Gray with road-travel, haggard with strain and fatigue, it was long, long after the rosy sunset-time, long, long after the yellow supper light, that he came dragging up through the sweet-scented dusk of the garden and threw himself down without greeting of any sort on the top step of the piazza, where the White Linen Nurse’s skirts glowed palely through the gloom. [Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson “HE WAS INORDINATELY BUSY RELEASING THE LAST CANARY” DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER] “Well, I put a canary-bird back into its cage for you,” he confided laconically. “It was a little chap’s soul. It sure would have gotten away before morning.” “Who was the man that tried to turn it loose _this_ time?” asked the White Linen Nurse. “I didn’t _say_ that anybody did,” growled the Senior Surgeon. “Oh,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh.” Quite palpably a little shiver of flesh and starch went rustling through her. “I’ve had a wonderful day, too,” she confided softly. “I’ve cleaned the attic and darned nine pairs of your stockings and bought a sewing-machine and started to make you a white silk negligée shirt for a surprise.” “Eh?” jerked out the Senior Surgeon. The jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes and the sound of ice knocking lusciously against a glass. “Oh, have you had any supper, sir?” asked the White Linen Nurse. With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back against the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little farther out along the piazza floor. “Supper?” he groaned. “No; nor dinner, nor breakfast, nor any other blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember.” Janglingly in his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like the slammed notes of a piano. “But I wouldn’t move now,” he snarled, “if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom were piled blankety-blank-blank high on all the blankety-blank-blank tables in this whole blankety-blank-blank house.” Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s just exactly what I hoped you’d say!” she cried. “’Cause the supper’s right _here_!” “Here?” snapped the Senior Surgeon. Tempestuously he began all over again: “I tell you I wouldn’t lift my little finger if all the blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank--” “Oh, goody, then!” said the White Linen Nurse. “’Cause now I can feed you! I sort of miss fussing with the canary-birds,” she added wistfully. “Feed me?” roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. “_Feed_ me?” he began all over again. Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly under his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out at it, and nipped the White Linen Nurse’s finger instead. “Ouch, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse. Mumblingly down from an up-stairs window, as from a face flatted smouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued.