hornet all hushed up and a-dream in the heart of a pink wild-rose!

Stalking out of the house in his own due time the Senior Surgeon reared
back aghast at the sight.

"Well--I'll be hanged!" he muttered. "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder
what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about
fiddling while Rome burns!"

Awkwardly, on the top step, he struggled alone into his cumbersome coat.
Every tingling nerve in his body, every shuddering sensibility, was
racked to its utmost capacity over the distressing scenes he had left
behind him in the big house. Back in that luxuriant sickroom, Youth
Incarnate lay stripped, root, branch, leaf, bud, blossom, fruit, of
All its manhood's promise. Back in that erudite library, Culture
Personified, robbed of all its fine philosophy, sat babbling illiterate
street-curses into its quivering hands. Back in that exquisite pink and
gold boudoir, Blonded Fashion, ravished for once of all its artistry,
ran stumbling round and round in interminable circles like a disheveled
hag. In shrill crescendos and discordant basses, with heartpiercing
jaggedness, with blood-curdling raspishness, each one, boy, father,
mother, meddlesome relative, competent or incompetent assistant,
indiscriminate servant, filing his separate sorrow into the Senior
Surgeon's tortured ears!

With one of those sudden revulsions to materialism which is liable
to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally
unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down
into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed
in his body clamoring for expression--before it, too, should be hurtled