"Trepan nothing!" grunted the Senior Surgeon. "I've got to go home early to-night--and help catch a canary." "Catch a--what?" gasped the younger surgeon. "A canary!" grinned the Senior Surgeon mirthlessly. "A--_what?_" roared the younger man. "Oh, shut up, you damned fool! Of course I'll come!" said the Senior Surgeon. There was no "boy" left in the Senior Surgeon when he reached home that night. Gray with road-travel, haggard with strain and fatigue, it was long, long after the rosy sunset time,--long, long after the yellow supper light, that he came dragging up through the sweet-scented dusk of the garden and threw himself down without greeting of any sort on the top step of the piazza where the White Linen Nurse's skirts glowed palely through the gloom. "Well, I put a canary bird back into its cage for you!" he confided laconically. "It was a little chap's soul. It sure would have gotten away before morning." "Who was the man that tried to turn it loose--_this_ time?" asked the White Linen Nurse. "I didn't say that anybody did!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "Oh," said the White Linen Nurse. "Oh." Quite palpably a little shiver of flesh and starch went rustling through her. "I've had a wonderful day, too!" she confided softly. "I've cleaned the attic and darned nine pairs of your stockings and bought a sewing-machine--and started to make you a white silk negligee shirt for a surprise!" "Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. The jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes and the sound of ice knocking lusciously against a glass. "Oh, have you had any supper, sir?" asked the White Linen Nurse. With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back against the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little further out along the piazza floor. "Supper?" he groaned. "No! Nor dinner! Nor breakfast! Nor any other--blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember!" Janglingly in his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like the slammed notes of a piano. "But I wouldn't--move--now," he snarled, "if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom--were piled blankety-blank-blank high--on all the blankety-blank-blank tables--in this whole blankety-blank-blank house!" Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands. "Oh, that's just exactly what I hoped you'd say!" she cried. "'Cause the supper's--right here!" "Here?" snapped the Senior Surgeon. Tempestuously he began all over again. "I--tell--you--I--wouldn't--lift--my--little finger--if all the blankety-blank-blank-blank--" "Oh, Goody then!" said the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause now I can feed you! I sort of miss fussing with the canary birds," she added wistfully. "Feed me?" roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. "Feed me?" he began all over again.