"Sitting down!" said the White Linen Nurse.
Contemptuously the Senior Surgeon"s mind ignored the interruption and reverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning the gloomy, black-walnut shadowed entrance hall of his great house, and how many yards of imported linoleum at $3.45 a yard it would take to recarpet the "d.a.m.ned hole,"--and how it would have seemed anyway if--if he hadn"t gone home--as usual to the horrid black-walnut shadows that night--but been carried home instead--feet first and--quite dead--dead, mind you, with a red necktie on,--and even the cook was out! And they wouldn"t even know where to lay him--but might put him by mistake in that--in that--in his dead wife"s dead--bed!
Altogether unconsciously a little fluttering sigh of ineffable contentment escaped the White Linen Nurse.
"I don"t care how long we have to sit here and wait for help," she announced cheerfully, "because to-morrow, of course, I"ll have to get up and begin all over again--and go to Nova Scotia."
"Go _where_?" lurched the Senior Surgeon.
"I"d thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard!" said the White Linen Nurse just a trifle stiffly.
Incredulously once more the Senior Surgeon withdrew his detaining hand.
"I"m not even touching your skirt!" he denied desperately. Nothing but denial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for an instant. "Why, for Heaven"s sake, should I want to hold on to your skirt?" he demanded peremptorily. "What the deuce--?" he began bl.u.s.teringly. "Why in--?"
Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the White Linen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw every vestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded out sometimes in the operating-room when in the midst of some ghastly, unforeseen emergency that left all his a.s.sistants blinking helplessly around them, his whole wonderful scientific mind seemed to break up like some chemical compound into all its meek component parts,--only to reorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action that fairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers--but was pretty apt to knock the breath into the body of the person most concerned.
When the Senior Surgeon"s scientific mind had reorganized itself to meet _this_ emergency he found himself infinitely more surprised at the particular type of explosion that had taken place than any other person could possibly have been.
"Miss Malgregor!" he gasped. "Speaking of preferring "domestic service," as you call it,--speaking of preferring domestic service to--nursing,--how would you like to consider--to consider a position of--of--well,--call it a--a position of general--heartwork--for a family of two? Myself and the Little Girl here being the "two,"--as you understand," he added briskly.
"Why, I think it would be grand!" beamed the White Linen Nurse.
A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation. "Your frank and immediate--enthusiasm," he murmured, "is more, perhaps, than I had dared to expect."
"But it would be grand!" said the White Linen Nurse. Before the odd little smile in the Senior Surgeon"s eyes her white forehead puckered all up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened, her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an unwonted footfall. "What--did--you--say?" she repeated worriedly. "Just exactly what was it that you said? I guess--maybe--I didn"t understand just exactly what it was that you said."
The smile in the Senior Surgeon"s eyes deepened a little. "I asked you,"
he said, "how you would like to consider a position of "general heartwork" in a family of two,--myself and the Little Girl here being the "two." "Heartwork" was what I said. Yes,--"Heartwork,"--not housework!"
"_Heartwork?_" faltered the White Linen Nurse. "_ Heartwork?_ I don"t know what you mean, sir." Like two falling rose-petals her eyelids fluttered down across her affrighted eyes. "Oh, when I shut my eyes, sir, and just hear your voice, I know of course, sir, that it"s some sort of a joke. But when I look right at you--I--don"t know--what it is!"
"Open your eyes and keep them open then till you do find out!" suggested the Senior Surgeon bluntly.
Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged each other.
""Heartwork" was what I said," persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpably his narrowing eyes shut out all meaning but one definite one.
The White Linen Nurse"s face went almost as blanched as her dress.
"You"re--you"re not asking me to--marry you, sir?" she stammered.
"I suppose I am!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon.
"Not marry you!" cried the White Linen Nurse. Distress was in her voice,--distaste,--unmitigable shock, as though the high G.o.ds themselves had fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments.
"Oh--not _marry_ you, sir?" she kept right on protesting. "Not be--_engaged_, you mean? Oh, not be _engaged_--and everything?"
"Well, why not?" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
Like a smitten flower the girl"s whole body seemed to wilt down into incalculable weariness.
"Oh--no--no! I couldn"t!" she protested. "Oh, no,--really!" Appealingly she lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurred with tears. "I"ve--I"ve been engaged--once--you know," she explained falteringly. "Why--I was engaged, sir, almost as soon as I was born, and I stayed engaged till two years ago. That"s almost twenty years. That"s a long time, sir. You don"t get over it--easy." Very, very gravely she began to shake her head. "Oh--no--sir! No! Thank you--very much--but I--I just simply couldn"t begin at the beginning and go all through it again! I haven"t got the heart for it! I haven"t got the spirit! Carvin"
your initials on trees and--and gadding round to all the Sunday school picnics--"
Brutally like a boy the Senior Surgeon threw back his head in one wild hoot of joy. Infinitely more cautiously as the agonizing pang in his shoulder lulled down again he proceeded to argue the matter, but the grin in his face was even yet faintly traceable.
"Frankly, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I"m infinitely more addicted to carving people than to carving trees. And as to Sunday school picnics?
Well, really now--I hardly believe that you"d find my demands in that direction--excessive!"
Perplexedly the White Linen Nurse tried to stare her way through his bantering smile to his real meaning. Furiously, as she stared, the red blood came flushing back into her face.
"You don"t mean for a second that you--that you love me?" she asked incredulously.
"No, I don"t suppose I do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I"m almost sure that my little kiddie here--loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it that we both--need you!"
"What you mean is--" corrected the White Linen Nurse, "that needing somebody--very badly, you"ve just suddenly decided that that somebody might as well be me?"
"Well--if you choose to put it--like that!" said the Senior Surgeon a bit sulkily.
"And if there hadn"t been an auto accident?" argued the White Linen Nurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, "if there hadn"t been just this particular kind of an auto accident--at this particular hour--of this particular day--of this particular month--with marigolds and--everything, you probably never would have realized that you did need anybody?"
"Maybe not," admitted the Senior Surgeon.
"U--m--m," said the White Linen Nurse. "And if you"d happened to take one of the other girls to-day--instead of me,--why then I suppose you"d have felt that she was the one you really needed? And if you"d taken the Superintendent of Nurses--instead of any of us girls--you might even have felt that _she_ was the one you most needed?"
With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back the Senior Surgeon 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 to 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.
"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.
"Yes what?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
Softly the White Linen Nurse"s chin burrowed down a little closer against the sleeping child"s tangled hair. "Why--yes--thank you very much--but I never shall love again," she said quite definitely.
"Love?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Why, I"m not asking you to love me!"
His face was suddenly crimson. "Why, I"d hate it, if you--loved me! Why, I"d--"
"O--h--h," mumbled the White Linen Nurse in new embarra.s.sment. Then suddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. "What do you want?" she asked.
Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands. "My goodness!" he said. "What do you suppose I want? _I want some one to take care of us!_"
Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate the shifting little sleepyhead on her breast.