Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went brightening across the Senior Surgeon’s brooding face, and was gone again.

“Rae Malgregor, come here!” he ordered quite sharply.

Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has never known heels, the White Linen Nurse came forward swiftly and sliding in cautiously between the Senior Surgeon and his desk, stood there with her back braced against the desk, her fingers straying idly up and down the edges of the desk, staring up into his face all readiness, all attention, like a soldier waiting further orders.

So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb of her,—­the little fluttering swallow,—­yet by some strange, persistent aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown, not an edge, not a thread, seemed to even so much as graze his knee, seemed to even so much as shadow his hand,—­lest it short-circuit thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions.

With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon sat staring into the girl’s eyes, the blue, blue eyes too full of childish questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment.

“After all, Rae Malgregor,” he smiled at last, faintly—­“After all, Rae Malgregor,—­Heaven knows when I shall ever get—­another holiday!”

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

With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter and began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers.

“How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?” he asked quite abruptly.

“Four months—­actually with you, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my—­proposal of marriage to you?” he asked shrewdly.

“Oh, yes, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse.  “You called it ’general heartwork for a family of two’!”

A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon’s own eyes fell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct as hers.

“Well,” he smiled.  “Through the whole four months I seem to have kept my part of the contract all right—­and held you merely as a—­drudge in my home.  Have you then decided, once and for all time,—­whether you are going to stay on with us—­or whether you will ‘give notice’ as other drudges have done?”

With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse began to finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half way round as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely the profile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior Surgeon’s questioning eyes.

“I shall never—­give notice, sir!” fluttered the white throat.

“Are you perfectly sure?” insisted the Senior Surgeon.

The pink in the White Linen Nurse’s profiled cheek deepened a little.

“Perfectly sure, sir!” attested the carmine lips.