“Blankety-blank-blank—­BLANK!” he announced in due time, “Blankety-blank-blank-blank—­BLANK!  Maybe when you two—­blankety-blank—­imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank cackling you’ll have the—­blankety-blank decency to save my—­my blankety-blank-blank—­blank—­blank-blank life!”

“Ha!  Ha!  Ha!” persisted the poor helpless White Linen Nurse with the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Hi!  Hi!  Hi!” snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs.

Feeling hopelessly crushed under two tons and a half of car, the Senior Surgeon closed his eyes for death.  No man of his weight, he felt quite sure, could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic, blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums.  Through his tight-closed eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate.  He thought it was the fires of Hell.  Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man he found himself staring impudently close instead into the White Linen Nurse’s furiously flushed face that lay cuddled on one plump cheek staring impudently close at him.

“Why—­why—­get out!” gasped the Senior Surgeon.

Very modestly the White Linen Nurse’s face retreated a little further into its blushes.

“Yes, I know,” she protested.  “But I’m all through giggling now.  I’m sorry—­I’m—­”

In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon’s features crinkled wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from the appalling proximity of the girl’s face.

“Your—­eyelashes—­are too long,” he complained querulously.

“Eh?” jerked the White Linen Nurse’s face.  “Is it your brain that’s hurt?  Oh, sir, do you think it’s your brain that’s hurt?”

“It’s my stomach!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.  “I tell you I ’m not hurt,—­I’m just—­squashed!  I’m paralyzed!  If I can’t get this car off me—­”

“Yes, that’s just it,” beamed the White Linen Nurse’s face.  “That’s just what I crawled in here to find out,—­how to get the car off you.  That’s just what I want to find out.  I could run for help, of course,—­only I couldn’t run, ’cause my knees are so wobbly.  It would take hours—­and the car might start or burn up or something while I was gone.  But you don’t seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery,” she added more brightly, “it only seems to be sitting on you.  So if I could only get the car off you!  But it’s so heavy.  I had no idea it would be so heavy.  Could I take it apart, do you think?  Is there any one place where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?”

“Take it apart—­Hell!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.

A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse’s face.  “All the same,” she asserted stubbornly, “if some one would only tell me what to do—­I know I could do it!”

Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little tremor quickened suddenly and was hushed again.