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Updated: May 9, 2025
Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely romantic one.
All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose. "Well, Rae Malgregor," he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right, though I certainly don't know where she got her information. I am a Liar. The pony's name is not yet 'Beautiful Pretty-Thing'! I am a Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I am a Robber!
Around his heart a horrid clammy chill began to settle. Sickeningly through his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began to rehearse themselves. "You mean, Miss Malgregor," he said a bit brokenly. "You mean that I haven't been generous enough with you?" "Yes, sir," faltered the White Linen Nurse.
"Good-night, Rae Malgregor Faber!" said the Senior Surgeon. "Good-night what?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Good-night, Rae Malgregor Faber," repeated the Senior Surgeon. Clutching at her skirts as though a mouse were after her, the White Linen Nurse went scuttling up the stairs. Very late on into the night the Senior Surgeon lay there on his piazza floor staring out into his garden.
"You mean that he didn't want you to be a trained nurse? You mean that he wasn't big enough, wasn't fine enough to appreciate the nobility of the profession?" "Nobility nothing!" snapped Rae Malgregor. "It was me scrubbing strange men with alcohol that he couldn't stand for! And I don't know as I exactly blame him," she added huskily.
A dozen impertinent speeches were rioting in her mind. Twice her mouth opened and shut before she finally achieved the particular opprobrium that completely satisfied her. "Bah! You look like a Trained Nurse!" she blurted forth at last with hysterical triumph. "So do you!" said the newcomer amiably. With a little gasp of dismay Rae Malgregor sprang suddenly forward.
Only once in fact across the intervening chasm of crankiness did the Senior Surgeon hurl a smile that was even remotely self-conscious or conciliatory. Glancing up suddenly from a particularly sharp and disagreeable speech, he noted the White Linen Nurse's red lips mumbling softly one to the other. "Are you specially religious, Miss Malgregor?" he grinned quite abruptly.
Like a short-necked animal elongated suddenly to the cervical proportions of a giraffe, the Superintendent of Nurses reared up from her stoop-shouldered desk-work and stared forth in speechless astonishment across the top of her spectacles. Exuberantly impertinent, ecstatically self-conscious, Rae Malgregor repeated her demand.
And now, now " the Superintendent's voice went suddenly a little hoarse, "and now here's Miss Malgregor intriguing to get an automobile ride with you!" "Eh?" cried the Senior Surgeon with a jump. "What? Is this an Insane Asylum? Is it a Nervine?" Madly he started for the door. "Order a ton of bromides!" he called back over his shoulder. "Order a car-load of them!
Like one fairly cramped with astonishment Rae Malgregor doubled up very suddenly at the waist-line, and thrusting her neck oddly forward after the manner of a startled crane, stood peering sharply round the corner of the rocking-chair at Zillah Forsyth. "Did his mother hate me?" she gasped. "Did his mother hate me? Well, what do you think?
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