“’S-h-h!” cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenly blanched, his mouth twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost insupportable pain. “For God’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded, “can’t you call it my Canadian trip?”
Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him.
“But it _is_ a spree, sir!” she protested resolutely. “And my father says--” Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its original assertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little smile crept softly out--“when my father’s got a lame trotting-horse, sir, that he’s trying to shuck off his hands,” she faltered, “he doesn’t ever go round mournful-like, with his head hanging, telling folks about his wonderful trotter that’s just ‘the littlest, teeniest, tiniest bit lame.’ Oh, no. What father does is to call up every one he knows within twenty miles and tell ’em: ‘Say, Tom, Bill, Harry, or whatever your name is, what in the deuce do you suppose I’ve got over here in my barn? A lame horse that wants to trot! _Lamer than the deuce_, you know, but can do a mile in two forty.’” Faintly the little smile quickened again in the White Linen Nurse’s eyes. “And the barn will be full of men in half an hour,” she said. “Somehow nobody wants a trotter that’s lame, but almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse that’s plucky enough to trot.”
“What’s the ‘lame trotting-horse’ got to do with _me_?” snarled the Senior Surgeon, incisively.
Darkly the White Linen Nurse’s lashes fringed down across her cheeks.
“Only what?” demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than he realized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by her shoulders, and jerked her sharply round to the light. “Only _what_?” he insisted peremptorily.
Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his.
“Only my father says,” she confided obediently--“my father says, ‘if you’ve got a worse foot, for Heaven’s sake, put it forward, and get it over with!’
“So I’ve _got_ to call it a spree,” smiled the White Linen Nurse; “’cause when I think of marrying a surgeon that goes off and gets drunk every June, it--it scares me almost to death; but--” Abruptly the red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes--“but when I think of marrying a--June drunk that’s got the grit to pull up absolutely straight as a die and be a surgeon all the other ’leven months in the year?” Dartingly she bent down and kissed the Senior Surgeon’s astonished wrist. “Oh, then I think you’re perfectly grand!” she sobbed.