"Now, Lendicott Paber!" she screamed. "Don't you start in—sassing—my darling little Peach!"
"Peach?" snorted the Senior Surgeon. With almost supernatural calm he put down his knife and fork and eyed his offspring with an expression of absolutely inflexible purpose. "Don't you—ever," he warned her, "ever—ever—let me hear you call—this woman 'Peach' again!"
A trifle faint-heartedly the Little Crippled Girl reached up and straightened her absurdly diminutive little white cap, and pursed her little mouth as nearly as possible into an expression of ineffable peace.
"Why—Lendicott Faber!" she persisted heroically.
"Lendicott?" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "What are you—'Lendicotting' me for?"
Hilariously with her own knife and fork the Little Crippled Girl began to beat upon the table.
"Why, you dear Silly!" she cried. "Why, if I'm the new Marma, I've got to call you 'Lendicott'! And Peach has got to call you 'Fat Father'!"
Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair, and jumped to his feet. The expression on his face was neither smile nor frown, nor war nor peace, nor any other human expression that had ever puckered there before.
"God!" he said. "This gives me the willies!" and strode tempestuously from the room.
Out in his own work-shop fortunately,—whatever the grotesque new pinkness,—whatever the grotesque new perkiness—his great free walking-spaces had not been interfered with. Slamming his door triumphantly behind him, he resumed once more the monotonous pace-pace-pace that had characterized for eighteen years his first night's return to—the obligations of civilization.