Before the Senior Surgeon's glowering, incredulous stare her heart began to plunge and pound again, but it plunged and pounded no harder, she realized suddenly, than when in the calm, white hospital precincts she was obliged to pass his terrifying presence in the corridor and murmur an inaudible "Good Morning" or "Good Evening." "After all, he's nothing but a man—nothing but a man—nothing but a mere—ordinary—two-legged man," she reasoned over and over to herself. With a really desperate effort she smoothed her frightened face into an expression of utter guilelessness and peace and smiled unflinchingly right into the Senior Surgeon's rousing anger as she had once seen an animal-trainer smile into 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 started up the steps.
From the green plushy robes on the back seat the White Linen Nurse could have sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!" piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply round to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves me—Loves me not—Loves me—Loves me not."
Bristling with unutterable contempt for all femininity, the Senior
Surgeon proceeded up the steps between two solemn-faced lackeys.
"Father!" wailed a feeble little voice. "Father!" There was no shrillness in the tone now, nor malice, nor any mischievous thing,—just desolation, the impulsive, panic-stricken desolation of a little child left suddenly alone with a stranger. "Father!" the frightened voice ventured forth a tiny bit louder. But the unheeding Senior Surgeon had already reached the piazza. "Fat Father!" screamed the little voice. Barbed now like a shark-hook the phrase ripped through the Senior Surgeon's dormant sensibilities. As one fairly yanked out of his thoughts he whirled around in his tracks.
"What do you want?" he thundered.
Helplessly the little girl sat staring from a lackey's ill-concealed grin to her Father's smoldering fury. Quite palpably she began to swallow with considerable difficulty. Then quick as a flash a diminutively crafty smile crooked across one corner of her mouth.
"Father?" she improvised dulcetly. "Father? May—may I—sit—in the
White Linen Nurse's lap?"
Just for an instant the Senior Surgeon's narrowing eyes probed mercilessly into the reekingly false little smile. Then altogether brutally he shrugged his shoulders.