“Well, Rae Malgregor,” he grinned mirthlessly.  “The little kid is right, though I certainly don’t know where she got her information.  I am a Liar.  The pony’s name is not yet ‘Beautiful Pretty-Thing’!  I am a—­Drunk.  I was drunk most of June!  I am a Robber!  I have taken you out of your youth—­and the love-chances of your youth,—­and shut you up here in this great, gloomy old house of mine—­to be my slave—­and my child’s slave—­and—­”

“Pouf!” said the White Linen Nurse.  “It would seem—­silly—­now, sir,—­to marry a boy!”

“And I’ve been a beast to you!” persisted the Senior Surgeon.  “From the very first day you belonged to me I’ve been a—­beast to you,—­venting brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience,—­all the work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of my disordered days—­and years,—­and I’ve let my little girl vent also on you all the pang and pain of her disordered days!  And because in this great, gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle from heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed, pleasant-hearted, I’ve let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery,—­the care,—­one horrid homely task after another piling up-up-up—­till you dropped in your tracks yesterday—­still smiling!”

“But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!” protested the White Linen Nurse.  “See, sir!” she smiled.  “I’ve got real lines in my face—­now—­like other women!  I’m not a doll any more!  I’m not a—­”

“Yes!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.  “And I might just as kindly have carved those lines with my knife!  But I was going to make it all up to you to-day!” he hurried.  “I swear I was!  Even in one short little week I could have done it!  You wouldn’t have known me!  I was going to take you away,—­just you and me!  I would have been a Saint!  I swear I would!  I would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday—­as you never dreamed of in all your unselfish life!  A holiday all you—­you—­you! You could have—­dug in the sand if you’d wanted to!  Gad!  I’d have dug in the sand—­if you’d wanted me to!  And now it’s all gone from me, all the will, all the sheer positive self-assurance that I could have carried the thing through—­absolutely selflessly.  That little girl’s sneering taunt?  The ghost of her mother—­in that taunt?  God!  When anybody knocks you just in your decency it doesn’t harm you specially!  But when they knock you in your Wanting-To-Be-Decent it—­it undermines you somewhere.  I don’t know exactly how!  I’m nothing but a man again—­now, just a plain, every day, greedy, covetous, physical man—­on the edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years,—­that he no longer dares to take!”

A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weight from one foot to the other.

“I’m sorry, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse.  “I’d like to have seen a roller-coaster, sir!”