"There's never but two that she's got to tell—or bust!" conceded the
White Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves the
most—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 to his. "Yes, sir," she said, "and she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her."
"Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now," he hastened to contend. "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 by the first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough to make it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!"
A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the pages of her memorandum book. "I've always had money enough to 'go slow and make things perfectly right,'" she confided a bit wistfully. "Never in all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren't guaranteed, or a dress that wouldn't wash, or a hat that wasn't worth at least three re-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to,—so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here's this wall-paper now,"—tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book—"it's got peacocks on it—life size—in a queen's garden—and I wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade! Maybe we'd get tired of it! Maybe it would poison us! Slam it on one week—and slash it off the next! I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir! I thought maybe—while you were way off in Canada—"
Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his—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 of his cuffs.
"All this talk of yours—about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my—Canadian trip!" he contended. "Why, it's all damned nonsense!"