so,--and everything,--maybe--I could get a position somewhere as general
housework girl."

With a roar of amusement as astonishing to himself as to his listeners,
the Senior Surgeon's chin jerked suddenly upward.

"You're crazy as a loon!" he confided cordially. "Great Scott! If you
can work up a condition like this on coffee,--what would you do on," he
hesitated grimly, "malted milk?" As unheralded as his amusement, gross
irritability overtook him again. "Will--you--stop--rattling that brown
paper?" he thundered at her.

Innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored the
temper.

"But I'm not rattling it, sir!" she protested. "I'm simply trying to
hide what's on the other side of it."

"What is on the other side of it?" demanded the Senior Surgeon bluntly.

With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around.

From behind her desk the austere Superintendent twisted her
neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics.
"_Don't--Ever--Be_--_bumptious_!" she read forth jerkily with a
questioning, incredulous sort of emphasis.

"Don't ever be bumptious?" squinted the Senior Surgeon perplexedly
through his glasses.