Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White Linen Nurse’s imperturbable face. “It’s an--established habit, you understand,” he re-warned her. “I’m not advocating it, you understand, I’m not defending it; I’m simply calling your attention to the fact that it _is_ an established habit. If you decide to come to us, I--I couldn’t, you know, at forty-eight, begin all over again to--to have some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me what a low beast I am till I go down the steps again the following June.” “No, of course not,” conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his. “Father’s like that,” she confided amiably. “Once a year--just Easter Sunday only--he always buys him a brand-new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to him, I don’t know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk,--oh, mad, fighting drunk is what I mean,--and goes out and tries to shoot up the whole county.” Worriedly, two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows. “And always,” she said, “he makes mother and me go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It’s pretty hard sometimes,” she said, “to find anything dressy enough for the morning that’s serviceable enough for the afternoon.” “Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared. “Well, it’s all right, then, is it? You’ll take us?” he asked brightly. “Oh, _no_!” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, _no_, sir! Oh, no, indeed, sir!” Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the grass. “Thank you _very much_,” she persisted courteously. “It’s been _very interesting_. I thank you _very much_ for telling me, but--” “But what?” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “But it’s too quick,” said the White Linen Nurse. “No man could tell like that, just between one eye-wink and another, what he wanted about _anything_, let alone marrying a perfect stranger.” Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled. “I assure you, my dear young lady,” he retorted, “that I am entirely and completely accustomed to deciding between ‘one wink and another’ just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people living to-day who wouldn’t be living if it had taken me even as long as a wink and three quarters to make up my mind.” “Yes, I know, sir,” acknowledged the White Linen Nurse. “Yes, of course, sir,” she acquiesced, with most commendable humility; “but all the same, sir, I couldn’t do it,” she persisted with inflexible positiveness. “Why, I haven’t enough education,” she confessed quite shamelessly. “You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital with,” drawled the Senior Surgeon, a bit grumpily, “and that’s quite as much as most people have, I assure you. ‘A high-school education or its equivalent,’--that is the hospital requirement, I believe?” he questioned tartly.