The White Linen Nurse Part 9

"Wake up! Wake up!" scolded the Little Crippled Girl shrilly.

"Naughty--Pink and White Nursie! I wanted to hear the b.u.mp! You screamed so loud I couldn't hear the b.u.mp!"

With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly around her.

It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field,--acres and acres of mild old gra.s.s tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the stone-wall at the top of the little gra.s.sy slope it was palpably evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the back-sliders.

Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes the White Linen Nurse turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up rakish and bruised as a prizefighter's. One sable sleeve was wrenched disastrously from its arm-hole, and along the edge of the vivid little purple skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery.

A trifle self-consciously the Little Girl began to gather herself together.

"We--we seem to have fallen out of something!" she confided with the air of one who halves a most precious secret.

"Yes, I know," said the White Linen Nurse. "But what has become of--your Father?"

Worriedly for an instant the Little Girl sat scanning the remotest corners of the field. Then abruptly with a gasp of real relief she began to explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her black eye.

"Oh, never mind about Father," she a.s.serted cheerfully. "I guess--I guess he got mad and went home."

"Yes--I know," mused the White Linen Nurse. "But it doesn't seem--probable."

"Probable?" mocked the Little Girl most disagreeably. Then suddenly her little hand went shooting out towards the stranded automobile.

"Why, there he is!" she screamed. "Under the car! Oh, Look--Look--Lookey!"

Laboriously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her knees. Desperately she tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizziness round her temples.

"Oh, my G.o.d! Oh, my G.o.d! What's the dose for anybody under a car?" she babbled idiotically.

Then with a really herculean effort,--both mental and physical, she staggered to her feet, and started for the automobile.

But her knees gave out, and wilting down to the gra.s.s she tried to crawl along on all-fours, till straining wrists sent her back to her feet again.

Whenever she tried to walk the Little Girl walked,--whenever she tried to crawl the Little Girl crawled.

"Isn't it fun!" the shrill childish voice piped persistently. "Isn't it just like playing s.h.i.+p-wreck!"

When they reached the car both woman and child were too utterly exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on the ground and--stare.

Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the Senior Surgeon's body lay rammed face-down deep, deep into the gra.s.s.

It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.

"I think he's dead!" she volunteered sagely. "His legs look--awfully dead--to me!" Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application of such excitement. "I hadn't--exactly--planned--on having him dead!" she began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional collapse zig-zagged suddenly across her face. "I won't have him dead! I won't! I _won't_!" she screamed out stormily.

In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at the Senior Surgeon's prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.

"Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do,--I know I could do it!

Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!"

she kept repeating helplessly.

Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the edge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellow wheel-spokes. "Father!" she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness.

"Father!" she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.

Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees and jostled the Little Girl aside.

"Fat Father!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "Fat Father! Fat Father!

_Fat Father!"_ she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that had never yet failed to rouse him.

Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon's horridly quiet shoulders a little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.

"Oh, his heart!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "I must find his heart!"

Throwing herself p.r.o.ne upon the cool meadowy ground and frantically reaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm's length she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.

"Ouch! You tickle me!" spluttered the Senior Surgeon weakly.

Rolling back quickly with fright and relief the White Linen Nurse burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

she giggled. "Hi! Hi! t.i.tter! t.i.tter! t.i.tter!"

Perplexedly at first but with increasing abandon the Little Girl's voice took up the same idiotic refrain. "Ha-Ha-Ha," she choked. And "Hi-Hi-Hi!" And "t.i.tter! t.i.tter! t.i.tter!"

With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, p.r.i.c.kly tickle of stale golden-rod.

"Blankety-blank-blank--BLANK!" he announced in due time, "Blankety-blank-blank-blank--BLANK! Maybe when you two--blankety-blank--imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank cackling you'll have the--blankety-blank decency to save my--my blankety-blank-blank--blank--_blank-blank_ life!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" persisted the poor helpless White Linen Nurse with the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Hi! Hi! Hi!" snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs.

Feeling hopelessly crushed under two tons and a half of car, the Senior Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt quite sure, could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic, blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it was the fires of h.e.l.l. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man he found himself staring impudently close instead into the White Linen Nurse's furiously flushed face that lay cuddled on one plump cheek staring impudently close at him.

"Why--why--get out!" gasped the Senior Surgeon.

Very modestly the White Linen Nurse's face retreated a little further into its blushes.

"Yes, I know," she protested. "But I'm all through giggling now. I'm sorry--I'm--"

In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon's features crinkled wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from the appalling proximity of the girl's face.

"Your--eyelashes--are too long," he complained querulously.

"Eh?" jerked the White Linen Nurse's face. "Is it your brain that's hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it's your brain that's hurt?"

"It's my stomach!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I tell you I 'm not hurt,--I'm just--squashed! I'm paralyzed! If I can't get this car off me--"

"Yes, that's just it," beamed the White Linen Nurse's face. "That's just what I crawled in here to find out,--how to get the car off you. That's just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course,--only I couldn't run, 'cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take hours--and the car might start or burn up or something while I was gone. But you don't seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery," she added more brightly, "it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could only get the car off you! But it's so heavy. I had no idea it would be so heavy.

Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?"

"Take it apart--h.e.l.l!" groaned the Senior Surgeon.