With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back he wrenched himself around until he faced her quite squarely.

“Now see here, Miss Malgregor,” he growled, “for Heaven’s sake, listen to sense, even if you can’t talk it! Here am I, a plain professional man, making you a plain professional offer. Why in thunder should you try and fuss me all up because my offer isn’t couched in all the foolish, romantic, lace-paper sort of flub-dubbery that you think such an offer ought to be couched in, eh?”

“Fuss you all up, sir?” protested the White Linen Nurse, with real anxiety.

Plates in tint, engraved for THE CENTURY by H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson

“‘THE CAR’S ON FIRE!’ HE MUMBLED. ‘YES, SIR,’ SAID THE WHITE LINEN NURSE. ‘WHY, DIDN’T YOU KNOW IT, SIR?’”

DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

“Yes, fuss me all up,” snarled the Senior Surgeon, with increasing venom. “I’m no story-writer; I’m not trying to make up what might have happened a year from next February in a Chinese junk off the coast of—Nova Zembla to a Methodist preacher and a—and a militant suffragette. What I’m trying to size up is just what’s happened to you and me to-day. For the fact remains that it is to-day. And it is you and I. And there has been an accident, and out of that accident—and everything that’s gone with it—I have come out thinking of something that I never thought of before. And there were marigolds,” he added with unexpected whimsicality. “You see, I don’t deny even the marigolds.”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.