“Feed me?” roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. “Feed me?” he began all over again.
Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly under his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out at it, and nipped the White Linen Nurse’s finger instead.
“Ouch, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse.
Mumblingly down from an up-stairs window, as from a face flatted smouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued.
“Peach! Peach!” called an angry little voice, “if you don’t come to bed now I’ll—I’ll say my curses instead of my prayers!”
A trifle nervously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet.
“Maybe I’d better go,” she said.
“Maybe you had,” said the Senior Surgeon, quite definitely.
At the edge of the threshold the White Linen Nurse turned for an instant.
“Good night, Dr. Faber,” she whispered.