In absolute submission to his demand, though with very palpable reluctance, the White Linen Nurse came forward to the table, put down the cup and saucer, and began to finger a trifle nervously at the cloth.

“Oh, I’m sure I didn’t mean any harm, sir,” she stammered.  “But all I say is,—­honest and truly all I say is,—­’Bah!  He’s nothing but a man—­nothing but a man—­nothing but a man!’ over and over and over,—­just that, sir!”

Uproariously the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair, and jumped to his feet.

“I guess after all I’ll have to let the little kid call you—­’Peach’—­one day a week!” he acknowledged jocosely.

With infinite seriousness then he tossed back his great splendid head,—­shook himself free apparently from all unhappy memories,—­and started for his work-room,—­a great gorgeously vital, extraordinarily talented, gray-haired boy lusting joyously for his own work and play again—­after a month’s distressing illness!

From the edge of the hall he turned round and made a really boyish grimace at her.

“Now if I only had the horns or the cloven hoof—­that you think I have,” he called, “what an easy time I’d make of it, raking over all the letters and ads. that are stacked up on my desk!”

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

Only once did he come back into the kitchen or dining-room for anything.  It was at seven o’clock.  And the White Linen Nurse was still washing dishes.

As radiant as a gray-haired god he towered up in the doorway.  The boyish rejuvenation in him was even more startling than before.

“I’m feeling so much like a fighting cock this morning,” he said, “I think I’ll tackle that paper on surgical diseases of the pancreas that I have to read at Baltimore next month!” A little startlingly the gray lines furrowed into his cheeks again.  “For Heaven’s sake—­see that I’m not disturbed by anything!” he admonished her warningly.

It must have been almost eight o’clock when the ear-splitting scream from upstairs sent the White Linen Nurse plunging out panic-stricken into the hall.

“Oh, Peach!  Peach!” yelled the Little Girl’s frenzied voice.  “Come quick and see—­what Fat Father’s doing now—­out on the piazza!”

Jerkily the White Linen Nurse swerved off through the French door that opened directly on the piazza.  Had the Senior Surgeon hung himself, she tortured, in some wild, temporary aberration of the “morning after”?

But staunchly and reassuringly from the further end of the piazza the Senior Surgeon’s broad back belied her horrid terror.  Quite prosily and in apparently perfect health he was standing close to the railing of the piazza.  On a table directly beside him rested four empty bird cages.  Just at that particular moment he was inordinately busy releasing the last canary from the fifth cage.  Both hands were smouched with ink and behind his left ear a fountain pen dallied daringly.