once shedallied to straighten out a snarled spray of red and brown woodbine. 

Missing the sound or the shadow of her the Senior Surgeon turnedsuddenly to wait. So startled was she by his intentness, so flustered, so affrighted, that just for an instant the Senior Surgeon thought thatshe was going to wheel in her tracks and bolt madly back to the house. Then quite unexpectedly she gave an odd, muffled little cry, and ranswiftly to him like a child, and slipped her bare hand trustingly intohis. And they went on together to the car. 

With his foot already half lifted to the step the Senior Surgeon turnedabruptly around and lifted his hat and stood staring back bareheaded forsome unexplainable reason at the two silent figures on the piazza. 

"Rae, " he said perplexedly, "Rae, I don't seem to know just why--butsomehow I'd like to have you kiss your hand to Aunt Agnes!"

Obediently the White Linen Nurse withdrew her fingers from his andwafted two kisses, one to "Aunt Agnes" and one to the Little CrippledGirl. 

Then the White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon climbed up into thetonneau of the car where they had never, never sat alone before, and theSenior Surgeon gave a curt order to his man and the big car started offagain into--interminable spaces. 

Mutely without a word, without a glance passing between them the SeniorSurgeon held out his hand to her once more, as though the absence of herhand in his was suddenly a lonesomeness not to be endured again whilelife lasted. 

Whizz--whizz--whizz--whirr--whirr--whirr the ribbony road began to rollup again on that hidden spool under the car. 

When the chauffeur's mind seemed sufficiently absorbed in speed andsound the Senior Surgeon bent down a little mockingly and mumbled hislips inarticulately at the White Linen Nurse. 

"See!" he laughed. "I've got a text, too, to keep my courage up! Ofcourse you look like an angel!" he teased closer and closer to herflaming face. "But all the time to myself--to reassure myself--I justkeep saying--' Bah! She 's nothing but a Woman--nothing but aWoman--nothing but a Woman'!"

Within the Senior Surgeon's warm, firm grasp the White Linen Nurse'scalm hand quickened suddenly like a bud forced precipitously into fullbloom. 

"Oh, don't--talk, sir, " she whispered. "Oh, don't talk, sir!Just--listen!"

"Listen? Listen to what?" laughed the Senior Surgeon. 

From under the heavy lashes that shadowed the flaming cheeks the Soul ofthe Girl who was to be his peered up at the Soul of the Man who was tobe hers, --_and saluted what she saw!_

"Oh, my heart, sir!" whispered the White Linen Nurse. "Oh, my heart! Myheart! my _heart_!"

THE END