The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5
Various
Periodicals
Feeling hopelessly imprisoned under the monstrous car, the Senior
Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt sure,
could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic,
blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed
eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it
was the fires of hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man, he
found himself staring impudently close, instead, into the White Linen
Nurse’s furiously flushed face, which lay cuddled on one plump cheek,
staring impudently close at him.
“Why--why--get out!” gasped the Senior Surgeon.
Very modestly the White Linen Nurse’s face retreated a little further
into its blushes.
“Yes, I know,” she protested; “but I’m all through giggling now. I’m
sorry--I’m--”
In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon’s features crinkled
wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from
the appalling proximity of the girl’s face.
“Your--eyelashes--are too long,” he complained querulously.
“Eh?” jerked the White Linen Nurse’s face. “Is it your brain that’s
hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it’s your brain that’s hurt?”
“It’s my stomach,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I tell you I’m not
hurt; I’m just--squashed. I’m paralyzed. If I can’t get this car off
me--”
“Yes, that’s just it,” beamed the White Linen Nurse’s face--“that’s
just what I crawled in here to find out--how to get the car off you.
That’s just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course;
only I couldn’t run, ’cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take
hours, and the car might start or burn up or something while I was
gone. But you don’t seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery,” she
added more brightly; “it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could
only get the car off you! But it’s so heavy. I had no idea it would be
so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place
where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?”
“Take it apart--hell!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.
A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse’s
face.
“All the same,” she asserted stubbornly, “if some one would only tell
me what to do, I know I could do it.”
Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little
tremor quickened suddenly, and was hushed again.
“Get out of here--quick!” stormed the Senior Surgeon.
“I won’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, “until you tell me what to do.”
Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray
eyes battled each other.
“_Can_ you do what you’re told?” faltered the Senior Surgeon.
“Oh, yes,” said the White Linen Nurse.
“I mean, can you do exactly what you’re told?” gasped the Senior
Surgeon. “Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them
explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own
judgment?”
“Oh, but I haven’t got any judgment,” protested the White Linen Nurse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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