"Oh, have you had any supper, sir?" asked the White Linen Nurse.
With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back against the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little further out along the piazza floor.
"Supper?" he groaned. "No! Nor dinner! Nor breakfast! Nor any other—blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember!" Janglingly in his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like the slammed notes of a piano. "But I wouldn't—move—now," he snarled, "if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom—were piled blankety-blank-blank high—on all the blankety-blank-blank tables—in this whole blankety-blank-blank house!"
Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands. "Oh, that's just exactly what I hoped you'd say!" she cried. "'Cause the supper's—right here!"
"Here?" snapped the Senior Surgeon. Tempestuously he began all over again. "I—tell—you—I—wouldn't—lift—my—little finger—if all the blankety-blank-blank-blank—"
"Oh, Goody then!" said the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause now I can feed you! I sort of miss fussing with the canary birds," she added wistfully.
"Feed me?" roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. "Feed me?" he began all over again.
Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly under his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out at it—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 flatted smouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued.