“What color is Aunt Agnes?” she asked vehemently. “Aunt Agnes is pretty white, too,” declared the Senior Surgeon. With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girl lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher. “If it’s just a perfectly plain white pony,” she said, “I’d rather have Peach. But if it’s a white pony with black blots on it, and if it can pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if it will eat sugar lumps out of my hand, and if its name is--is ’Beautiful, Pretty Thing--’” “Its name has always been ‘Beautiful, Pretty Thing,’ I’m quite sure,” insisted the Senior Surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out and put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse’s shoulder. Instantly into the Little Girl’s suspicious face flushed a furiously uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned upon her father. “You’re a liar!” she screamed. “There _is_ no white pony! You’re a robber! You’re a--a--drunk! You sha’n’t have my darling Peach!” She threw herself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse’s lap. Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the clinging little arms, and, raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet, pushed her gently toward the hall. “Go to my workroom,” he said. “Quickly! I want to talk with you.” A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behind him. The previous night’s loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now, and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that, and of the day before that. Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his desk chair, with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as though she were nothing but a white linen nurse. All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose. “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.”