“Get out of here—­quick!” stormed the Senior Surgeon’s ghastly face.

“I won’t!” said the White Linen Nurse’s face.  “Until you tell me—­what to do!”

Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray eyes battled each other.

“Can you do what you’re told?” faltered the Senior Surgeon.

“Oh, yes,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“I mean can you do exactly—­what you’re told?” gasped the Senior Surgeon.  “Can you follow directions, I mean?  Can you follow them—­explicitly?  Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own judgment?”

“Oh, but I haven’t got any—­judgment,” protested the White Linen Nurse.

Palpably in the Senior Surgeon’s blood-shot eyes the leisurely seeming diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions.

“Then get out of here—­quick—­for God’s sake—­and get to work!” he ordered.

Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the wheel-spokes again.  Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical problem his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed eyelids.

“Yes, sir?” prodded the White Linen Nurse.

“Keep still!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.  “I’ve got to think,” he said.  “I’ve got to work it out!  All in a moment you’ve got to learn to run the car.  All in a moment!  It’s awful!”

“Oh, I don’t mind, sir,” affirmed the White Linen Nurse serenely.

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again.  “You don’t—­mind?” he groaned.  “You don’t—­mind?  Why, you’ve got to learn—­everything!  Everything—­from—­the very beginning!”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” crooned the White Linen Nurse.

Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again.  The Senior Surgeon did not stop to argue any further.

“Now come here,” ordered the Senior Surgeon.  “I’m going to—­I’m going to—­” Startlingly his voice weakened,—­trailed off into nothingness,—­and rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness.  “Look here now!  For Heaven’s sake use your brains!  I’m going to dictate to you—­very slowly—­one thing at a time—­just what to do!”

Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and began to grin at him.  “Oh, no, sir,” she said.  “I couldn’t do it that way,—­not ‘one thing at a time.’  Oh, no indeed, sir!  No!” Absolute finality was in her voice,—­the inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person.

“You’ll do it the way I tell you to!” roared the Senior Surgeon struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint.

“Oh, no, sir,” beamed the White Linen Nurse.  “Not one thing at a time!  Oh, no, I couldn’t do it that way!  Oh, no, sir, I won’t do it that way—­one thing at a time,” she persisted hurriedly.  “Why, you might faint away or something might happen—­right in the middle of it—­right between one direction and another—­and I wouldn’t know at all—­what to turn on or off next—­and it might take off one of your legs, you know, or an arm.  Oh, no,—­not one thing at a time!”