With an impulse absolutely novel to him the Senior Surgeon turned and swung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder.

“Your Aunt Agnes is coming to stay with you—­in just about ten minutes!” he affirmed.  “That’s—­what’s going to happen to you! And maybe there’ll be a pony—­a white pony.”

“But Peach is so—­pleasant!” wailed the Little Crippled Girl.  “Peach is so pleasant!” she began to scream and kick.

“So it seems!” growled the Senior Surgeon.  “And she’s—­dying of it!”

Tearfully the Little Girl wriggled down to the ground, and hobbled around and thrust her finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse’s blushiest cheek.

“I don’t want—­Peach—­to—­die,” she admitted worriedly.  “But I don’t want anybody to take her away!”

“The pony is—­very white,” urged the Senior Surgeon with a diplomacy quite alien to him.

Abruptly the Little Girl turned and faced him.  “What color is Aunt Agnes?” she asked vehemently.

“Aunt Agnes is—­pretty white, too,” attested the Senior Surgeon.

With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girl lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher.

“If it’s just a perfectly plain white pony,” she said, “I’d rather have Peach.  But if it’s a white pony with black blots on it, and if it can pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if it will eat sugar-lumps out of my hand,—­and if its name is—­is—­’Beautiful Pretty-Thing’—­”

“Its name has always been—­’Beautiful Pretty-Thing,’ I’m quite sure!” insisted the Senior Surgeon.  Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out and put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse’s shoulder.

Instantly into the Little Girl’s suspicious face flushed a furiously uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment.  Madly she turned upon her father.

“You’re a liar!” she screamed.  “There is no white pony!  You’re a robber!  You’re a—­a—­drunk!  You shan’t have my darling Peach!” And threw herself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse’s lap.

Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the little clinging arms, and raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet pushed her emphatically towards the hall.

“Go to my work-room,” he said.  “Quickly!  I want to talk with you!”

A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behind him.  The previous night’s loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now, and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that, and of the day before that.

Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his desk chair with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as though she were nothing but a—­white linen nurse.  All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose.