Mrs. Red Pepper | Page 7

night and all morning."
She disappeared as the Green Imp's horn vociferated a signal of
greeting from far down the road.
"They'll never get time to grow tired of each other," commented Martha,
as the two friends descended the old-time winding staircase. "Isn't this
old hall delightful, now? I never realized the possibilities of the house,
with this part closed so long."
"One more peep at the living-room, and then we'll go. Isn't it just like
Ellen? Such a charming, quiet room, without the least bit of ostentation,
yet simply breathing beauty and refinement. She is the most wonderful
shopper I know. She made every dollar Red furnished go twice as far as
I could. I don't suppose he would let her spend a penny of her own on
this house."

"He's too busy to know or care what she does--till he sees it. I'll venture
she has slipped in a penny or two. That magnificent piano is hers, you
know,--and two or three pieces of furniture. All he'll realize is that it's
delightful and that she's in it. It's all so funny, anyhow,--this bringing
home a bride and having her fall to work to furnish her own nest."
"She's enjoyed it. I'd like to be on the scene to-night, when she shows it
to him."
"No chance of that. When Red does get her to himself for ten minutes
he quite plainly prefers to have the rest of us depart. Have you
noticed?"
"Yes, indeed. I only hope that state of things will last." And Winifred
smiled and sighed at once, as if she were skeptical concerning of the
permanency of married bliss.
Office-hours were full ones that evening, and it was quite nine o'clock
before R.P. Burns, M.D. closed the door on the last of his patients. The
moment he was free he turned to Miss Mathewson, his office nurse,
with a deep breath of relief.
"Let's put out the lights and call it off," he said. "Run home and get an
hour to yourself before bedtime, and never mind finishing the books.
Do you know,"--he was smiling down at her, where she sat, a trim
white figure at her desk, an assistant who had been his right hand for
nine years, and who perhaps knew his moods and tempers better than
anybody in the world, though he did not at all realize this,--"do you
know, I find it harder to settle down to work again than I thought I
should? Curious, isn't it?"
"Not at all curious, Doctor Burns." Miss Mathewson spoke in her usual
quiet tone, smiling in return. "It is distracting, even to me, to know that
a person so lovely as your wife is under the same roof."
This was much for this most reserved associate of his to say, and Burns
recognized it. He regarded her with interested astonishment. "So she's
got you, too!" he ejaculated. "I'm mighty glad of that, for it will tend to

make you sympathetic with my wish to have an hour to myself--and
her--now and then. I'm to see my home to-night, for the first time,--if--"
Steps sounded upon the office porch. Burns made a flying leap for the
door into his private office, intent on getting to his room and
exchanging his working garb for one suited to the evening he meant to
spend with Ellen. When he had swiftly but noiselessly closed the door,
Miss Mathewson answered the knock.
A tall countryman loomed in the doorway.
"Doctor in?"
"He is in," said the office nurse, who would tell lies to nobody, "but he
is engaged. Office-hours are over. Please give me any message for
him."
"I'd like to see him," said the countryman, doggedly.
"I don't wish to disturb him unless it is quite necessary," explained
Miss Mathewson.
"I call it necessary," said the countryman, "when a fellow has a broken
leg. Got him out here in the wagon. Now will you call the Doctor?"
"I surely will," and Miss Mathewson smiled sympathetically.
She called her employer, who came out, frowning, still in his white
coat.
"Confound you, Jake," said he, "don't you know it's against the law to
break legs or mend them after office-hours?"
Miss Mathewson, in the brief interval consumed by the men in bringing
the injured man in from the street, slipped across the hall.
"It will be another hour, Mrs. Burns," said she, at the door of the
living-room. "But after that I shall not be here to answer the door or the
telephone, and the Doctor can ignore them, if he will."

Ellen rose, smiling, and came across the room to her. The two figures,
one in the severe white of a uniform, the other in the filmy,
lace-bordered white of a delicate house gown, met in the doorway.
"You dear, kind little