Gruffly the Senior Surgeon laughed. Embarrassment was in the laugh, and anger, and a fierce, fiery sort of resentment against both the embarrassment and the anger,--but no possible trace of amusement. Impatiently he glanced up at the fast speeding clock. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "I'm an hour late now!" Scowling like a pirate he clicked the cover of his watch open and shut for an uncertain instant. Then suddenly he laughed again, and there was nothing whatsoever in his laugh this time except just amusement. "See here, Miss--Bossy Tamer," he said. "If the Superintendent is willing, go get your hat and coat, and I'll take you out on that meningitis case with me. It's a thirty mile run if it's a block, and I guess if you sit on the front seat it will blow the cobwebs out of your brain--if anything will," he finished not unkindly. Like a white hen sensing the approach of some utterly unseen danger the Superintendent seemed to bristle suddenly in every direction. "It's a bit--irregular," she protested in her most even tone. "Bah! So are some of the most useful of the French verbs!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. In the midst of authority his voice could be inestimably soft and reassuring, but sometimes on the brink of asserting said authority he had a tone that was distinctly unpleasant. "Oh, very well," conceded the Superintendent with some waspishness. Hazily for an instant Rae Malgregor stood staring into the Superintendent's uncordial face. "I'd--I'd apologize," she faltered, "but I--don't even know what I said. It just blew up!" Perfectly coldly and perfectly civilly the Superintendent received the overture. "It was quite evident, Miss Malgregor, that you were not altogether responsible at the moment," she conceded in common justice. Heavily then, like a person walking in her sleep the girl trailed out of the room to get her coat and hat. Slamming one desk-drawer after another the Superintendent drowned the sluggish sound of her retreating footsteps. "There goes my best nurse!" she said grimly. "My very best nurse! Oh no, not the most brilliant one, I didn't mean that, but the most reliable! The most nearly perfect human machine that it has ever been my privilege to see turned out,--the one girl that week in, week out, month after month, and year after year, has always done what she's told,--when she was told,--and the exact way she was told,--without questioning anything, without protesting anything, without supplementing anything with some disastrous original conviction of her own--_and look at her now_!" Tragically the Superintendent rubbed her hand across her worried brow. "Coffee, you said it was?" she asked skeptically. "Are there any special antidotes for coffee?" With a queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff Senior Surgeon jerked his glance back from the open window where with the gleam of a slim torn-boyish ankle the frisky young Spring went scurrying through the tree-tops.