Breathlessly the White Linen Nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs. Her eyes were blurred with tears. "You've no business—to hurry me so!" she protested passionately. "It isn't fair!—It isn't kind!"
Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon's jolted arms the Little Girl woke from her feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk into her father's face.
"Where's—my kitty?" she asked hazily.
"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
Harshly the little iron leg-braces clanked together.
In an instant the White Linen Nurse was on her knees in the grass. "You don't hold her right, sir!" she expostulated. Deftly with little soft, darting touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into her own tears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a buckle or the dragging weight on a little cramped hip.
Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness.
"All the birds were there, Father," she droned forth feebly from her sweltering mink-fur nest.
All the birds were there
With yellow feathers instead of—hair,
And bumble bees—and bumble bees—
And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?
Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her Father's shoulder. "And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?"