Beyond this hectic horticultural outburst the leisurely Spring faded out again into April’s naturally sallow colors.

Glossy and black as an endless typewriter ribbon, the narrow, tense State Road seemed to wind itself everlastingly in—­and in—­and in—­on some hidden spool of the car’s mysterious mechanism.  Clickety-Click-Click-Clack,—­faster than any human mind could think,—­faster than any human hand could finger,—­hurtling up hazardous hills of thought,—­sliding down facile valleys of fancy,—­roaring with emphasis,—­shrieking with punctuation,—­the great car yielded itself perforce to Fate’s dictation.

Robbed successively of the city’s humanitarian pang, of the suburb’s esthetic pleasure, the White Linen Nurse found herself precipitated suddenly into a mere blur of sight, a mere chaos of sound.  In whizzing speed and crashing breeze,—­houses—­fences—­meadows—­people—­slapped across her eyeballs like pictures on a fan.  On and on and on through kaleidoscopic yellows and rushing grays the great car sped, a purely mechanical factor in a purely mechanical landscape.

Rigid with concentration the Senior Surgeon stared like a dead man into the intrepid, on-coming road.

Intermittently from her green, plushy laprobes the little crippled girl struggled to her feet, and sprawling clumsily across whose-ever shoulder suited her best, raised a brazenly innocent voice, deliberately flatted, in a shrill and maddeningly repetitive chant of her own making, to the effect that

All the birds were there
With yellow feathers instead of hair,
And bumble bees crocheted in the trees—­
And bumble bees crocheted in the trees—­
And all the birds were there—­
And—­And—­

Intermittently from the front seat the Senior Surgeon’s wooden face relaxed to the extent of a grim mouth twisting distractedly sideways in one furious bellow.

“Will—­you—­stop—­you
r—­noise—­and—­go—­back—­to—­your—­seat!”

Nothing else happened at all until at last, out of unbroken stretches of winter-staled stubble, a high, formal hemlock hedge and a neat, pebbled driveway proclaimed the Senior Surgeon’s ultimate destination.

Cautiously now, with an almost tender skill, the big car circled a tiny, venturesome clump of highway violets and crept through a prancing, leaping fluff of yellow collie dogs to the door of the big stone house.

Instantly from inestimable resources a liveried serving man appeared to help the Surgeon from his car; another, to take the Surgeon’s coat; another, to carry his bag.

Lingering for an instant to stretch his muscles and shake his great shoulders, the Senior Surgeon breathed into his cramped lungs a friendly impulse as well as a scent of budding cherry trees.