“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.

The jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes and the sound of ice knocking lusciously against a glass.

“Oh, have you had any supper, sir?” asked the White Linen Nurse.

With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back against the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little further out along the piazza floor.

“Supper?” he groaned.  “No!  Nor dinner!  Nor breakfast!  Nor any other—­blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember!” Janglingly in his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like the slammed notes of a piano.  “But I wouldn’t—­move—­now,” he snarled, “if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom—­were piled blankety-blank-blank high—­on all the blankety-blank-blank tables—­in this whole blankety-blank-blank house!”

Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands.  “Oh, that’s just exactly what I hoped you’d say!” she cried. “’Cause the supper’s—­right here!”

“Here?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.  Tempestuously he began all over again.  “I—­tell—­you—­I—­wouldn’t—­lift—­my—­little finger—­if all the blankety-blank-blank-blank—­”

“Oh, Goody then!” said the White Linen Nurse. “’Cause now I can feed you!  I sort of miss fussing with the canary birds,” she added wistfully.

“Feed me?” roared the Senior Surgeon.  Again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass.  “Feed me?” he began all over again.

Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly under his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out at it—­and nipped the White Linen Nurse’s finger instead.

“Ouch—­sir!” said the White Linen Nurse.

Mumblingly down from an upstairs window, as from a face flatted smouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued.

“Peach!—­Peach!” called an angry little voice.  “If you don’t come to bed—­now—­I’ll—­I’ll say my curses instead of my prayers!”

A trifle nervously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet.

“Maybe I’d—­better go?” she said.

“Maybe—­you had!” said the Senior Surgeon quite definitely.

At the edge of the threshold the White Linen Nurse turned for an instant.

“Good-night, Dr. Faber!” she whispered.

“Good-night, Rae Malgregor—­Faber!” said the Senior Surgeon.

“Good-night—­what?” gasped the White Linen Nurse.

“Good-night, Rae Malgregor—­Faber,” repeated the Senior Surgeon.

Clutching at her skirts as though a mouse were after her, the White Linen Nurse went scuttling up the stairs.

Very late—­on into the night—­the Senior Surgeon lay there on his piazza floor staring out into his garden.  Very companionably from time to time, like a tame firefly, a little bright spark hovered and glowed for an instant above the bowl of his pipe.  Puff-puff-puff, doze-doze-doze, throb-throb-throb,—­on and on and on and on—­into the sweet-scented night.