"Wot abaht wot?" mimicked McCullough, though his heart smote him for the cold-blooded evasion.
"Wot abaht wot you sed abaht me. . . ?"
"Well, wot abaht it. . . ?"
Speechless with rage, for a moment Hardy gazed into the other's nonchalant mask-like visage, then, with a gesture of maniacal impotence, he raised his clenched fists high above his head.
Sister Marthe now judged it high time to intervene. During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment. Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had passed between the two men.
Seizing McCullough by the arm, despite his protestations of injured innocence, she gently, but firmly, escorted him out of the ward.
"Vas! vas!—Now you go, M'sieu McCullough! . . . out of ze ward right-away! . . . Vat you say—vat you do—I do not know, but you 'ave excite 'im 'orrible! . . . Oh, pardonnez-moi, Docteur!" she ejaculated, as she bumped into that gentleman in the corridor.
"Hullo!" said the latter inquiringly, as he remarked the little nurse's flushed, angry face. "What's up, Sister Marthe?"
For answer, that irate lady pointed accusingly to McCullough. That worthy, his questionable experiment accomplished, was retreating up the corridor as fast as his crutches could carry him.
"First, Docteur," began the nurse indignantly, "'e blow smoke in ze eye of ze parrot, then 'e turn roun' to pauvre M'sieu 'Ardy an' 'e sing—oh, I 'ave not ze English, but 'e blaguè 'im so—