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

With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal pacing of the floor.

“Bully for you!” he said.  “You mean then we’ll be married some time in July after I get back from my—­trip?”

“Oh, no, sir,” stammered the White Linen Nurse.

“But Great Heavens!” shouted the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes, sir,” the White Linen Nurse began all over again.  Dreamily planning out her wedding gown, her lips without the slightest conscious effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate “No, sir.”

“You’re an idiot!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.

A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie.  “Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?” she asked, with real concern.

“Eh?  What?” said the Senior Surgeon.

“I mean—­does Japan spot?” queried the White Linen Nurse.  “Would it spot a serge, I mean?”

“Oh, Hell with Japan!” jerked the Senior Surgeon.

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

Now perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse were married on the first day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior Surgeon’s great, gloomy house, to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings.  Everything now is perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings.  Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings!

But even a little child could explain the ensuing June!  Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year!  Bud, blossom, bird-song, breeze,—­rioting headlong through the Land.  Warm days sweet and lush as a green-house vapor!  Crisp nights faintly metallic like the scent of stars!  Hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street-corner!  Even the Ash-Man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones!

Like two fairies who had sublet a giant’s cave the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior Surgeon’s gloomy old house.

It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal,—­square and brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick walls.  Except for dusting the lilac bushes with the hose, and weeding a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden.  But the house?  Oh ye gods!  All day long from morning till night,—­but most particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black walnut furniture had escaped.  All day long from morning till night,—­but most particularly from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down step-ladders stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings.