overture. "It was quite evident, Miss Malgregor, that you were not
altogether responsible at the moment," she conceded in common justice.

Heavily then, like a person walking in her sleep the girl trailed out of
the room to get her coat and hat.

Slamming one desk-drawer after another the Superintendent drowned the
sluggish sound of her retreating footsteps.

"There goes my best nurse!" she said grimly. "My very best nurse! Oh no,
not the most brilliant one, I didn't mean that, but the most reliable!
The most nearly perfect human machine that it has ever been my privilege
to see turned out,--the one girl that week in, week out, month after
month, and year after year, has always done what she's told,--when she
was told,--and the exact way she was told,--without questioning
anything, without protesting anything, without supplementing anything
with some disastrous original conviction of her own--_and look at her
now_!" Tragically the Superintendent rubbed her hand across her worried
brow. "Coffee, you said it was?" she asked skeptically. "Are there any
special antidotes for coffee?"

With a queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff Senior Surgeon jerked
his glance back from the open window where with the gleam of a slim
torn-boyish ankle the frisky young Spring went scurrying through the
tree-tops.

"What's that you asked?" he quizzed sharply. "Any antidotes for coffee?
Yes. Dozens of them. But none for Spring."

"Spring?" sniffed the Superintendent. A little shiveringly she reached