e snapped,
"Oh, why in the devil didn't I have sense enough to bring another
assistant?"

"I am here, doctor," answered the girl.

"Yes, yes, I know." He regarded her with the old, searching look. Then,
to the nurse, "It's only one of the many chances we have got to take.
When you put the patient under the anaesthetic you will show Rose exactly
how it is administered, for she will have to keep her unconscious
without any further aid from you after I begin to operate. We have _got_
to trust her, Miss Merriman," he added shortly, as he caught the
expression of grave doubt which the nurse could not keep from appearing
on her countenance. "See that she washes and sterilizes her hands
thoroughly. That hot water, Rose. I want a basinful."

She supplied it, then departed to do the rest of his bidding, and for
some moments was kept so busy that she did not realize what the other
two were doing at the bedside, other than to note that Donald had raised
the head of the bed by blocking up the legs with firelogs, and covered
it with a rubber sheet such as she had never seen before.

When she did, however, return to the side of the little sufferer, whose
face was far whiter than the clean, but coarse, sheet which covered the
emaciated body, a low cry of protest and grief was wrung from her lips.
Already most of the lovely ringlets of spun gold, which had won for the
baby Donald's characterization of "Little Buttercup," gleamed on the
rough floor, and the ruthless but necessary sacrifice was being
continued.

There were tears on her cheeks as she aided the doctor to scrub the
shorn scalp, until the child moaned and turned her head from side to
side.

"He is my commanding officer. He told me that I must always remember
that, and obey," whispered Rose to herself, as Donald, in his
abstraction, began to snap forth his orders in a manner and tone which,
for a moment, made her shrink and quiver. His words were often
unintelligible to her, until Miss Merriman, silent-footed and efficient,
translated them into action, as, before the wide eyes of the mountain
child, there began to unfold the swift drama of modern surgical science
at its pinnacle, amid that fantastic setting.

Strange words, indeed, were those which now fell on her attentive ears,
many of them far outside the bounds of her limited vocabulary; yet,
stranger still, she soon began to grasp their meaning intuitively, and
her quick native perception, keyed high by emergenc