With an abrupt effort at self-control Rae Malgregor jerked her head into at least the outer semblance of a person lost in almost fathomless thought.
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” she acknowledged worriedly. “But it would be a great pity, I suppose, to waste all the grand training that’s gone into my hands.” With sudden conviction her limp shoulders stiffened a trifle. “My oldest sister,” she stammered, “bosses the laundry in one of the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school in Moncton. But I’m so strong, you know, and I like to move things round so, and everything, maybe I could get a position somewhere as general housework girl.”
With a roar of amusement as astonishing to himself as to his listeners, the Senior Surgeon’s chin jerked suddenly upward.
“You’re crazy as a loon!” he confided cordially. “Great Scott! If you can work up a condition like this on coffee, what would you do on malted milk?” As unheralded as his amusement, gross irritability overtook him again. “Will—you—stop—rattling that brown paper?” he thundered at her.
As innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored the temper.
“But I’m not rattling it, sir!” she protested. “I’m simply trying to hide what’s on the other side of it.”
“What is on the other side of it?” demanded the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.
With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around.
From behind her desk the austere Superintendent twisted her neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics. “Don’t Ever Be Bumptious!” she read forth jerkily with a questioning, incredulous sort of emphasis.
“Don’t ever be bumptious!” squinted the Senior Surgeon perplexedly through his glass.