cover another's past. So the Old Senior Surgeon had forestalled her
inquisitiveness with a tale adorned with all the pretty imaginings that
he, "a clumsy-minded old gruffian," could conjure up.

Margaret MacLean remembered the story--word for word--as we remember
"The House That Jack Built." It began with the Old Senior Surgeon
himself, who heard a pair of birds disputing in one of the two trees
which sentineled the hospital. They had built a nest therein; it was
bedtime, and they wished to retire, only something prevented. Upon
investigation he discovered the cause--"and there you were, my dear, no
bigger than my thumb!"

This was the nucleus of the story; but the Old Senior Surgeon had
rolled it about, hither and yon, adding adventure after adventure,
until it had assumed gigantic proportions. As she grew older she took
a hand in the adventure-making herself, he supplying the bare plot, she
weaving the threads therefrom into a detailed narrative which she
retold to him later, with a few imaginings of her own added. This is
what had established the custom for the Old Senior Surgeon to take a
peep into Ward C at day's end and call across to her: "Hello, Thumbkin!
What's the news?" or, "What's happened next?" And until this day the
answer had always been a joyous one.

Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and
see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and
answered in a shrill, tense voice: "I'm not Thumbkin. I'm a foundling.
I don't belong to anybody. I never had any father or mother or
nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so. They stood right
there--two of them; and one told the other all about me."