Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp of relief and announced
resonantly, "Well, it's all settled then? We'll be married some time in
July,--after I get home from Canada?" And when the White Linen Nurse
kept on smiling perfectly amiably and said, "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, thank
you, sir! It wouldn't seem exactly legal to me to be married any other
month but June!" Then the Senior Surgeon went absolutely dumb with rage
that this mere chit of a girl,--and a trained nurse, too,--should dare
to thwart his personal and professional convenience. But the White Linen
Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and
blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to--accommodate
you--sir,--and if June doesn't accommodate you--I'd rather go to Japan
with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it
sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism
case'!" the Senior Surgeon would protest.
Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the
three special arguments that should best protect him, he thought, from
the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June.
"But you can't get ready so soon!" he suggested at last with real
triumph. "You've no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be
married! There are so many people she has to tell,--and everything!"
"There's never but two that she's got to tell--or bust!" conceded the
White Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves the
most--and the woman she hates the worst. I'll write my mother to-morrow.
But I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday."
"The deuce you did!" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to
his. "Yes, sir," she said, "and she looked as sick as a young
undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her."
"Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now," he hastened to
contend. "The house now needs a lot of fixing over! It's all run down!
It's all--everything! We never in the world could get it into shape by
the first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough to
make it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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