“Yes, but what’s that got to do with you?” asked the Senior Surgeon a bit impatiently.

With ill-concealed dismay the White Linen Nurse stood staring blankly at the Senior Surgeon’s gross stupidity.

“Why, don’t you see?” she faltered.  “I’ve been chasing this nursing job three whole years now—­and there’s no wag to it!”

“Oh Hell!” said the Senior Surgeon.  If he hadn’t said “Oh Hell!” he would have grinned.  And it hadn’t been a grinning day, and he certainly didn’t intend to begin grinning at any such late hour as that in the afternoon.  With his dignity once reassured he relaxed then a trifle.  “For Heaven’s sake, what do you want to be?” he asked not unkindly.

With an abrupt effort at self-control Rae Malgregor jerked her head into at least the outer semblance of a person lost in almost fathomless thought.

“Why I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” she acknowledged worriedly.  “But it would be a great pity, I suppose, to waste all the grand training that’s gone into my hands.”  With sudden conviction her limp shoulders stiffened a trifle.  “My oldest sister,” she stammered, “bosses the laundry in one of the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school in Moncton.  But I’m so strong, you know, and I like to move things round so,—­and everything,—­maybe—­I could get a position somewhere as general housework girl.”

With a roar of amusement as astonishing to himself as to his listeners, the Senior Surgeon’s chin jerked suddenly upward.

“You’re crazy as a loon!” he confided cordially.  “Great Scott!  If you can work up a condition like this on coffee,—­what would you do on,” he hesitated grimly, “malted milk?” As unheralded as his amusement, gross irritability overtook him again.  “Will—­you—­stop—­rattling that brown paper?” he thundered at her.

Innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored the temper.

“But I’m not rattling it, sir!” she protested.  “I’m simply trying to hide what’s on the other side of it.”

“What is on the other side of it?” demanded the Senior Surgeon bluntly.

With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around.

From behind her desk the austere Superintendent twisted her neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics. “Don’t—­Ever—­Be—­bumptious!” she read forth jerkily with a questioning, incredulous sort of emphasis.

“Don’t ever be bumptious?” squinted the Senior Surgeon perplexedly through his glasses.

“Yes,” said Rae Malgregor very timidly.  “It’s my—­motto.”

“Your motto?” sniffed the Superintendent.

“Your motto?” chuckled the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes, my motto,” repeated Rae Malgregor with the slightest perceptible tinge of resentment.  “And it’s a perfectly good motto, too!  Only, of course, it hasn’t got any style to it.  That’s why I didn’t want the girls to see it,” she confided a bit drearily.  Then palpably before their eyes they saw her spirit leap into ineffable pride.  “My Father gave it to me,” she announced briskly.  “And my Father said that, when I came home in June, if I could honestly say that I’d never once been bumptious—­all my three years here,—­he’d give me a—­heifer!  And—­”