Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor.
“You’re a good little girl, Rae Malgregor,” he mumbled huskily--“a good little girl. I truly believe you’re the kind that will see me through.” Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely in its turn resentment overtook the humiliation. “But I won’t be married in June,” he reasserted bombastically. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I tell you I positively refuse to have a lot of damned fools speculating about my private affairs, wondering why I didn’t take you, wondering why I didn’t stay home with you. I tell you I won’t. I surely _won’t_.”
“Yes, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.
With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal pacing of the floor.
“Bully for you!” he said. “You mean then we’ll be married some time in July after I get back from my--trip?”
“Oh, no, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.
“But, great Heavens!” shouted the Senior Surgeon.
“Yes, sir,” the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamily planning out her wedding-gown, her lips without the slightest conscious effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate “No, sir.”
“You’re an idiot!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie.
“Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?” she asked, with real concern.
“I mean, does Japan _spot_?” queried the White Linen Nurse. “Would it spot a serge, I mean?”
“Oh, hell with Japan!” jerked out the Senior Surgeon.
Now, perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse _were_ married on the first day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior Surgeon’s great, gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings. Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings.
But even a little child could explain the ensuing June. Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, birdsong, breeze, rioting headlong through the land; warm days as sweet and lush as a greenhouse vapor; crisp nights faintly metallic, like the scent of stars; hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street corner; even the ash-man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones.