Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his—­fiancée’s.

“Now, my dear girl,” he said.  “That’s just what I want to explain!  That’s just what I want to explain!  Just what I want to explain!  To—­er—­explain!” he continued a bit falteringly.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one of his cuffs.

“All this talk of yours—­about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my—­Canadian trip!” he contended.  “Why, it’s all damned nonsense!”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of dust on his other cuff.

“Why my—­my dear girl,” he persisted.  “It’s absurd!  It’s outrageous!  Why people would—­would hoot at us!  Why they’d think—!”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“Why, my dear girl,” sweated the Senior Surgeon.  “Even though you and I understand perfectly well the purely formal, business-like conditions of our marriage, we must at least for sheer decency’s sake keep up a certain semblance of marital conventionality—­before the world!  Why, if we were married at noon the first day of June—­as you suggest,—­and I should go right off alone as usual—­on my Canadian trip—­and you should come back alone to the house—­why, people would think—­would think that I didn’t care anything about you!”

“But you don’t,” said the White Linen Nurse serenely.

“Why, they’d think,” choked the Senior Surgeon.  “They’d think you were trying your—­darndest—­to get rid of me!”

“I am,” said the White Linen Nurse complacently.

With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and stood glaring down at her.

Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare.

“A gentleman—­and a red-haired kiddie—­and a great walloping house—­all at once!  It’s too much!” she confided genially.  “Thank you just the same, but I’d rather take them gradually.  First of all, sir, you see, I’ve got to teach the little kiddie to like me!  And then there’s a green-tiled paper with floppity sea gulls on it—­that I want to try for the bath-room!  And—­and—­” Ecstatically she clapped her hands together.  “Oh, sir!  There are such loads and loads of experiments I want to try while you are off on your spree!”

“S—­h—­h!” cried the Senior Surgeon.  His face was suddenly blanched,—­his mouth, twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost insupportable pain.  “For God’s sake, Miss Malgregor!” he pleaded, “can’t you call it my—­Canadian trip?”

Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him.