“I’ve _always_ had money enough to ‘go slow and make things perfectly right,’” she confided a bit wistfully. “Never in all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren’t guaranteed or a dress that wouldn’t wash or a hat that wasn’t worth at least three re-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to--so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here’s this wall-paper, now,”--tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book,--“it’s got peacocks on it, life-size, in a queen’s garden, and I wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade, maybe we’d get tired of it, maybe it would poison us: slam it on one week, and slash it off the next. I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir. I thought maybe, while you were ’way off in Canada--” [Illustration: Plates in tint, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson “‘YOU’VE NO BUSINESS TO HURRY ME SO,’ SHE PROTESTED. ‘IT ISN’T FAIR; IT ISN’T KIND’” DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER] Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his fiancée’s. “Now, my dear girl,” he said, “that’s just what I want to explain--that’s just what I want to explain--just what I want to explain--to--er--explain,” he continued a bit falteringly. “Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one of his cuffs. “All this talk of yours about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my--Canadian trip,” he contended, “why, it’s all damned nonsense.” “Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of dust on his other cuff. “Why, my--my dear girl,” he persisted, “it’s absurd, it’s outrageous! Why, people would--would hoot at us! Why, they’d think--” “Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Why, my dear girl,” sweated the Senior Surgeon, “even though you and I understand perfectly well the purely formal, businesslike conditions of our marriage, we must at least, for sheer decency’s sake, keep up a certain semblance of marital conventionality before the world. Why, if we were married at noon the first day of June as you suggest, and I should go right off alone as usual on my Canadian trip, and you should come back alone to the house, why, people would think--would think that I didn’t care anything about you.” “But you don’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, serenely. “Why, they’d think,” choked the Senior Surgeon--“they’d think you were trying your--darndest to get rid of me.” “I am,” said the White Linen Nurse, complacently. With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and stood glaring down at her. Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare.