"But I'm not rattling it, sir!" she protested. "I'm simply trying to hide 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 her neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics. "Don't—Ever—Be—bumptious!" she read forth jerkily with a questioning, incredulous sort of emphasis.
"Don't ever be bumptious?" squinted the Senior Surgeon perplexedly through 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 perceptible tinge of resentment. "And it's a perfectly good motto, too! Only, of course, it hasn't got any style to it. That's why I didn't want the girls to see it," she confided a bit drearily. Then palpably before their eyes they saw her spirit leap into ineffable pride. "My Father gave it to me," she announced briskly. "And my Father said that, when I came home in June, if I could honestly say that I'd never once been bumptious—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.