“Gad!” he attested.  “What a hand!  You’re a wonder!  Under proper direction you’re a wonder!  It was like myself working with twenty fingers and no thumbs!  I never saw anything like it!”

Almost boyishly the embarrassed flush mounted to his cheeks as he jerked away again.  “Excuse me for not recognizing you,” he apologized gruffly.  “But you girls all look so much alike!”

As though the eloquence of Heaven itself had suddenly descended upon a person hitherto hopelessly tongue-tied, Rae Malgregor lifted an utterly transfigured face to the Senior Surgeon’s grimly astonished gaze.

“Yes!  Yes, sir!” she cried joyously.  “That’s just exactly what the trouble is!  That’s just exactly what I was trying to express, sir!  My face is all worn out trying to ‘look alike’!  My cheeks are almost sprung with artificial smiles!  My eyes are fairly bulging with unshed tears!  My nose aches like a toothache trying never to turn up at anything!  I’m smothered with the discipline of it!  I’m choked with the affectation!  I tell you—­I just can’t breathe through a trained nurse’s face any more!  I tell you, sir, I’m sick to death of being nothing but a type.  I want to look like myself!  I want to see what Life could do to a silly face like mine—­if it ever got a chance!  When other women are crying, I want the fun of crying!  When other women look scared to death, I want the fun of looking scared to death!” Hysterically again with shrewish emphasis she began to repeat:  “I won’t be a nurse!  I tell you, I won’t!  I won’t!”

“Pray what brought you so suddenly to this remarkable decision?” scoffed the Senior Surgeon.

“A letter from my father, sir,” she confided more quietly.  “A letter about some dogs.”

“Dogs?” hooted the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.  A trifle speculatively for an instant she glanced at the Superintendent’s face and then back again to the Senior Surgeon’s.  “Yes, sir,” she repeated with increasing confidence.  “Up in Nova Scotia my father raises hunting-dogs.  Oh, no special fancy kind, sir,” she hastened in all honesty to explain.  “Just dogs, you know,—­just mixed dogs,—­pointers with curly tails,—­and shaggy-coated hounds,—­and brindled spaniels, and all that sort of thing,—­just mongrels, you know, but very clever; and people, sir, come all the way from Boston to buy dogs of him, and once a man came way from London to learn the secret of his training.”

“Well, what is the secret of his training?” quizzed the Senior Surgeon with the sudden eager interest of a sportsman.  “I should think it would be pretty hard,” he acknowledged, “in a mixed gang like that to decide just which particular dog was suited to what particular game!”

“Yes, that’s just it, sir,” beamed the White Linen Nurse.  “A dog, of course, will chase anything that runs,—­that’s just dog,—­but when a dog really begins to care for what he’s chasing he—­wags!  That’s hunting!  Father doesn’t calculate, he says, on training a dog on anything he doesn’t wag on!”