"Watching with--me?" snarled the Senior Surgeon resentfully. "Why--should--you--watch--with--me?" Like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping down across the pink cheeks and lifted as suddenly again. "Because you're my--_man!_" yawned the White Linen Nurse. Almost roughly the Senior Surgeon reached down and pulled the White Linen Nurse to her feet. "God!" said the Senior Surgeon. In his strained, husky voice the word sounded like an oath. Grotesquely a little smile went scudding zig-zag across his haggard face. With an impulse absolutely alien to him he reached out abruptly again and raised the White Linen Nurse's hand to his lips. "_'Good_ God' was what I meant--Miss Malgregor!" he grinned a bit sheepishly. Quite bruskly then he turned and looked at his watch. "I'd like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it!" he ordered peremptorily,--in his own morbid pathological emergency no more stopping to consider the White Linen Nurse's purely normal fatigue, than he in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to consider his own comfort,--safety,--or even perhaps, life! Joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose, he went swinging up the stairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great, splashing, cold shower-bath. Only one thing seemed to really trouble him now. At the top of the stairs he stopped for an instant and cocked his head a bit worriedly towards the drawing-room where from some slow-brightening alcove bird-carol after bird-carol went fluting shrilly up into the morning. "Is that--those blasted canaries?" he asked briefly. Very companionably the White Linen Nurse cocked her own towsled head on one side and listened with him for half a moment. "Only four of them are blasted canaries," she corrected very gently. "The fifth one is a paroquet that I got at a mark-down because it was a widowed bird and wouldn't mate again." "Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse and started for the kitchen. No one but the Senior Surgeon himself breakfasted in state at five o'clock that morning. Snug and safe in her crib upstairs the Little Crippled Girl slumbered peacefully on through the general disturbance. And as for the White Linen Nurse herself,--what with chilling and rechilling melons,--and broiling and unbroiling steaks,--and making and remaking coffee,--and hunting frantically for a different-sized water glass,--or a prettier colored plate, there was no time for anything except an occasional hurried surreptitious nibble half way between the stove and the table. Yet in all that raucous early morning hour together neither man nor girl suffered towards the other the slightest personal sense of contrition or resentment, for each mind was trained equally fairly,--whether reacting on its own case or another's--to differentiate pretty readily between mean nerves and a--mean spirit.