"Well, Rae Malgregor," he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right, though I certainly don't know where she got her information. I _am_ a Liar. The pony's name is not yet 'Beautiful Pretty-Thing'! I _am_ a--Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I _am_ a Robber! I have taken you out of your youth--and the love-chances of your youth,--and shut you up here in this great, gloomy old house of mine--to be my slave--and my child's slave--and--" "Pouf!" said the White Linen Nurse. "It would seem--silly--now, sir,--to marry a boy!" "And I've been a beast to you!" persisted the Senior Surgeon. "From the very first day you belonged to me I've been a--beast to you,--venting brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience,--all the work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of my disordered days--and years,--and I've let my little girl vent also on you all the pang and pain of _her_ disordered days! And because in this great, gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle from heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed, pleasant-hearted, I've let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery,--the care,--one horrid homely task after another piling up-up-up--till you dropped in your tracks yesterday--still smiling!" "But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!" protested the White Linen Nurse. "See, sir!" she smiled. "I've got real lines in my face--now--like other women! I'm not a doll any more! I'm not a--" "Yes!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "And I might just as kindly have carved those lines with my knife! But I was going to make it all up to you to-day!" he hurried. "I swear I was! Even in one short little week I could have done it! You wouldn't have known me! I was going to take you away,--just you and me! I would have been a Saint! I swear I would! I would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday--as you never dreamed of in all your unselfish life! A holiday all _you--you--you!_ You could have--dug in the sand if you'd wanted to! Gad! I'd have dug in the sand--if you'd wanted me to! And now it's all gone from me, all the will, all the sheer positive self-assurance that I could have carried the thing through--absolutely selflessly. That little girl's sneering taunt? The ghost of her mother--in that taunt? God! When anybody knocks you just in your decency it doesn't harm you specially! But when they knock you in your Wanting-To-Be-Decent it--it undermines you somewhere. I don't know exactly how! I'm nothing but a man again--now, just a plain, every day, greedy, covetous, physical man--on the edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years,--that he no longer dares to take!" A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weight from one foot to the other. "I'm sorry, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "I'd like to have seen a roller-coaster, sir!"