"Idiot!" snapped the Senior Surgeon as he turned on his heel and started
up the steps.

From the green plushy robes on the back seat the White Linen Nurse could
have sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!"
piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply round
to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete
absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb
of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves
me--Loves me not--Loves me--Loves me not."

Bristling with unutterable contempt for all femininity, the Senior
Surgeon proceeded up the steps between two solemn-faced lackeys.

"Father!" wailed a feeble little voice. "Father!" There was no
shrillness in the tone now, nor malice, nor any mischievous thing,--just
desolation, the impulsive, panic-stricken desolation of a little child
left suddenly alone with a stranger. "Father!" the frightened voice
ventured forth a tiny bit louder. But the unheeding Senior Surgeon had
already reached the piazza. "Fat Father!" screamed the little voice.
Barbed now like a shark-hook the phrase ripped through the Senior
Surgeon's dormant sensibilities. As one fairly yanked out of his
thoughts he whirled around in his tracks.

"What do you want?" he thundered.

Helplessly the little girl sat staring from a lackey's ill-concealed
grin to her Father's smoldering fury. Quite palpably she began to
swallow with considerable difficulty. Then quick as a flash a
diminutively crafty smile crooked across one corner of her mouth.