Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the Senior
Surgeon's body lay rammed face-down deep, deep into the grass.
It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.
"I think he's dead!" she volunteered sagely. "His legs look--awfully
dead--to me!" Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or
two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application of
such excitement. "I hadn't--exactly--planned--on having him dead!" she
began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional collapse
zig-zagged suddenly across her face. "I won't have him dead! I won't! I
_won't_!" she screamed out stormily.
In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her
trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at
the Senior Surgeon's prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and
fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.
"Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do,--I know I could do it!
Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!"
she kept repeating helplessly.
Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the
edge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellow
wheel-spokes. "Father!" she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness.
"Father!" she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.
Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees
and jostled the Little Girl aside.
"Fat Father!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "Fat Father! Fat Father!
_Fat Father!"_ she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that
had never yet failed to rouse him.
Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon's horridly quiet shoulders a
little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.
"Oh, his heart!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "I must find his heart!"
Throwing herself prone upon the cool meadowy ground and frantically
reaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm's length
she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight
of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.
"Ouch! You tickle me!" spluttered the Senior Surgeon weakly.
Rolling back quickly with fright and relief the White Linen Nurse burst
forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"
she giggled. "Hi! Hi! Titter! Titter! Titter!"
Perplexedly at first but with increasing abandon the Little Girl's voice
took up the same idiotic refrain. "Ha-Ha-Ha," she choked. And
"Hi-Hi-Hi!" And "Titter! Titter! Titter!"
With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his
mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous
speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two
stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of stale
golden-rod.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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