"It looks like—Hell!" he muttered feebly.
"Yes, isn't it sweet?" conceded the White Linen Nurse with unmistakable joyousness. "And your library—" Triumphantly she threw back the door to his grim work-shop.
"Good God!" stammered the Senior Surgeon. "You've made it—pink!"
Rapturously the White Linen Nurse began to clasp and unclasp her hands.
"I knew you'd love it!" she said.
Half dazed with bewilderment the Senior Surgeon started to brush an imaginary haze from his eyes but paused mid-way in the gesture and pointed back instead to a dapper little hall-table that seemed to be exhausting its entire blonde strength in holding up a slender green vase with a single pink rose in it. Like a caged animal buffeting for escape against each successive bar that incased it, the man's frenzied irritation hurled itself hopefully against this one more chance for explosive exit.
"What—have—you—done—with the big—black—escritoire that stood—there?" he demanded accusingly.
"Escritoire?—Escritoire?" worried the White Linen Nurse. "Why—why—I'm afraid I must have mislaid it."
"Mislaid it?" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "Mislaid it? It weighed three hundred pounds!"
"Oh, it did?" questioned the White Linen Nurse with great, blue-eyed interest. Still mulling apparently over the fascinating weight of the escritoire she climbed up suddenly into a chair and with the fluffy broom-shaped end of her extraordinarily long braid of hair went angling wildy off into space after an illusive cobweb.
Faster and faster the Senior Surgeon's temper began to search for a new point of exit.