Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White Linen Nurse’s imperturbable face.  “It’s an—­established custom, you understand,” he rewarned her.  “I’m not advocating it, you understand,—­I’m not defending it.  I’m simply calling your attention to the fact that it is an established custom.  If you decide to come to us, I—­I couldn’t, you know, at forty-eight—­begin all over again to—­to have some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me—­what a low beast I am—­till I go down the steps again—­the following June.”

“No, of course not,” conceded the White Linen Nurse.  Blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his.  “Father’s like that!” she confided amiably.  “Once a year,—­just Easter Sunday only,—­he always buys him a brand new suit of clothes and goes to church.  And it does something to him,—­I don’t know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk,—­oh mad, fighting drunk is what I mean, and goes out and tries to tear up the whole county.”  Worriedly two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows.  “And always,” she said, “he makes Mother and me go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him.  It’s pretty hard sometimes,” she said, “to find anything dressy enough for the morning, that’s serviceable enough for the afternoon.”

“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.  Then suddenly he began to smile again like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared.  “Well, it’s all right then, is it?  You’ll take us?” he asked brightly.

“Oh, no!” said the White Linen Nurse.  “Oh, no, sir!  Oh, no indeed, sir!” Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the grass.  “Thank you very much!” she persisted courteously.  “It’s been very interesting!  I thank you very much for telling me, but—­”

“But what?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.

“But it’s too quick,” said the White Linen Nurse.  “No man could tell like that—­just between one eye-wink and another what he wanted about anything,—­let alone marrying a perfect stranger.”

Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled.  “I assure you, my dear young lady,” he retorted, “that I am entirely and completely accustomed to deciding between ‘one wink and another’ just exactly what it is that I want.  Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people living to-day who wouldn’t be living, if it had taken me even as long as a wink and three-quarters to make up my mind!”

“Yes, I know, sir,” acknowledged the White Linen Nurse.  “Yes, of course, sir,” she acquiesced with most commendable humility.  “But all the same, sir, I couldn’t do it!” she persisted with inflexible positiveness.  “Why, I haven’t enough education,” she confessed quite shamelessly.

“You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital,” drawled the Senior Surgeon a bit grumpily.  “And that’s quite as much as most people have, I assure you!  ’A High School education or its equivalent,’—­that is the hospital requirement, I believe?” he questioned tartly.