“Would he be apt to eat with mine?” asked the Senior Surgeon, with extravagant gravity.
Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of her father’s intrinsic honor.
“Oh, no,” she denied with some vehemence; “Father’s never cheeky like that! Father’s simple sometimes—plain, I mean. Or he might be a bit sharp. But, oh, I’m sure he’d never be—cheeky. Oh, no, sir. No.”
“Oh, very well, then,” grinned the Senior Surgeon. “We can consider everything all comfortably settled, then, I suppose?”
“No, we can’t,” screamed the White Linen Nurse. A little awkwardly, with cramped limbs, she struggled partly upward from the grass and knelt there, defying the Senior Surgeon from her temporarily superior height. “No, we can’t,” she reiterated wildly. “I tell you I can’t, sir. I won’t! I won’t! I’ve been engaged once, and it’s enough. I tell you, sir, I’m all engaged out!”
“What’s become of the man you were engaged to?” quizzed the Senior Surgeon, sharply.
“Why, he’s married,” said the White Linen Nurse. “And they’ve got a kid!” she added tempestuously.
“Good! I’m glad of it,” smiled the Senior Surgeon, quite amazingly. “Now he surely won’t bother us any more.”
“But I was engaged so long,” protested the White Linen Nurse—“almost ever since I was born, I said. It’s too long. You don’t get over it.”