"None at all. Children's wards, of course, but nothing like what ought to be. Of course we can't take care of the surplus. It will be only special cases, here and there, that we shall try to handle. But I'm meeting with those every day—cases where the country air and the country fare are almost as much a part of the cure as the surgical interference. My word! but it will be a satisfaction to bundle the poor little chaps off to our farm!"

His eyes were very bright. He lay smiling to himself for a minute, then he sat up.

"In a month," said he, "we shall be ready for business. I have four little patients waiting now for the place. On three of them I'm going to operate at once. On the fourth—you are."

Again the two pairs of eyes met—hazel eyes confident and determined, brown eyes startled, stabbed with sudden pain. Burns held up his hand.

"Don't say a word," he commanded. "I'm merely making an assertion. I'm willing to back it up by argument, if you like, though I'd rather not. In fact, I'd much rather not. I prefer simply to make the assertion, and let it sink in."

But Leaver would speak. "You forget," he said, bitterly, "that I've put all that behind me. I told you I should never operate again. I meant it."

"Yes, you meant it," said Burns comfortably. "A man means it when he swears he'll never do again something that has become second nature to him to do. He'll do it—he's made that way. You will do this thing, and do it with all your old grip and skill. But I'm not going to discuss it with you. Some day, if you are good, I'll describe the case to you. It's one you can handle better than I, and it's going to be up to you."

He got to his feet, ignoring the slow shaking of Leaver's downbent head. "By the way," he said, with a glance at the cottage, now a mere blur in the oncoming twilight, "have you heard of the young photographer who is to sweep down upon us and make wonderful, dream-like images of us all, for good hard cash and fame? A friend of my wife's: a girl who looks twenty-five, but is a bit more, I am told. A remarkably good-looking, not to say fascinating, person with a grandmother still more fascinating—at least to me. They are to come as soon as this rookery can be made habitable."

"Miss Mathewson spoke of it. It will be an interesting event to the village, I should suppose. But I shall not be among the victims of the lady's art. I may as well tell you, Red—I must get away next week."

Burns wheeled upon him. "What's that you say?"

The other proceeded with evident effort, laying his head back against the tree-trunk again. "I am as grateful to you and Mrs. Burns as a man can possibly be, so grateful that I can't put it into words—"

"Don't try. Go on to something more important."

"I have trespassed on your hospitality—"

"Don't use hackneyed phrases like that. Say something original."

—"as long as I can be willing to do it. I am as much improved as I can expect to be—for a long time. I can't hang on, a useless invalid on your hands—"

"Cut it, old man! You're not an invalid, and you're not useless. You're giving me one of the most interesting studies I've engaged in in a long time. I'm liable to write a book on you, when I get sufficient data."

Leaver smiled faintly. "Nevertheless, I can't do it, Red. You wouldn't do it in my place. Be honest—would you?"

"Probably not. I'd be just pig-headed fool enough to argue the case to myself precisely as you are doing. Well, Jack, I've expected this hour. It's a pity there isn't more faith and trust in friendship in the world. We're all deadly afraid of trying our friends too far, so after just about so long we strike out for ourselves. But since it is as it is, and you're growing restless, I'll agree that you leave us, if you'll stay for a while where you'll be under my observation. I've set my heart on making a complete cure in this case—or, rather, you understand, assisting Nature to do so. If you go off somewhere I shall lose track of you. Suppose you stay in the village here for a while longer. I know a splendid place for you, just round the corner. Quiet, pleasant home, middle-aged widow and her young son—a lady, and a sensible, cheerful one—she'll never bore you by talk unless you feel like it—and then the talk will be worth while. What do you say? You know perfectly well that you're not yet quite fit to shift for yourself. Be rational, and let me manage things for you a while longer."

Leaver stood up; in the dim light Burns could not see his face. But he heard his voice—one which showed tension.

"You don't know what you're asking, old friend. There are reasons why I feel like getting away, entirely apart from any conditions under your control. Yet since you ask it of me, and I owe you so much, and since—I suppose it doesn't really make much difference where I am—I'll stay for the present."

"Good! I'm much obliged, Jack."

Burns got up, also, and the two strolled away together, in the pleasant summer dusk.



CHAPTER IX

A PRACTICAL ARTIST

"Here I am! And the goods are here too. Isn't it a miracle? It could never have been done if I hadn't found a kind friend among the railroad men, who sent my things by fast freight. Now to settle in a whirlwind of a hurry and fly back for Granny."

These were Miss Charlotte Ruston's words of greeting as she shook hands with the occupants of the Macauley car, which had met her at the station on the last day of July. She looked as fresh and eager to carry out her plans as if she were not just at the end of a journey.

"I suppose you'll stop for luncheon first," Martha Macauley suggested. She noted, with the approval of the suburbanite who cares much to be well dressed, the quietly smart attire of the arriving traveller.

"Indeed I will. Fuel first, fire afterward. But I'm fairly burning to begin, July weather though it is. How are my hollyhocks? A splendid row? I've dreamed of those hollyhocks!"

"They are all there—as well as one can see them above the weeds. We would have had the grass cut for you, but didn't venture to touch so much as a spear, lest we destroy some picturesque effect," Ellen said, giving her friend's hand an affectionate grasp as Charlotte took her place beside her.

"I do want to see to it all for myself. I've had the greatest difficulty in waiting these four weeks, or should have had if I hadn't been so busy. But now that I'm here I'll show you how to make a home out of four chairs, three rugs, a table, a mirror, and an adorable copper bowl. Talk of the simple life—you're going to see it lived just across the street, you matrons with innumerable things to dust!"

"We shall be delighted to watch you do it," Ellen assured her, and Martha gave an incredulous assent.

It was but a few hours before they saw the prophecy coming true. Miss Ruston barely took time for luncheon, and by the time the dray containing her modest supply of household goods was at her door she was ready for work. A blue painter's blouse slipped over her travelling dress, her sleeves rolled well up her shapely arms, she had plunged into the labour of settling. She had for an assistant a woman whom Ellen had engaged for her, and a tall youth who was the woman's son, and these two she managed with a generalship little short of genius.

The floors had been cleaned and stained with a simple dull-brown stain a week before, and Miss Ruston eyed them with satisfaction, uneven though they were. She set the lad at work oiling them, demonstrating to him with her own hands, carefully gloved, the way to do it. Every window she flung wide, and Mrs. Kelsey was presently scrubbing away at the dim, small panes, trying her best to make them shine to please the young lady who from time to time stopped as she flew by to comment on her work.

"That's it, Mrs. Kelsey, you know how, don't you? I haven't much in the way of hangings for them, so we must have them bright as mirrors. Hard to get into the corners? Yes, I know. But it's somehow the corners that show most. Try this hairpin under your cloth,"—she slipped one out from her heavy locks—"you can get into the corners with that, I'm sure. Tom, there's a spot as big as a plate you haven't hit. You can't see it in that light; bend over this way a minute, and you'll find it. That's it! It would have been a pity to leave it, wouldn't it! Don't miss any more places, Tom. I haven't many rugs, and the floors will show a good deal."

"I didn't know artists were ever such practical people," confessed Mrs. Red Pepper Burns, sitting on the edge of a straight-backed old chair in the small kitchen. The house boasted but four rooms, two below and two above, with a small enclosure off the kitchen which had been used for a bedroom in the benighted days when people knew no better, and which Charlotte had promptly set aside for a dark room.

"Practical? I'm not an artist, as you use the word, but I assure you real artists are the most practical people in the world. Not one of them but can make a whistle out of a pig's tail, or a queen's robe out of a sheet and a blue scarf! What do you think of my light-housekeeping outfit?"

She held up an aluminum skillet which she had just taken from the box she was unpacking. "Here's everything we can need in the way of cooking utensils, packed into a foot square, and light as a feather, the whole thing. My purse was rather light when I had bought it, too." She made a funny little grimace, then laughed. "But my most trying purchase was my tin bath! You can't imagine what a hunt I had for it. But I found it at last in an Englishman's little out-of-the-way shop, and a big tin ewer to go with it. I'm proud of them now, and emptying the tub once a day is going to be fine for my muscles."

"You have splendid courage, dear, and I can see you're not afraid of hard work. I want you to promise me this, though, Charlotte. When you are specially tired, and there's luncheon or dinner to get, run over and let us give you a trayful of things. Cynthia always cooks more than we eat, and then has to contrive to use it in other ways."

Charlotte nodded. "Thank you. Luckily, though I'm poor I'm not proud. By the way, you haven't an unused kitchen chair, have you? To tell the truth I forgot several things, and one of them is a chair for the kitchen. I probably shall not sit down myself, and shall always serve our little meals in the living-room, but I foresee that I shall have guests here in the kitchen, and I'd like to be able to offer them a chair. That one you're sitting in is my very best old split-bottomed, high-backed photographer's treasure, which must go in the front room by the fireplace."

"When you are through explaining I will assure you that two kitchen chairs will arrive as soon as I go home," promised Ellen.

"Bless you! I foresee that you will make a splendid neighbour. Do you want to climb upstairs and see the nest I'm going to feather for Granny?"

She turned to the narrow little staircase between the walls, and gayly led the way. But Ellen exclaimed in dismay over the steepness of the stairs.

"Charlotte! Do you think dear little old Madam Chase can climb these? They are the steepest I ever saw!"

"She won't need to. Private lift, always ready."

"What do you mean? Surely not—"

Charlotte extended two round, supple arms. "Why not? Granny weighs just eighty pounds—if she is wearing plenty of clothes. In her little nightie and lavender kimono considerably less. And I'm strong as strong."

"But even then she's more than you ought to carry up and down this ladder."

Charlotte turned at the top of the stairs, and laughed back at her friend. "Granny's a sports-woman," said she. "She will—whisper it!—thoroughly enjoy sliding down these stairs, and, as for my carrying her up them, haven't you yet found out that a weight you love devotedly is just no weight at all? Now, look here! Aren't these bits of rooms fascinating? Hot, just now, I admit—" She ran to the windows, wrenched them open and propped them up. "Too hot in July, certainly; we'll camp downstairs while this weather lasts. But fine and warm and sunny through the winter. A bit of an oil-stove will make Granny as snug as a kitten, and her maid Charlotte will see that she's never left alone with it burning."

"I see you're quite invincible in your determination to make the best of everything. I can hardly believe you are the same girl I used to know, brought up to be waited on and petted by everybody. You've developed splendidly, and I'm proud of you."

"Thank you, Len. No, I'm not the same girl at all. I've been having to depend upon my own management for four years now—long enough to learn a good many makeshifts. It's been rather a pull, but I've had Granny through it all, and as long as she's left to me I won't complain. I used to be an extravagant person, but you've no idea how I've learned to make money last. Don't stay up here, it's too hot for you. But I'll get the place in order, for it may be cooler by the time I bring Granny, so we can sleep here."

"I'll help. What comes first?"

"Nothing—for you. I'll run up and down with rugs and curtains,—really, they're about all there are to go up here, except Granny's dressing-table. I've saved that for her, and a little old single bed she likes. I'll have Tom bring them up."

But Ellen insisted on helping, and when the bed was in place made it up with the fine old linen Charlotte produced, exclaiming over its handsome monograms, of an antique pattern much admired in these days.

"But where is your bed, Charlotte? I want to get that ready, too," she urged, when various small tasks were completed.

"Oh, never mind about mine. I'll see to that later." Charlotte was rubbing away at an old brass candlestick upon the dressing-table.

"I didn't see another bed. Surely you can't both sleep in this?"

"Hardly—poor Granny! No; mine is a folding cot, the nicest thing!"

"And you've no furniture at all for your room?"

"Don't want it. Granny will let me peep in her mirror. Don't look so shocked, Len. We're just camping out for a year, you know, and I brought all we needed. What's the use of being encumbered with household goods?"

"But you have them, somewhere? Let me send for them, dear, please. If you are to stay all winter you must be comfortable."

"We shall be. And—I haven't any more things, if you must have it. When the estate was sold I bought in all I could afford, but have sold some since. You may as well know it, but I want you to understand that I don't consider it a hardship at all to live as I intend to live this year. I shall be making money hand over fist, presently, and by the time I have had my city studio a year or two shall be affording Eastern rugs and hand-carved furniture. Wait and see!"

She stopped polishing and stood looking at her friend with the peculiar, radiant look which was her greatest charm, her dark eyes glowing, her lips in proud, sweet lines of resolution, her round chin held high. Then she laughed, throwing her head higher yet, with a gay spirit; came forward and caught Ellen Burns by the shoulders and bending kissed her.

"I told you I wasn't proud," she said, "but I am! Too proud to be proud! I never believed in the pride which covers up, but in that which frankly owns its poverty, and laughs at it. I laugh!"

"You splendid girl! Where did you get it?"

"Picked it up. But I really think I shall have the happiest year out of this I've known yet."

"I believe you will. And I shall delight in having you so near."

The two descended. By the time Mrs. Kelsey's work-day was over the front room was in order, and Charlotte, bidding good-night to her servitors, gave them hearty praise and bade them come back early in the morning. Ellen had gone home, bidding Charlotte follow her at convenience.

"I must run out and pick some flowers for my copper bowl," Charlotte had said. "Then the room will be ready to show your husband this evening. I'm anxious to have it make a good impression on him, and I've discovered that men always notice posies."

So, out in the tangled garden she chose a great bunch of delphinium, in mingled shadings from pale blues and lavenders to deepest sapphire tones, and bringing it in exultingly filled the copper bowl and set it on the old spindle-legged table opposite the fireplace. Woven rag rugs in dull blues lay on the floor; one great winged chair, Granny's chair, stood by the window. Besides this were the splint-bottomed, high-backed chair, two Sheraton chairs, and a Chippendale mirror,—all relics of a luxurious old home. Two small portraits in oil hung upon the wall, painted by some master hand, portraits of Charlotte's parents. This was all the furnishing the room contained, but somehow, in the warm light of the late July afternoon, it looked anything but bare.

The Chesters, the Macauleys and the Burnses, all came across the street in the early July evening, to view the work which had been done. Charlotte had slipped on a thin white gown and pinned a bunch of old-fashioned crimson-and-pink "bleeding-hearts" at her waist, to do the occasion honour. She looked, somehow, already as if she belonged with the place. She sat upon the doorstone and hemmed small muslin curtains which were to go in the bedrooms upstairs, and Martha, Winifred, and Ellen, seeing this, sent for their sewing materials and helped her, while the daylight lasted.

Burns, looking on, hands in pockets, suddenly observed, "We fellows ought to be doing something for her. What do you say to every man going for a scythe and cutting the grass? No lawn mower can tackle a tangle like this."

Macauley groaned. "Why begin to be neighbourly at such a pace? Cutting this grass is going to be no easy task."

But Chester and Burns had already started across the street, and Macauley was obliged to follow. By the time darkness fell the front yard had been cropped into at least a semblance of tidiness, and Charlotte was offering her thanks to three warm gentlemen, and regretting that she had not been keeping house long enough to have any refreshment to offer them.

"Come over when we are settled, and Granny and I will have some sparkling Southern beverages for you," she promised.

"You are coming over to sleep, child," Ellen said, as the time for departure arrived, and Charlotte showed signs of closing up her small domain.

"Not at all. I mean to have the fun of spending my first night in my new home," Miss Ruston declared, and held to her decision, in spite of the arguments and entreaties of the women and the assertions of the men that she would be afraid.

"Well, then, beat on a dishpan if anything disturbs you, and we'll rush across in a body and rescue you," promised Macauley.

Left alone, Charlotte went inside, lighted a genial looking lamp, and sat down alone in her little living-room. Chin in her palms, she leaned her elbows upon the spindle-legged table, looking up at the portrait of her mother, its fine colourings glowing in the mellow light from the lamp. She sat for a long time in this posture, her eyes losing their sparkle and growing dreamy, and—at last—a trifle misty. When this stage occurred she suddenly jumped up, carried the lamp into the kitchen, searched until she found a candle and lighted it, then, extinguishing the lamp, she went slowly upstairs to the cot bed.

By the following evening her preparations were so far complete that she could take the evening train for Baltimore, announcing that the two future occupants of the little house would return within forty-eight hours. During her absence the three women who were her friends put their heads together, ordered extra baking and brewing done in their own kitchens, and ended by stocking her small shelves with a great array of good things.

Before the forty-eight hours had quite gone by Miss Ruston was leading a tiny figure, with shoulders held almost as straight as her own, in at the hedge gate. It was twilight of the August evening. The cottage door was open and the rays from the lamp lately lighted by her neighbours streamed down the path.

Charlotte stooped—she had to stoop a long way—and put her lips close to the small ear under the white hair which lay softly over it. "Doesn't it look like home, Granny?" she said, in a peculiar, clear tone, a little raised.

"What say, dear?" responded a low and quite toneless voice—the voice of the very deaf.

"Home, Granny?" repeated the younger voice. The strong arm of the taller figure came about the little shoulders in the small gray travelling coat.

"Warm? Not so warm as it was on the train. I shall be quite comfortable once I am sitting quietly in my chair."

Doctor and Mrs. Burns, following the travellers with certain pieces of hand luggage, looked at one another.

"Bless her small heart, is she as deaf as that?" queried Red Pepper, in a whisper. "I shall have difficulty in getting my adoration over to her!"

"She has grown much deafer since I knew her, several years ago," Ellen explained. "But as her eyes seem bright as ever I imagine you will have no difficulty in making her understand your adoration. She is used to it."

"I should think she might be. She is the prettiest old lady I ever saw, and looks one of the keenest. We shall understand each other, if we have to write on slates."

Charlotte led Madam Chase—Mrs. Rodney Rutherford Chase was the name on the visiting cards she still used with scrupulous care for the observances of etiquette—in at the cottage door and placed her in the winged chair. She untied and removed a microscopic bonnet, drew off the gray coat, and laid an inquiring finger on her charge's wrist.

"Let me attend to that," begged R.P. Burns, looming in the small doorway. "I'll find out how tired she is. I doubt if she would admit it by word of mouth."

He went down on one knee beside the chair, a procedure which brought his smiling face beside the old lady's questioning one. His fingers clasped her wrist, and held it after he had found out what it told him.

"Tired?" he said, very distinctly, his lips forming the word for her to see.

Madam Chase shook her head decidedly. "Not at all, Doctor. But the train was very warm and very dusty. I shall be glad to feel a cool linen pillow under my head instead of a hot cotton one."

He nodded. "Could you eat a bit, and drink a cup of tea?"

"What say, Doctor? Tea? Yes, I should be glad of tea. I never like the decoction they serve upon trains and call tea."

"I'll have it for her in a minute," and Ellen went out into the kitchen.

Burns looked up at Miss Ruston. "As soon as she has had her tea she must go to bed. She has stood the journey well, but she needs a long rest after it." Then he looked again at Mrs. Rodney Rutherford Chase. "I can see you are a very plucky small person," said he, and her nod and smile in answer showed that at least she caught the indications of a compliment.

Presently, when she had had her tea, had patted Ellen's hand for bringing it, and had looked about her a little with observant eyes which showed pleasure when they rested on certain familiar objects, she laid her white curls back against the chair and looked up at her granddaughter like a child who asks to be put to sleep.

Burns advanced again. "May I have the honour?" he asked, stooping over the tiny figure with outstretched arms.

"You'll find me pretty heavy, Doctor," said she, but she put up her arms and clasped his neck as he lifted her, quite as if it were a matter of course with her to have stalwart men offer their services on all occasions. Burns strode up the steep and narrow staircase with her as if she had been a child, Charlotte preceding him with a pair of candles. In her own room he laid the little old lady on her bed, then stooped once more.

"May I have a reward for that?" he asked, and without waiting for permission kissed the delicate cheek, as soft and smooth as velvet beneath his lips.

"You are a very good young man," said the old lady. "I think I shall have to adopt you as a grandson."

Burns laid his hand on his heart and made her a deeply respectful bow, at which she laughed and waved him away.

"Adorable," said he to Charlotte, on his way down, "is not a word which men use over every small object, as you women do, therefore it should have the more force when they do make use of it. No other word fits little Madam Chase so well. Consider me yours to command in her service, at any hour of day or night."

"Thank you," Charlotte called softly after him. "I assure you she will command you herself, and delight in doing it. She never fails to recognize homage when she receives it, or to demand it when she does not. But she will give you quite as much as she takes from you."

"I'm confident of it," and Burns descended to his wife. "You have a rival," he told her solemnly.



CHAPTER X

A RUNAWAY ROAD

Camera hung by a strap over her shoulder, small tripod tucked under her arm, Charlotte Chase Ruston, photographer, turned aside from the country road along which she was walking, to follow a winding lane leading into a deep wood. The luring entrance to this lane had been beyond her power to resist, although the sun had climbed nearly to the zenith, warning her that it was time to turn her steps toward home. In her search for picturesque bits of landscape to turn to account in her work, her enthusiasm was likely at any time to lead her far afield.

Just as the lane promised to debouch into an open meadow and release its victim from any special sense of curiosity, it suddenly swerved to one side, forced its way under a pair of bars, and ran curving away into deep shadows, fringed with ferns, and overhung with the dense foliage of oak and walnut. A distant glimpse of brilliant scarlet flowers, standing like sentinels in uniform against the dark green of the undergrowth, beckoned like a hand. With a laugh Charlotte set her foot upon the bottom rail. "I'm coming," she called blithely to the scarlet flowers. "You needn't shout so loud at me."

Hurrying, because of the hour, she pulled her blue linen skirts over the fence, and dropped lightly upon the other side. She ran along the lane to the flowers, stopped to admire, but refused to pick them, telling them they were better where they were, and would droop before she could get them home. Then she went swiftly on around a bend in the cart-path, catching the faint sound of falling water, and impelled to seek its source, just as is every one at hearing that suggestive sound. And, of course, the water was farther away than it sounded.

A trifle short of breath, from her haste, she ran it down at last, and came upon it—a series of small waterfalls down which a small stream tumbled recklessly along a vagrant watercourse, seeming to care little when it reached its destination, so that it contrived to have plenty of fun and exercise by the way. And on the bank, stretched recumbent, hands clasped under head, lay a long figure in gray flannels, a straw hat and a book at its side.

Charlotte stopped short. The figure turned its head, sat up, and got rather quickly to its feet, pushing back a heavy, dark lock of hair which had fallen across a tanned forehead. Dr. John Leaver came forward.

"I'm so sorry I disturbed you," said Charlotte Ruston, finding words at last, after having been surprised out of speech by the sudden apparition, "I hope I didn't wake you from a nap."

"You haven't disturbed me, and I was not asleep. I'm only waiting for Dr. Burns, who may come now at any minute. This is a pleasant place to meet in, isn't it?"

Their hands met, each looked with swift, straight scrutiny into the face of the other, and then hands and eyes parted abruptly. When they regarded each other after that, it was as two casual acquaintances may exchange glances, in the course of conversation, when other things are of more interest than the personal relation.

"Indeed it is pleasant—charming! The path lured me on and on, I couldn't stop. I ought to be at home this minute. Did you walk so far? Mrs. Burns told me you were here, and that you had been ill. I was very sorry, and I'm now so glad to see you looking so well."

"Thank you. I am much myself again, but not yet quite equal to a walk of this distance. Dr. Burns and his car are just a few rods away, on the other side of this bit of woods. He has a patient in a little shack over there, and brought me along to see this spot. It was worth coming for."

"You must enjoy Dr. Burns very much."

"We are old friends, and being together again after a nine-years' separation, is a thing to make the most of."

"I should think so. He seems so alive, so full of interest in every living thing. He must be a fine comrade."

"The finest in the world. To me there is nobody like him, and most people who know him, I've noticed, feel in the same way. He has a beautiful wife. She is a friend of yours, she tells me."

"Also an old friend, and almost the dearest I have. I'm very happy to be near her. Dr. Leaver, will you tell me what time it is, please? I have a dreadful suspicion that I shall be very late."

As he drew out his watch a voice was heard from the other side of a clump of undergrowth, calling crisply:

"All right, Jack, we're off. One more call before luncheon, and it's blamed late, so get busy."

"In a minute," Leaver called back, smiling, as he showed Charlotte his watch's dial.

Red Pepper Burns looked over the bushes, discerning in his friend's tone an intention of delay, and inclined to be still more peremptory with him about it. Discovering now what looked like an interesting situation, he came forward, bareheaded, his frown of impatience turning to a smile of greeting.

"What luck, to find a dryad in the woods!" he cried. "Did this gentleman invade your domain?"

"Not at all. I invaded his most unexpectedly. I was following a lane, intending to turn back at any moment, when it ran away under a fence and treacherously led me into trouble."

"Call it trouble, do you, meeting your friends in the woods? That's always the way! Call a woman luck, and she calls you trouble! Let me tell you, Miss Charlotte, it's luck for you, meeting us, for we can give you a lift of a mile down the road. We have to turn off there, but you'll be less late for a luncheon that's probably already cold than you would be after walking the whole distance. You won't refuse? You mustn't, for I expect it's my only chance to get John Stone Leaver of Baltimore started. Otherwise he'll stand here till mid-afternoon, showing you his watch and pointing out to you the beauties of this noisy brook."

"Thank you, Dr. Burns, but you can't very well take me in a car built for two."

"Can't I? The car has frequently carried half a dozen, judiciously distributed over the running-boards, to the imminent peril of the tires and springs. We'll put Dr. Leaver on the running-board. It will hurt neither his clothes nor his dignity, and if it does he can get off and walk."

He led the way. If she could have done so Charlotte would gladly have turned and run away. But there are people from whom one cannot easily run away, and Red Pepper Burns was one of them. With all his powers of discernment, he had no possible notion that the two who followed him were not eager to accept this arrangement. They looked well together, too, he had observed as he neared them—exceedingly well. He was sure he was doing them a favour in keeping them together as long as possible.

In point of actual distance he certainly succeeded literally in keeping them extremely near together, during the few minutes it took to get out of a winding wood-road to the main highway, and to drive at a stimulating pace a mile down that road. When Leaver took his place upon the running-board he was unavoidably close to Charlotte's knee, and his head was within reach of her hand. His hand, grasping the only available hold with which to keep himself in place, as Burns let the car go at high speed, was close under her eyes.

Keeping his eyes upon the road, Burns, in a gay mood now, kept up a running fire of talk, to which Charlotte, as became necessary, responded. Leaver, straw hat in hand, also stared straight ahead, and Charlotte, unobserved by either companion, looked at the head below her, its heavy, dark-brown hair ruffled by the wind of their progress, noted—not for the first time—the fine line of the partial profile, the shoulder in its gray flannel, the well-knit hand, tanned, like its owner's face, with much exposure. And, as she made these furtive observations, something within her breast, which she had thought well under control, became suddenly unmanageable.

"I'm sorry to desert you here, so ungallantly," Burns declared, bringing the car to a standstill at a cross-road. "If my friend here were quite fit I'd put him down, too, and give him the pleasure of walking in with you. In a week or two more I'll turn him loose. Looks pretty healthy, doesn't he?"

"I'm entirely able to walk in with Miss Ruston now," said Leaver, standing, hat in hand, in the road, as Charlotte adjusted her belongings and prepared to walk rapidly away.

"That's my affair, for a bit longer," and Burns put out a peremptory hand. "Be good and jump in. The lady will excuse you, and I won't, so there you are. Forgive me, Miss Ruston, and don't bring on heart failure by walking too fast in this August sun."

"I won't. Good-bye, and thank you both," and Charlotte set briskly off toward home, while the car swept round the turn and disappeared into a hollow of the road.

"That's what I call a particularly worth-while girl," commented Burns, as the Imp carried them away. "Beauty, and sense, and spirit, not to mention originality and a few other attributes. You don't often get them all combined. Good old family, according to my wife, but all gone now, and this girl left to make her way on her own resources. But perhaps you know all this already, since you've met her before?"

"I know the main facts?—yes," Leaver responded. His lips had taken on a curiously tight set, since the car had left the corner. His eyes, under their strongly marked brows, narrowed a little, as he looked out across a field of corn yellowing in the sunlight. "She has visited more or less in Baltimore, where she has been very much admired."

"Why 'has been'?" queried Burns. "She doesn't look like a 'has-been' to me. More like very much of a 'now-and-here'—eh?"

"I mean only that since she has been thrown upon her own resources she has applied herself closely to the study of photography, and has been little seen in society."

"I imagine when she was seen she kept a few fellows guessing. She looks to me as if she might have refused her full share of men."

"I have no doubt of it."

That which Burns would have enjoyed saying next he refrained from. But to himself he made the observation: "By the signs I haven't much doubt you were one of them, old man." Aloud he questioned innocently:

"You know her rather well?"

"Quite well."

"Your manner says 'Drop it,'" observed Burns, with a keen glance at a side-face clean-cut against the landscape. "I've encountered that manner before, and I'll take warning accordingly. This is a fine day, and it's rather an interesting case I'm going to see, up this road. If you care to come in I'll be glad of your opinion, but I won't insist on it."

"Unless you really wish it, I'll stay out, thank you."

Burns left his companion in the car, open book in hand. It was a book Red Pepper had strongly recommended, with the motive of stirring up his friend to interested resentment,—a particularly unfair and prejudiced discussion of a subject just then being torn to pieces by all manner of disputants, with the issue still very much in doubt. He knew precisely the place Leaver had reached in his reading, and noted, as he got out of the car, the page at which he was about to begin. The page was one easily recognizable, for it was one upon whose margin he himself had drawn, in a moment of intense irritation with the argument advanced thereon, a rough outline of a donkey's head with impossibly long and obstinate ears.

He left Leaver with eyes bent upon the page, not the semblance of a smile touching his grave mouth at sight of the really striking and effective cartoon which so ably expressed a former reader's sentiments. Burns went into the house making with himself a wager as to how far Leaver's perusal of the chapter would have progressed in the ten minutes which would suffice for the visit, and was divided whether to stake a page against a half-chapter, or to risk his friend's being aware of his observation and leaping through the chapter to its end.

When he came out the book was closed and lying upon Leaver's knee. Burns took his place and drove off, malice sparkling in his eye.

"What did you think of that chapter?" he inquired.

"Interesting argument, but weak in spots."

"Hm—m. Which spots?"

Leaver indicated them. There could be no doubt that he had read the chapter carefully to the end. Burns put him through a severe cross-examination, but he stood the test, much to his examiner's disgust. In detective work it is usually irritating to have one's theories disproved. But he still doubted the evidence of his ears. Either John Leaver was a colder blooded deceiver than he thought him, or his powers of concentration were more than ordinarily great, that he could turn from the contemplation of a subject like the one left at the cross-roads corner, a subject which Burns was pretty sure vitally concerned him, to a mere abstract discussion of a modern sociological problem, bare of practical illustration, and dealing purely with one man's notions not yet worked out to any constructive conclusion.

"Well," said Leaver, turning suddenly to look at Burns with a smile, "are you satisfied that I have read the chapter?"

Burns also turned, met his companion's eye, and broke into a laugh. "I shall have to admit you have," said he.

"Why should you have doubted it?"

"I haven't been gone long enough for you to have read and digested it."

Leaver looked at his watch. "You were gone seventeen minutes. That's long enough to take in the argument pretty thoroughly. As to digesting it—it's indigestible. Why try?"

"No use at all. But having given my mental machinery a lot of friction I enjoyed trying to stir yours up also to irritation and discontent. But I haven't done it. You've remained calm where I grew hot. Also you've proved your ability to change the subject of your thinking as you would switch off one electric current and switch on another. It shows you're a well man."

"I must warn you, as I have done at various times in our association: 'Don't jump to conclusions.' Your first one, that I hadn't read the chapter, was wrong. I had read it. Your second one, that, after all, I had read the chapter while you were in the house, was also wrong. I had read it by the side of the brook, an hour ago."

Burns's laughter spoke his enjoyment as heartily as if he were not the one cornered. But his amusement ended in triumph, after all, though to this he discreetly did not give voice. Since he had met Miss Charlotte Ruston in the woods Dr. John Leaver had not given himself to the study of any other man's ideas.



CHAPTER XI

AFTER DINNER

"Charlotte Chase Ruston, I want you to come over to a little dinner to-night. Just a few people, and as informal as dinners on hot August evenings should be. Afterward we'll spend the time on the porch."

"Thank you, Len. Whom are you going to have? I want to prepare my mind for what is likely to happen."

Mrs. Burns mentioned her guests. "I've arranged them with special reference to Dr. Leaver," she explained. "I think it will do him good, just now, to have to exert himself a little bit. He seems well enough, but absolutely uninterested in things or people,—except the children. He spends hours with them. I'm going to put you next him, if I may."

"Please don't. I particularly want the chance to talk with Mr. Arthur Chester about something I've found he can tell me. We never can get time for it, and this will be just the chance. Give Miss Mathewson to Dr. Leaver, and put some pretty girl on his other side."

"I will, if you prefer, of course," Ellen agreed promptly. She had observed that, although she had taken pains to have them meet, Dr. Leaver and Miss Ruston seemed to be in the habit of quietly avoiding each other. But she was not the woman to ask her friend's confidence, since it was not voluntarily given. She could only wonder why two people from the same world, apparently so well suited to each other, should be so averse to spending even a few moments together.

An hour later Charlotte, having dispatched considerable business, bundling it out of the way as if it had suddenly become of no account, was delving in a trunk for a frock.

"It's the one and only possible thing I have that will do for one of Len's 'little dinners,'" she was saying to herself. "I know just how she'll be looking, and I must live up to her. I wonder if I can mend it to be fit—I wonder."

She carried it downstairs. Madam Chase, sitting by the window with her knitting, looked up.

"Mending lace, dearie?" she asked. "Can't I do it for you?"

"I'm afraid it's beyond even you, Granny," she said, ruefully. To the deaf ears her gesture told more than her words.

"Let me see," commanded the old lady. When the gauzy gown was spread before her she examined it carefully.

"If it need not be washed—" she began.

"It must be. Look at the bottom." Charlotte's expressive hands demonstrated as she talked. "I've danced in it and sat out dances in all sorts of places in it. But I can wash it, if you can mend it. I'll wash it with the tips of my fingers."

"I will try," said her grandmother.

That afternoon Charlotte carefully laundered the mended gown, dried it in the sun and ironed it, partly with her fingers, partly with a tiny iron. Finished, it was a work of art, a frock of rare lace of exquisite design, several times made over, and now, in its last stage, prettier than in its first.

"If it will hold together," Charlotte said laughing, as she put it on, and, kneeling before Granny, waited while the delicate old fingers slowly fastened each eyelet. When she rose she was a figure at which the old lady who loved her looked with pleased eyes.

"You are beautiful, dearie," she said. "And nobody will guess that your dress is mended."

"Not a bit, thanks to your clever fingers. Now I'll go find some flowers to wear, and then I'm off. I'll come back to put you to bed, and you'll send Bob over if you want the least thing, won't you, even the least?"

Charlotte went out into her garden, holding her skirts carefully away from possible touch of bush or briar. Late August flowers were many, but among them were none that pleased her. She came away therefore without a touch of colour upon her white attire, yet seeming to need none, the bloom upon her cheek was so clear, the dusk of her hair so rich.

"Isn't she fascinating?" said Winifred Chester in the ear of John Leaver, as Charlotte came in. "I never saw a girl who seemed so radiantly well and happy, with so little to make her so. I think she and Madam Chase must be very poor, all the nice things they have seem so old, and the new things so very simple. Ellen says the family was a very fine one."

"Very fine," he agreed. His eyes were upon Charlotte as she greeted her hosts. He answered Winifred's further comments absently. He bowed gravely in response to Charlotte's recognition of him, then turned and talked with the pretty girl whom Ellen had asked him to take in to dinner.

At the table Miss Ruston and Dr. Leaver found themselves nearly opposite. Leaver talked conscientiously with his companion, then devoted himself to Winifred Chester, upon his other side. Returning to do his duty by Miss Everett, he found her eager to discuss those opposite.

"They say Miss Ruston does the most wonderful photographs," she observed. "One would know she was devoted to some art, wouldn't one? The way that frock is cut about her shoulders—only an artist would venture to wear it like that, without a single touch of colour. Every other woman I know would have put on a string of gold beads or pearls or at least a pendant of some sort."

For a moment Leaver forgot to answer. He had not looked at Charlotte since he had first taken his seat. Now, with Miss Everett calling his attention to her, and everybody else, including the subject of their interest, absorbed in their own affairs, he let his eyes rest lingeringly upon her. He had had only brief glimpses of her since she had come to town, and had seen her at such times always in the summer street-or-garden attire which she constantly wore. Now he saw her under conditions which vividly brought back to him other scenes. The white lace gown she wore, with its peculiar cut, like the spreading of flower petals about the beautifully modeled shoulders—it struck him as familiar. Had she worn any jewels upon that white neck when he had seen her? He thought not. He had never known her to wear ornament of any sort, he was sure. She needed none, he was equally sure of that. As she sat, with her head turned toward Arthur Chester, who was expounding with great elaboration something which called for maps upon the tablecloth drawn with a rapidly moving finger, she was showing to the observers across the table a face and head in profile, an outline which had been burned into the memory of the man who now regarded it and forgot to make answer.

Miss Everett glanced at him curiously. Then she murmured: "Don't you think the leaving off of all ornaments is sometimes just as much a coquetry as the wearing of them would be? It certainly challenges notice even more, doesn't it?"

"It depends on whether one happens to possess them, I should say," Leaver returned.

"About their drawing attention, or their absence drawing it? I suppose so. But when you don't know which it is, but judge by the richness of the gown that the wearer can afford them—"

"I'm no judge of the richness of a gown."

"I am, then. That is the most wonderful lace—anybody can see—at least any woman."

"Tell me, Miss Everett,"—Leaver made a determined effort to get away from the personal aspect of the subject,—"why does a woman love jewels? For their own sake, or because of their power to adorn her—if they do adorn her?"

The young woman plunged animatedly into a discussion of the topic as he presented it. She was wearing certain striking ornaments of pearl and turquoise, which undoubtedly became her fair colouring whether they enhanced her beauty or not. It was while this discussion was in progress, Leaver forcing himself to attend sufficiently to make intelligent replies, that Charlotte Ruston suddenly turned and looked at him. He looked straight back at her, a peculiar intentness growing in his deep-set eyes.

He did not withdraw his gaze until she had turned away again, and the encounter had been but for the briefest space, yet when it was over John Leaver's colour had changed a little. For the moment it was as if nobody else had been in the room—he was only dully conscious that upon his other side Winifred Chester was addressing him, and that he must make reply.

When the company which had spent the sultry August evening upon the porch in the semi-darkness was near to breaking up, Leaver came to Charlotte and took his place beside her. When she left the house he was with her, and the two crossed the street and went in at the hedge gate together.

"May I stay a very little while?" he asked. And when she assented he added, "Shall we find the bench in your garden?"

"Do you know that bench?" she questioned, surprised.

"I spent many hours upon it before you came, and during the days when I was not getting about much. I listened to the reading of two books, lounging there. So it seems like a familiar spot to me."

"It is my favourite resting place. I am sorry you were driven away by my coming. You and Miss Mathewson would have been very welcome there, all the rest of the summer, if I had known."

"Thank you. But I have passed the invalid stage and am not being treated as a patient. I read for myself, at present, and tramp the country, instead of sitting on benches, anywhere. It's a great improvement."

"I am very glad."

Charlotte let him lead the way to the retreat under the apple-tree, and he proved his knowledge of it by stopping now and then to hold aside hindering branches of shrubbery, and to lift for her a certain heavily leafed bough which drooped across the path, but which would hardly have been discerned in the summer starlight by one not familiar with its position.

"It would be a pity to tear that gown," he remarked, as the last barrier was passed. "It occurred to me, as I looked at you to-night, that it was one I had seen you wear in Baltimore, last winter. Am I right?"

"Last winter, and the winter before, and even the winter before that, if you had known me so long," she answered, with a gay little laugh. "I am so fond of it I shall not discard it until it can no longer be mended."

"You are wise. I believe it is hardly the attitude of the modern woman toward dress of any sort, but it might well be. We never tire of Nature, though she wears the same costume season after season."

"Her frocks don't fray at the edges—or when they do she turns them such gorgeous colours that we don't notice they are getting worn."

"Aren't there some rough edges on this bench? Please take this end; I think I recall that it is smoother than the other."

"Thank you. One good tear, and even Granny's needle couldn't make me whole again."

He bent over to pick up a scarf of silver gauze which had slipped from her shoulders. He laid it about them, and as he did so she shivered suddenly, though the air was warm, without a hint of dampness. But she covered the involuntary movement with a shrug, saying lightly, "A man I know says he thoroughly believes a woman is colder rather than warmer in a scarf like this, on the theory that anything with so many holes in it must create an infinite number of small draughts."

"He may be right. But I confess, as a physician, I like to cover up exposed surfaces from the open night air—to a certain extent—even with an excuse for a protection like this."

He sat down beside her. The bench was not a long one, and he was nearer to her than he had yet been to-night. She sat quietly, one hand lying motionless in her lap. The other hand, down at her side, laid hold of the edge of the bench and gripped it rather tightly. She began to talk about the old garden, as it lay before them, its straggling paths and beds of flowers mere patches of shadow, dark and light. He answered, now and then, in an absent sort of way, as if his mind were upon something else, and he only partly heard. She spoke of "Sunny Farm"—the children's hospital in the country—of Burns and Ellen and Bob—and then, suddenly, with a sense of the uselessness of trying all by herself to make small talk under conditions of growing constraint, she fell silent. He let the silence endure for a little space, then broke it bluntly.

"I'm glad," he said, in the deep, quiet voice she remembered well, "that you will give me a chance. What is the use of pretending that I have brought you here to talk of other people? I have something to say to you, and you know it. I can't lead up to it by any art, for it has become merely a fact which it is your right to know. You should have known it long ago."

He stopped for a minute. She was absolutely still beside him, except for the hand that gripped the edge of the bench. That took a fresh hold.

When he spoke again, his voice, though still quiet, showed tension.

"Before I saw you the last time, last spring, I meant to ask you to marry me. When I did see you, something had happened to make that impossible. It had not only made it impossible, but it made me unable even to explain. I shall never forget that strange hour I spent with you. You knew that something was the matter. But I couldn't tell you. I thought then I never could. Seeing you, as I have to-night, I realized that I couldn't wait another hour to tell you. But, even now, I don't feel that I can explain. There's only one thing I am sure of—that I must say this much: All my seeking of you, last winter, meant the full intent and purpose to win you, if I could. And—you can never know what it meant to me to give it up."

The last words were almost below his breath, but she heard them, heard the uncontrollable, passionate ache of them. Plainer than the words themselves this quality in them spoke for him.

For a moment there was silence between them again. Then he went on: "I can't ask—I don't ask—a word from you in answer. Neither can I let myself say more than I am saying. It wouldn't be fair to you, however you might feel. And I want you to believe this—that not to say more takes every bit of manhood I have."

Silence again. Then, from the woman beside him, in the clearest, low voice, with an inflection of deep sweetness:

"Thank you, Dr. Leaver."

Suddenly he turned upon the bench—he had been staring straight before him. He bent close, looked into her shadowy face for a moment, then found her hand, where it lay in her lap, lifted it in both his own, and pressed it, for a long, tense moment, against his lips. She felt the contact burn against the cool flesh, and it made intelligible all that he would not allow himself to say, in terms which no woman could mistake.

Then he sprang up from the bench.

"Will you walk as far as the house with me?" he asked, gently. "Or shall I leave you here? It is late: I don't quite like to leave you here alone."

"I will go with you," she answered, and, rising, drew her skirts about her. He stood beside her for a moment, looking down at her white figure, outlined against the darkness behind them. She heard him take one deep, slow inspiration, like a swimmer who fills his lungs before plunging into the water; she heard the quick release of the breath, followed by his voice, saying, with an effort at naturalness:

"If I had such a place as this, where I'm staying, I should be tempted to bring out a blanket and sleep in it to-night."

"One might do worse," she answered. "These branches have been so long untrimmed that it takes a heavy shower to dampen the ground beneath."

They made their way back along the straggling paths, and came to the cottage, from whose windows streamed the lamplight that waited for Charlotte. As it fell upon her Leaver looked at her, and stood still. Pausing, she glanced up at him, and away again. She knew that he was silently regarding her. Quite without seeing she knew how his face looked, the fine face with the eyes which seemed to see so much, the firm yet sensitive mouth, the whole virile personality held in a powerful restraint.

Then he opened the door for her, and she passed him. She looked back at him from the threshold.

"Good-night," she said, and smiled.

"Good-night," he answered, and gave back the smile. Then he went quickly down the path and away.

Ten minutes afterward she put out the light in the front room, and stole out of the door, leaving it open behind her. Still in the white gown of the evening, but with a long, dark cloak flung over it, she went swiftly back over the paths to the garden bench. Arrived there she sat down upon it, where she had sat before, but not as she had been. Instead, she turned and laid her arm along the low back of the bench, and her head upon it, and remained motionless in that position for a long time. Her eyes were wide, in the darkness, and her lips were pressed tight together, and once, just once, a smothered, struggling breath escaped her. But, finally, she sat up, threw up her head, lifted both arms above it, the hands clenched tight.

"Charlotte Ruston," she whispered fiercely, "you have to be strong—and strong—and stronger yet! You have to be! You have to be!"

Then she rose quickly to her feet, with a motion not unlike that with which John Leaver had sprung to his an hour before. It was a movement which meant that emotion must yield to action. She went swiftly back to the house, in at the door, up the straight, high stairs to her room.

As she lighted her candle a voice spoke from Madam Chase's room, its door open into her own.

"Charlotte?"

"Yes, Granny?"

The girl went in, taking the candle, which she set upon the dressing-table. She bent over the bed, putting her lips close to the old lady's ear.

"Can't you sleep, dear?" she asked.

"Not until you are in, child. Why are you so late?"

"It's not late, Granny. You know I went to Dr. Burns's to dinner."

"It's very late," repeated the delicate old voice, slightly querulous, because of its owner's failure to hear the explanation. "Much too late for a girl like you. You should have had your beauty sleep long ago."

Charlotte smiled, feeling as if her twenty-six years had added another ten to themselves since morning. She patted the soft cheek on the pillow, and tenderly adjusted the gossamer nightcap which, after the fashion of its wearer's youth, kept the white locks snugly in order during the sleeping hours.

"I'm here now, Granny. Please go to sleep right away. Or—would you like a glass of milk first?"

"What say?"

"Milk, dear,—hot milk?"

"Yes, yes, it will put me to sleep. Quite hot, not lukewarm."

Charlotte went down the steep stairs again, heated the milk, and brought it back. When it had been taken she kissed the small face, drew the linen sheet smooth again, and went away with the candle. In her own room she presently lay down upon her cot, rejoicing that the old lady could not hear its creaking.

Toward morning she fell asleep.



CHAPTER XII

A CHALLENGE

"Miss Ruston!"

"Yes?" The answer came through the door of the dark-room. "I can't come out for four minutes. Can you give me the message through a closed door?"

"Certainly," responded Amy Mathewson, standing outside. She was dressed for motor travel and her eyes were full of anticipation. "Mr. Macauley is taking some of us out to meet Dr. Burns at Sunny Farm. The Doctor has telephoned from there that he would be very glad if you could come with us, bring your camera, and take some photographs of a patient for him."

"Delighted—if I can arrange for Granny," Charlotte called back.

"Mrs. Burns's Cynthia will stay with her."

"How soon must we start?"

"As soon as you can be ready."

"Give me ten minutes, and I'll be there."

The big brown car was waiting outside the hedge gate when, nearly as good as her word, Charlotte ran down the path. She had pulled a long linen coat over her blue morning dress, and a veil floated over her arm.

"Dear me, you all look so correct in your bonnets and caps! Must I tie up my head, or may I leave off the veil until my hair gets to looking wild?"

"It never looked wild yet that I can recall, so jump in and go as you please. It's too hot for caps, and I'll keep you company," responded Macauley, from the front seat. His wife, Martha, sat beside him, swathed in brown from head to foot. Martha had acquired a motoring costume which she considered matched the car and was particularly smart besides, and she seldom left off any detail, no matter how warm the day. Martha looked around as Charlotte took her place beside Miss Mathewson on the broad rear seat. The two swinging seats which equipped the car to carry seven passengers were occupied by Bobby Burns and young Tom Macauley.

"People who have hair like Miss Ruston can go bareheaded where the rest of us have to tie ourselves together to keep from blowing away," observed Martha.

Her husband laughed. "I never heard you own quite so frankly before that parts of you were detachable," said he.

"They're not!" cried Martha, indignantly. "But Miss Ruston's hair is that crisp, half curly sort that stays just where you put it, and mine is so straight and fine that it gets stringy. It makes all the difference in the world."

The car moved off. After a minute it turned a corner and came to a standstill before a house. Macauley sounded a penetrating horn, and after a minute the door opened and John Leaver came out.

"Come on, Doctor," called Macauley. "R.P. has been telephoning in, in the usual fever of haste, to have us get out there. It seems the place is in order and two patients have arrived. He wants a doctor, nurse, and photographer on the job at once. Find a place on the back seat, there?"

Leaver came quickly down the walk. He looked like a well man now, whether he felt like a well one or not. He had gained in weight, his face had lost its worn look, his eyes were no longer encompassed by shadows. The sun was in his eyes as he opened the rear door and prepared to take the one seat left in the car, that beside Charlotte Ruston, who had moved to one side as she saw what was about to happen. Her shoulder pressed close against that of Miss Mathewson, she left so large a space for the newcomer.

After the first exchange of small talk, it was a silent drive. Macauley was making haste to obey the summons he had received, and the rush of air past those in the car with him was not conducive to frequent speech. Soon after they were off Charlotte drew her big white veil over her head and face, and was lost to view beneath its protecting expanse. One of the veil's fluttering ends persisted in blowing across Leaver's breast, quite unnoticed by its owner, whose head did not often turn that way. The man did not put it aside, but after a time he took hold of it and kept it in his hand, secure from the domineering breeze.

"Here we are! Behold Sunny Farm, the dream of Doctor and Mrs. Red Pepper, given tangible shape. Not a bad-looking old rambling place, is it?"

Macauley brought his car to rest beside the long green roadster already there. Its occupants jumped out and strolled up the slope toward the white farmhouse, across whose front and wing stretched long porches, on one of which stood a steamer chair and a white iron bed, each holding a small form. Upon the step sat Ellen Burns and a nurse in a white uniform; by the bed stood Burns himself.

Miss Mathewson's observant eyes were taking veiled note of her recent charge as he went up the steps and approached the bed. The little patient upon it had not lifted his head, as had the child in the chair, to see who was at hand.

"Oh, the little pitiful face!" breathed Charlotte Ruston in Amy's ear, as she looked down into a pair of great black eyes, set in hollows so deep that they seemed the chiseling of merciless pain.

"This is Jamie Ferguson," said Burns, with his hand on the boy's head. "He is very happy to be here in the sunshine, so you are not to pity him. Come here, Bob, and tell Jamie you will play with him when he is stronger. He knows wonderful things, does Jamie. And this is Patsy Kelly, in the chair."

There was a pleasant little scene now enacted upon the porch, in which Bob and Tom were introduced to the small patients, and everybody looked on while shy advances were made by the well children, to be received with timid gravity by the sick ones. Through it all Red Pepper Burns was furtively observing the demeanour of Dr. John Leaver.

He had hardly taken his eyes from Jamie Ferguson. Into his face had come a look his friend had not seen there since he had been with him, the look of the expert professional man who sees before him a case which interests him. He stood and studied the child without speaking while Bob and Tom remained, and when the small boys, too full of activity to stay contentedly with other boys who could not play, were off to explore the place, Leaver drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

Burns glanced at his wife, and gave a significant nod of his head toward the interior of the house. Ellen rose.

"Come Martha, and Charlotte," said she, "and let me show you over the rooms. I'm so proud of the progress we have made in the fortnight since the house was vacated for us."

She led them inside. Amy Mathewson went over to the chair and Patsy Kelly, turning her back upon the pair by the bed.

"When did you come, Patsy?" she asked.

"We come the morn," said Patsy, a pale little fellow of nine, with a shock of hair so red that beside it that of Red Pepper Burns would have looked a subdued chestnut. "In the ambilunce we come. I liked the ride, but Jamie didn't. He was scared of bein' moved."

"Jamie is not so well as you. How fine it is that you can lie in this chair and have your head up. You can see all about. Isn't it beautiful here?"

"It is. I'm glad I come. He said I'd be glad, but I didn't believe him. I didn't know," said Patsy Kelly, with a sigh of satisfaction. "I had mate and pitaty for breakfast the morn," he added, and rapture shone out of his eyes.

By the side of Jamie Ferguson Dr. John Leaver was telling a story. He was apparently telling it to Dr. Burns, who listened with great interest, but at the same time shy Jamie Ferguson was listening too. There were curious points in the story when the narrator turned to the boy in the bed and inquired, smiling: "Could you do that, Jamie?" to which questions Jamie usually replied in the negative. They were mostly questions concerning backs and legs and hips, and the boy in the story seemed to find difficulty in using his, too, which made Jamie feel a strong interest in him. Altogether it was a fascinating tale. When it was over the two men walked away together down the slope, and between them passed other questions and answers, of a sort which Jamie could not have understood.

Down by the gate Leaver came to a pause, nodding his head in a thoughtful way. "You are quite right, I believe, both in your conclusions and in your plan for operation. I should go ahead without further delay than is necessary to get him into a bit better condition."

"I thought you would agree with me," Burns replied. "I'm gratified that you do. But I'm not going to operate. I've got a better man: Leaver, of Baltimore."

The other turned quickly. A strange look swept over his face.

"I told you my decision about that," he said.

"I know you did. But I told you some time ago about this case, and warned you that it was your case. I haven't changed my mind."

Leaver shook his head. "I haven't changed mine, either. But I didn't know this was the case you meant. If I had I shouldn't have gone to examining it without an invitation."

"You had an invitation. That was what I got you out here this morning for. I didn't bring you myself because I didn't want you steeling yourself against looking into it, as you would if I had told you about it on the way out. My plan worked all right. The minute you saw the child your instincts and training got the better of your caution. That's what they'll continue to do if you give them a chance. See here, you don't mean to quit your profession and take to carpentry, do you?"

"I expect to practise medicine," Leaver said, and there was a queer setting of his lips as he said it.

"Medicine! You? Jack, you couldn't do it."

"Couldn't I? I don't know that I could." He drew a half shuddering breath. "But I can try, somewhere, if not in Baltimore."

"I'd like to thrash you!" cried Red Pepper Burns, and he looked it. "Standing there the picture of a healthy man and telling me you're going to take to doling out pills and writing prescriptions.... See here. We've put in a little surgery up there in the north wing, it's a peach of a place. Come and see it."

He led the way rapidly back up to the house, in at the door and up the stairs. At the end of a long corridor he threw open the door of a small room, whose whole northern side was of glass. Its equipment was as complete as could be asked by the most exacting of operating surgeons.

"Good!" Leaver cried, quite forgetting himself for the moment. "I had no idea you meant to carry things so far as this. Fine!"

"Isn't it? Could you have a better place to try your hand again? Nobody looking on but Amy Mathewson, Miss Dodge—whom you met downstairs—and Dr. Buller—for the anesthetic. Buller's the best anesthetizer in the state and a splendid fellow besides. Also my humble self, ready to be your right-hand man. I promise you this,—if the least thing goes wrong—and you ask it—I'll take your place without a word. Jack, the case is one that needs you. I've never done this operation: you have. You've written a monograph on it. It's up to you, John Leaver. I don't dare you to do it, I dare you not to do it!"

For the first time, in response to his arguments on this subject, Burns got no answer but silence. But his friend's face was slowly flushing a deep, angry red. At this sight Burns rejoiced. His theory had been that if he could wake something in Leaver besides deep depression and sad negation he had a chance to influence him. He believed thoroughly that if he could force the distinguished young surgeon through one successful operation confidence would return like an incoming tide. He had hoped that the pathetic sight of the little malformed body of Jamie Ferguson would arouse the passion for salvage which lies in the breast of every man who practises the great profession; he saw that thus far his plan had succeeded. Now to accomplish the rest.

"Suppose," said Leaver, turning slowly toward the other man, "I agree to stand beside you and direct the operation?"

It was Burns's turn to colour angrily, his quick temper leaping to fire in an instant.

"Not much! Let every tub stand on its own bottom! Either I do the job or I don't do it; but I don't take the part of an apprentice. I'll agree to play second fiddle to you, with you playing first. But I'll be—condemned—if I'll play first, with a coach at my elbow. Take that and be hanged to you!"

He walked over to the open window, threw back the screen and put his head out, as if he needed air to breathe. Leaver was at his side in an instant.

"I beg your pardon, my dear fellow, I do sincerely. It was an unworthy suggestion, and I don't blame you for resenting it. Nobody needs help less than you. You could do the operation brilliantly. That's why there's no need in the world to force me into the situation—no need—"

Burns wheeled. "There is need! There's need for you—to save your soul alive. You've been no coward so far—your overworked nerves played you a trick and you've had to recover. But you have recovered, you are fit to work again. If you don't do this thing you'll be a coward forever!"

It bit deep, as he had known it would. If he had struck a knife into his friend's heart he could not have caused so sharp a hurt. Leaver turned white under this surgery of speech, and for an instant he looked as if he would have sprung at Burns's throat. There followed sixty silent seconds while both men stood like statues. But the merciless judgment had turned the scale. With a control of himself which struck Burns, as he recalled it afterward, as marvellous, Leaver answered evenly: "You shall not have the chance to say that again. I will operate when you think best."

"Thank God!" said Red Pepper Burns, under his breath.

The two walked out of the little white room, with its austere and absolute cleanliness, without another word concerning that which was to come. Burns took his friend over the house, and Leaver looked into room after room, approving, commending, even suggesting, quite as if nothing had happened. And yet, after all, not quite as if nothing had happened. He was not the same man who had come out to Sunny Farm an hour before. Burns knew, as well as if he could have seen into Leaver's mind, the conflict that was going on there. The thing was settled, he would not retreat, yet there was still a fight to be fought—the biggest fight of his life. On its issue was to depend the success or failure of the coming test. Burns's warm heart would have led him to speak sympathetically and encouragingly of the issue to be met; his understanding of the crisis it precipitated kept him mute. Whatever help he was now to give his friend must be given, not through speech but through silence, and by that subtler means of communication between spirit and spirit which cannot be analyzed or understood, but which may be more real than anything in life.

They went downstairs, presently, and rejoined the party. Miss Ruston and Miss Mathewson, Mr. James Macauley and his son Tom, with Bobby Burns, were engaged in a spirited game of "puss in a corner," for the benefit of Patsy Kelly, who lay looking on from his chair with sparkling, excited eyes. Beside Jamie Ferguson, who could not see, Mrs. Burns sat, describing to him the game and interpreting the shouts of laughter which reached his ears as he lay, too flat upon his back to see what was happening twenty feet away.

Ellen looked up, as her husband approached, and something in his face made her regard him intently. He smiled at her, his hazel eyes dark as they often were when something had stirred him deeply, and she guessed enough of the meaning of this aspect to keep her from looking at Dr. Leaver until he had been for some time upon the porch.

When she did observe him, he was standing, leaning against a pillar and looking at the wan little face below her, from a point at which Jamie could not know of his scrutiny. His back was turned upon the game upon the grass, though the others were watching it. When it ended Burns called Charlotte Ruston to the taking of the photographs he wanted—snapshots of the two little patients carried into the full sunlight. This being quickly accomplished, he announced his own immediate departure.

"Will you go back with me in the Imp, or at your leisure with the crowd in the car?" Burns asked Leaver, in an undertone. "My wife will be glad to go in either car; she suggested your taking your choice."

"If the Macauleys will not misunderstand, I should prefer to go with you," Leaver replied.

"They won't. Two medicine-men are supposed always to wish for a chance to hobnob, and we'll put it on that score. I really want to consult you about Patsy's case."

"Not going with us? Willing to forsake three fair ladies for one red-headed fiend, just because you know he's going to give us his dust? I like that!" cried Macauley, who could be trusted never to make things easy for his friends.

"Abuse him as you like. He's off with me at my request," called Burns, pulling out into the road and turning with a sweep.

Martha Macauley looked after the Green Imp's rapidly lessening shape through the dust-cloud which it left behind. "I never thought till to-day that Dr. Leaver seemed the least bit like a noted surgeon," said she, as they waited for Macauley to get his car underway. "I could never imagine his acting like Red, and rushing enthusiastically from bedside to operating-room, pushing everything out of his way to make time to cut somebody to pieces and sew him up again, for his ultimate good. But to-day somehow, he seemed more—what would you call it—professional?"

"That's the word," her husband agreed. "It's the word they juggle with. If a thing's 'professional,' it's all right. If it's not, it may as well be condemned to outer darkness at once."



CHAPTER XIII

A CRISIS

"Little wife?"

"Yes, Redfield Pepper—"

"I'm as nervous as a cat up a tree with a couple of dogs at the foot!"

"Why, Red, I never heard you talk of being nervous! What does it mean?"

"An operation to-morrow."

"But you never are 'nervous,' dear."

"I am now."

"Is it such a critical one?"

"The most critical I ever faced."

Ellen looked at her husband, or tried to look, for they were moving slowly along the street, at a late hour, Burns having suggested a short walk before bedtime. It was quite dark, and Ellen could judge only by her husband's voice that he spoke with entire soberness.

"Can you tell me anything about it?" she suggested, knowing that relief from tension sometimes comes with speech. Any confession of nervousness from Red Pepper Burns seemed to her most extraordinary. She knew that he often worked under tremendous tension, but he had never before admitted shakiness of nerve.

"Not much, if anything at all. It's a particularly private affair, for the present. It's a queer operation, too. I may not handle a knife, tie an artery, or stitch up a wound—may do less than I ever did in my life on such an occasion, yet—I'll be hanged if I'm not feeling as owly about it as if it were the first time I ever expected to see blood."

Ellen put her hand on his arm, slipped it into the curve, and kept it there, while he held it pressed close against him. "Red, have you been working too hard lately?" she asked.

"Not a bit. I'm fit as a fiddler. Don't worry, love. I've no business to talk riddles to you, of all people. But for a peculiar reason I'm horribly anxious about the outcome of to-morrow's experiment, and had to work it off somehow. Just promise me that when you say your prayers to-night you'll ask the good God not to let me be mistaken in forcing a situation I may not be able to control."

"I will," Ellen promised, with all her heart, for she saw that, whatever the crisis might be, it was one to which her usually daring husband was looking forward with most uncharacteristic dread.

She was conscious that Burns spent a restless night. At daybreak he was up and out of the house. Before he went, however, he bent over her and kissed her with great tenderness, murmuring, "A prayer or two more, darling, won't hurt anything, when you are awake enough. I've particular faith in your petitions."

She held him with both arms.

"Don't worry, Red. It isn't like you. You will succeed, if it is to be."

"It's got to be," he said between his teeth, as he left her.

He swallowed a cup of Cynthia's hot coffee—bespoken the night before, as on many similar occasions—and ran out to his car just as the slow September sunrise broke into the eastern sky. In two minutes more he was off in the Imp, flying out the road to Sunny Farm.

Arrived there he astonished Miss Dodge, the nurse in charge, who was not accustomed to Dr. Burns's ways. He had left the small patient, Jamie Ferguson, the night before, entirely satisfied with his condition for undergoing the operation set for nine o'clock this morning. He now went once more painstakingly over every detail of the preparation he had ordered, making sure for himself that nothing had been omitted.

Then he called for Miss Mathewson, who had spent the night at the Farm. She was to assist Leaver as she was accustomed to assist Burns. He took her off by herself and addressed her solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever done.

"Amy, if you ever had your wits on call, have them this morning. In all my life I never cared more how things went at a time like this. I care so much I'd give about all I own to know this minute that the thing would go through."

"Why, Dr. Burns," said she, in astonishment, "it should go through. It is a critical operation, of course, but the boy seems in very fair shape for it, and Dr. Leaver has done it before. Dr. Leaver is quite well now—"

"I know, I know. Feel of that!"

He touched her hand with his own, which was icy cold. She started, and looked anxiously at him.

"Doctor, you can't be well! This isn't you—to be so—nervous! Why, think of all the operations you've done, and never a sign of minding. And this isn't even your responsibility—it's Dr. Leaver's."

"That's right, scold me," said he, trying to laugh. "It's what I need. I'm showing the white feather, a hatful of them. But you're mistaken about one thing. It is my responsibility, every detail of it. Don't forget that. If the case goes wrong, it's my fault, not Dr. Leaver's."

Then he walked away, leaving Miss Mathewson utterly dumbfounded. She understood perfectly that Dr. John Leaver had suffered a severe breakdown from overwork, and that this was his first test since his recovery. But she knew nothing of the peculiar circumstances of his last appearance in an operating-room, and could therefore have no possible notion of the crisis this morning's work was to be to him. She did know enough, however, to be deeply interested in the outcome, and she watched the Green Imp flying down the road toward home with the sense that when it returned it would bear two surgeons for whom she must do the best work of support in her life.

"Ready, Jack?"

"Ready."

John Leaver took the seat beside Burns, giving the outstretched hand a strong grip. He carried no hand-bag, there was no sign of his profession about him. He had sent to Baltimore for his own instruments, but they were waiting for him in the little operating-room at Sunny Farm, having been through every rite practised by modern surgery.

The car set off.

"It's a magnificent morning," said Red Pepper Burns.

"Ideal."

"September's the best month in the year, to my fancy."

"A crisp October rivals it, to my notion."

"Not bad. There's a touch of frost in the air this morning."

"Quite a touch."

The car sped on. The men were silent. His one glance at his friend's face had showed Burns that Leaver had, apparently, his old quiet command of himself. But this, though reassuring, he knew could not be trusted as an absolute indication of control within. For himself, he had never been so profoundly excited in his life. He found himself wondering how he was going to stand and look on, unemployed, yet ready, at a sign, to take the helm. He felt as if that moment, if it should come, would find him as unnerved as the man he must help. Yet, with all his heart and will, he was silently assuring himself that all would go well—must go well. He must not even fear failure, think failure, imagine failure. Strong confidence on his own part, he fully believed, would be definite, if intangible, assistance to his friend....

Rounding a curve in the road, the white outlines of Sunny Farm house stood out clearly against the background of near green fields, and distant purple hills.

"House gets the sun in great shape mornings," observed Burns.

"The location couldn't be better," responded Leaver's quiet voice.

The car swung into the yard. The two men got out, crossed the sward, and stood upon the porch. Miss Mathewson met them at the door, her face bright, her eyes clear, only a little flush on either cheek betraying to Burns that she shared his tension.

"Jamie seems in the best of condition," said she.

"That's good—that's good," Burns answered, as if he had not made sure of the fact for himself within the hour.

"I will go in and see him a minute," Leaver said, and disappeared into Jamie Ferguson's room.

Outside Burns walked up and down the corridor, waiting, in a restlessness upon which he suddenly laid a stern decree. He stopped short and forced himself to stand still.

"You idiot," he savagely addressed himself, "you act like a fool medical student detailed to give an anesthetic at a noted surgeon's clinic for the first time. Cut it, and behave yourself."

After which he was guilty of no more outward perturbation, and, naturally, of somewhat less inner turmoil.

"Satisfied?" he asked of Leaver, as the other came out of Jamie's room.

Leaver nodded. "Rather better than I had hoped. He's a plucky little chap."

"You're right, he is."

The two went up to the dressing-room. Half an hour later, clad in white from head to foot, arms bare and gleaming, hands gloved, allowing assistants to open and close doors for them lest the slightest contamination affect their rigid cleanliness, they came into the operating-room. For the moment they were left alone there, while the nurses went to summon the bearer of the little patient. It was the moment Burns had dreaded, the stillness before action which most tries the spirit at any crisis.

He could not help giving one quick glance at his friend before he turned away to look out of the window with eyes which saw nothing outside it. In that instant's glance he thought the old Leaver stood before him, cool, collected, armed to the teeth, as it were, for the fight, and looking forward to it with eagerness. There had been possibly a slight pallor upon his face, as Miss Dodge had adjusted his mask of gauze, but, as Burns recalled it, this was a common matter with many surgeons, and it might easily have been characteristic of Leaver himself, even though Burns had not remembered it. His own heart was thumping heavily in his breast, as it had never thumped when he had been the chief actor in the coming scene.

"Lord, make him go through all right," he was praying, almost unconsciously, while he eyed the September landscape unseeingly, and listened for the sound of the stretcher bearers....

As they came in at the door Burns turned, and saw, or thought he saw, Leaver draw one deep, long breath. Then, in a minute or so, the fight was on. He remembered, of old, that there was never much delay after the distinguished surgeon saw his patient before him, had assured himself that all was well with the working of the anesthetic, and had taken up his first instrument....

Swift and sure moved Leaver's hands, obeying the swift, sure working of his brain. There was not a moment's indecision. More than one moment of deliberation there was, but Burns, watching, knew as well as if his friend had been a part of himself that the brief pauses in his work were a part of the work itself, and meant that as his task unfolded before him he stopped to weigh feasible courses, choosing with unerring judgment the better of two possible alternatives, and proceeding with the confidence essential to the unfaltering touch. As Burns beheld the process pass the point of greatest danger and approach conclusion, he felt somewhat as a man may who, unable to help, watches a swimmer breasting tremendous seas, and sees him win past the last smother of breakers and make his way into calmer waters. He was conscious that he himself had been breathing shallowly as he watched, and now drew several deep inspirations of relief.

"By George, that was the gamest thing I ever saw," thought Burns, exultingly. "He hasn't shown the slightest sign of flinching. And Amy Mathewson—she's played up to every move like a little second brain of his."

He looked at the small clock on a shelf of the surgery, and his head swam. "He's outdone himself," he nearly cried aloud. "This will stand beside anything he's ever done. If he'd been slower than usual it would have been only natural, after this interval, but he's been faster. Oh, but I'm glad—glad!"

The event was over. Both Leaver and Burns, no longer under the necessity of avoiding contact with things unsterilized, felt the small patient's pulse and nodded at each other. The assistants bore Jamie Ferguson's little inert body away, Miss Dodge attending.

Dr. Leaver turned to Miss Mathewson. He drew off the masking gauze from his head, showing a flushed, moist face and eyes a little bloodshot. But his voice was as quiet as ever as he said:

"I've never had finer assistance from any one, Miss Mathewson. If you had been trained to work opposite me you couldn't have done better."

"You work much like Dr. Burns," she said, modestly. "That made it easy."

Burns burst into a smothered laugh. "That's the biggest compliment I've had for a good while," said he.

As they dressed, neither man said much. But when coats were on, and the two were ready to go to Jamie's room, they turned each to the other.

"Well, old man?" Burns was smiling like the sunshine itself into his friend's eyes. "I think I never was so happy in my life."

"I know you're happy," said the other man. "I don't believe I'll trust myself yet to tell you what I am."

"Don't try. We won't talk it over just yet. But I've got to say this, Jack: You never did a more masterly job in your life."

Leaver smiled—and shivered. "I'm glad it's over," said he.

They went down to Jamie's room, and there, on either side of the high hospital cot, watched consciousness returning. With consciousness presently came pain.

"I'm going to stay with him," Leaver announced, by and by. Jamie's little, wasted hand was fast in his, Jamie's eyes, when they rested anywhere with intelligence, rested on his face—a face tender and pitiful.

"Good for you. I shall feel easier about him if you do," and Burns went away with the feeling that this course would be as good for the surgeon as for the patient.

He stopped in the lower hall to telephone Ellen.

"All safely over, dear," he said. "The patient doing well so far, and no reason why he shouldn't continue, as far as we can see."

"Oh, I'm so glad, Red," came back the joyous reply, and Burns responded:

"That goes without saying, partner. I'll tell you a lot more about it, now, when I get back."

The Green Imp went back at a furious pace. Half-way home, however, as it neared a figure walking by the roadside, it suddenly slowed down.

"Will you ride home, Miss Photographer?" Burns called. "Or do you prefer trudging all the way back with that camera and tripod?"

"I'm delighted to ride, Dr. Burns," replied Charlotte Ruston. "Captivating roadside views enticed me much farther than I intended, and the camera weighs twice what it did when I started."

"Jump in, then, and let me give you a piece of good news I'm bursting with," and Burns held out his hand for the camera. "You're getting a beautiful sunburn on that right cheek," he commented.

"I'll burn the left to match it, if you won't drive too fast. You'll have to go a little slower while you talk. I've noticed you're always silent when you're scorching along the road."

"So I am, I believe. Well, I'm not going to be silent now. I've just come from seeing Jamie Ferguson put on the road to future health and happiness, the good Lord willing—and I've a notion He is."

"Jamie—the little cripple who lies on his back?"

"The same. He'll lie on his back some time longer and then, I think, he'll get up."

"You operated on him to-day? How glad I am!"

"No, I didn't operate. It took a better man than I. I've never done this particular stunt, and Jamie was not a patient for experiment. Jack Leaver did the trick, and a finished trick it was, too. I'm so full of enthusiasm over his performance that I'm bursting with it, as I warned you."

Charlotte Ruston had turned suddenly to face him. As he looked at her, with this announcement, he had a view of lovely, startled eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked, wondering. He had to look ahead at the road, but he cut down on the Imp's speed, so that he could spare a glance at his companion again. "You look as if I'd given you bad news instead of good."

"Oh, no!—oh, no!" she said, in odd, short breaths. "It's great—wonderful! Poor little fellow! I'm very glad. You said—Dr. Leaver did it? I was simply—surprised."

"Did it brilliantly. But there's no occasion for surprise about that. Having been in Baltimore as much as you have, you must know his position there. There's nobody with a bigger reputation."

"But I thought he had been—ill?"

"Tired out. Small wonder, at the pace he was going—the working pace, I mean. He never let up on himself. I got him here to rest up. He would have been off long ago if I would have given him leave, but I had his promise to keep away from work till he was thoroughly fit for it, so I've made the most of my chance. I shall never get another. If I know him he'll be back in his office before the week ends. Once give a chap like him a taste of work after idleness, and there's no use trying to hold him."

"You think him fully fit, now?"

"Never so fit in his life, if I'm any judge. I've seen him at work many a time, and I never saw finer methods than his to-day, his own or any man's—and I've watched some pretty smooth things. By the way, I understand you had met Dr. Leaver before you met him here?"

"Yes, I had met him."

Burns was not possessed of more than the ordinary amount of curiosity concerning other people's affairs, but he was accustomed to observe human nature and note its signs, and it struck him now rather suddenly that both John Leaver and Charlotte Ruston had seemed rather more than necessarily non-committal concerning an acquaintance which both admitted. He saw no reason why he should not ask a question or two. Asking questions was a part of his profession.