I'd thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard! said the White Linen Nurse just a trifle stiffly.It's an established marine marries princess custom, you understand, he rewarned her.The Senior Surgeon's mind was full of the horrid thought that he'd forgotten to renew his automobile fire insurance, and that he had a sprained back, and that his rival colleague had told him he didn't know how to run an auto anyway and that the cook had given notice that morning, and that he had a sprained back, and that the moths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress suit, and that the Superintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch of pink roses for his birthday, and that the boiler in the kitchen leaked, and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read a paper on Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo, and he hadn't even begun the paper yet, and that he had a sprained back, and that the wall paper on his library hung in shreds and tatters waiting for him to decide between a French fresco effect and an early English paneling, and that his little daughter was growing up in wanton ugliness under the care of coarse, indifferent hirelings, and that the laundry robbed him weekly of at least five socks, and that it would cost him fully seven thousand dollars to replace this car, and that he had a sprained back! It's restful, isn't it? cooed the White Linen Nurse.It wasn't her 'complete muscular atrophy' that I was thinking about! marine marries princess she said.A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation.Very slowly, very complacently, all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, marine marries princess tightening a wobbly button.My goodness! he said.But it marine marries princess would be grand! said the White Linen Nurse.I don't believe I'd like it! Half propped up on one elbow, still dizzy with mental chaos, still paralyzed with physical inertia, the Senior Surgeon lay staring blankly all around him.It is enough perhaps to say that she marine marries princess was the daughter of an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides as it was by strong personal ambitions was one of those so called 'marriages of convenience' which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned.Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing.