“Pray what brought you so suddenly to this remarkable decision?” scoffed the Senior Surgeon.
“A letter from my father, sir,” she confided more quietly—“a letter about some dogs.”
“Dogs?” hooted the Senior Surgeon.
“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. A trifle speculatively for an instant she glanced at the Superintendent’s face and then back again to the Senior Surgeon’s. “Yes, sir,” she repeated with increasing confidence, “up in Nova Scotia my father raises hunting-dogs. Oh, no special fancy kind, sir,” she hastened in all honesty to explain, “just dogs, you know; just mixed dogs, pointers with curly tails, and shaggy-coated hounds, and brindled spaniels, and all that sort of thing; just mongrels, you know, but very clever. And people, sir, come all the way from Boston to buy dogs of him, and once a man came way from London to learn the secret of his training.”
“Well, what is the secret of his training?” quizzed the Senior Surgeon with the sudden eager interest of a sportsman. “I should think it would be pretty hard,” he acknowledged, “in a mixed gang like that to decide just what particular game was suited to which particular dog.”
“Yes, that’s just it, sir,” beamed the White Linen Nurse. “A dog, of course, will chase anything that runs,—that’s just dog,—but when a dog really begins to care for what he’s chasing, he—wags! That’s hunting. Father doesn’t calculate, he says, on training a dog on anything he doesn’t wag on.”
“Yes, but what’s that got to do with you?” asked the Senior Surgeon, a bit impatiently.
With ill-concealed dismay the White Linen Nurse stood staring blankly at the Senior Surgeon’s gross stupidity.
“Why, don’t you see?” she faltered. “I’ve been chasing this nursing job three whole years now, and there’s no wag to it.”
“Oh, hell!” said the Senior Surgeon. If he hadn’t said “Oh, hell!” he would have grinned. And it hadn’t been a grinny day, and he certainly didn’t intend to begin grinning at any such late hour as that in the afternoon. With his dignity once reassured, he then relaxed a trifle. “For Heaven’s sake, what do you want to be?” he asked not unkindly.