“You’re an idiot!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie.
“Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?” she asked, with real concern.
“Eh? What?” said the Senior Surgeon.
“I mean, does Japan spot?” queried the White Linen Nurse. “Would it spot a serge, I mean?”
“Oh, hell with Japan!” jerked out the Senior Surgeon.
“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
Now, perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse were married on the first day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior Surgeon’s great, gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings. Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings.
But even a little child could explain the ensuing June. Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, birdsong, breeze, rioting headlong through the land; warm days as sweet and lush as a greenhouse vapor; crisp nights faintly metallic, like the scent of stars; hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street corner; even the ash-man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones.
Like two fairies who had sublet a giant’s cave, the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior Surgeon’s gloomy old house.