When they reached the car both woman and child were too utterly exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on the ground and—­stare.

Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the Senior Surgeon’s body lay rammed face-down deep, deep into the grass.

It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.

“I think he’s dead!” she volunteered sagely.  “His legs look—­awfully dead—­to me!” Only excitement was in the statement.  It took a second or two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application of such excitement.  “I hadn’t—­exactly—­planned—­on having him dead!” she began with imperious resentment.  A threat of complete emotional collapse zig-zagged suddenly across her face.  “I won’t have him dead!  I won’t!  I won’t!” she screamed out stormily.

In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at the Senior Surgeon’s prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.

“Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do,—­I know I could do it!  Oh, I know I could do it!  If some one would only tell me what to do!” she kept repeating helplessly.

Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the edge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellow wheel-spokes.  “Father!” she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness.  “Father!” she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.

Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees and jostled the Little Girl aside.

“Fat Father!” screamed the White Linen Nurse.  “Fat Father!  Fat Father! Fat Father!" she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that had never yet failed to rouse him.

Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon’s horridly quiet shoulders a little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.

“Oh, his heart!” gasped the White Linen Nurse.  “I must find his heart!”

Throwing herself prone upon the cool meadowy ground and frantically reaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm’s length she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.

“Ouch!  You tickle me!” spluttered the Senior Surgeon weakly.

Rolling back quickly with fright and relief the White Linen Nurse burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter.  “Ha!  Ha!  Ha!” she giggled.  “Hi!  Hi!  Titter!  Titter!  Titter!”

Perplexedly at first but with increasing abandon the Little Girl’s voice took up the same idiotic refrain.  “Ha-Ha-Ha,” she choked.  And “Hi-Hi-Hi!” And “Titter!  Titter!  Titter!”

With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech.  Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of stale golden-rod.