“There!  That’s done!” he said tersely.  “So much for the Past!  Now for the Present!  Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself!  A man and a very little girl,—­not guaranteed,—­not even recommended,—­offered merely ‘As Is’ in the honest trade-phrase of the day,—­offered frankly in an open package,—­accepted frankly,—­if at all—­’at your own risk.’  Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us!  Look at us closely, I ask, and—­decide for yourself!  I am forty-eight years old.  I am inexcusably bad-tempered,—­very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of great mercy.  I am moody.  I am selfish.  I am most distinctly unsocial.  But I am not, I believe, stingy,—­nor ever intentionally unfair.  My child is a cripple,—­and equally bad-tempered as myself.  No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her.  And she shows it.  We have lived alone for six years.  All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending.  I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled.  I am a man with all a man’s needs,—­mental, moral, physical.  My child is a child with all a child’s needs,—­mental, moral, physical.  Our house of life is full of cobwebs.  The rooms of affection have long been closed.  There will be a great deal of work to do!  And it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved.  I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say ’Oh, but I didn’t know you would expect me to do this! Oh, but I hadn’t any idea you would want me to do that! And I certainly don’t see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!’”

Across the Senior Surgeon’s face a real smile lightened suddenly.

“Really, Miss Malgregor,” he affirmed, “I’m afraid there isn’t much of anything that you won’t be expected to do!  And as to your ’Thursdays out’?  Ha!  If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering!  And as to ‘wages’?  Yes!  I want to talk everything quite frankly!  In addition to my average yearly earnings,—­which are by no means small,—­I have a reasonably large private fortune.  Within normal limits there is no luxury I think that you cannot hope to have.  Also, exclusive of the independent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should be very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish concerning your family in Nova Scotia.  Also,—­though the offer looks small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large to you later,—­also, I will personally guarantee to you—­at some time every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two months’