"There! That's done!" he said tersely. "So much for the Past! Now for the Present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself! A man and a very little girl,--not guaranteed,--not even recommended,--offered merely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase of the day,--offered frankly in an open package,--accepted frankly,--if at all--'at your own risk.' Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us! Look at us closely, I ask, and--decide for yourself! I am forty-eight years old. I am inexcusably bad-tempered,--very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of great mercy. I am moody. I am selfish. I am most distinctly unsocial. But I am not, I believe, stingy,--nor ever intentionally unfair. My child is a cripple,--and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her. And she shows it. We have lived alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with all a man's needs,--mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all a child's needs,--mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be a great deal of work to do! And it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say 'Oh, but I didn't know you would expect me to do _this!_ Oh, but I hadn't any idea you would want me to do _that!_ And I certainly don't see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!'" Across the Senior Surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly.