out and gathered a white knitted shawl around her shoulders. "Spring? I
don't see what Spring's got to do with Rae Malgregor or any other young
outlaw in my graduating class. If graduation came in November it would
be just the same! They're a set of ingrates, every one of them!"
Vehemently she turned aside to her card-index of names and slapped the
cards through one by one without finding one single soothing exception.
"Yes, sir, a set of ingrates!" she repeated accusingly. "Spend your life
trying to teach them what to do and how to do it! Cram ideas into those
that haven't got any, and yank ideas out of those who have got too many!
Refine them, toughen them, scold them, coax them, everlastingly drill
and discipline them! And then, just as you get them to a place where
they move like clock-work, and you actually believe you can trust them,
then graduation day comes round, and they think they're all safe,--and
every single individual member of the class breaks out and runs a-muck
with the one dare-devil deed she's been itching to do every day the past
three years! Why this very morning I caught the President of the Senior
Class with a breakfast tray in her hands--stealing the cherry out of her
patient's grape fruit. And three of the girls reported for duty as bold
as brass with their hair frizzed tight as a nigger doll's. And the girl
who's going into a convent next week was trying on the laundryman's
derby hat as I came up from lunch. And now, now--" the Superintendent's
voice went suddenly a little hoarse, "and now--here's Miss
Malgregor--intriguing--to get an automobile ride with--_you!_"

"Eh?" cried the Senior Surgeon with a jump. "What? Is this an Insane
Asylum? Is it a Nervine?" Madly he started for the door. "Order a ton of
bromides!" he called back over his shoulder. "Order a car-load of them!
Saturate the whole place with them! Drown the whole damned place!"

Half way down the lower hall, all his nerves on edge, all his unwonted