Mrs. Red Pepper | Page 8

person," said Red Pepper's wife, with her warm
hand on the nurse's arm, "how good it is of you to care! But I can wait.
Can't you stay in here with me, while the Doctor sees his patient?"
"I must help him. It's a broken leg, and I must go this minute," said
Miss Mathewson. But she paused for an instant more, looking at Ellen.
The nurse was the taller, and looked the older of the two, but the
affectionate phrase "little person" had somehow touched a heart which
was lonelier even than Ellen guessed--and Ellen guessed much more
than Red Pepper had ever done. Red Pepper's wife leaned forward.
"You and I must be good friends," said she, and Miss Mathewson
responded with a flush of pleasure. Then the nurse flew back to the
office, while Ellen, after listening for a little to the sounds of footsteps
in the office, turned back to the fire.
"How does it happen," said she musingly to herself, as she stood
looking down into the depths of the glowing heart of it, "that one
woman can be so rich and one so poor--under the same roof? She sees
more of him than I,--lives her life closer to him, in a way,--and yet I am
rich and she is poor. How I wish I could make her happy--as happy as
she can be without the one thing that would have made her so. O
Red!--and you never saw it!"
The hour went by. The broken leg was set and bandaged, the injured
man was conveyed back to the wagon which had brought him; and Red
Pepper Burns took a last look at his patient, in the light of the lantern
carried by the countryman.
"You've been game as any fighting man, Tom," said he, cheerily. "The
drive home'll be no midsummer-night's-dream, but I see that upper lip
of yours is stiff for it. Good-night--and good luck! We'll take care of
the luck."

As he turned back up the path the front door of his house swung open.
It was a door he had never entered more than once, his offices being in
the wing, and the upright portion having been totally unused since he
had owned the place. With an exclamation he was up the steps in two
leaps, and standing still upon the threshold.
"Come in a little farther, please, dear," said a voice from behind the
door, "so I can close it."
Burns shut the door with a bang, and turned upon the figure in the
corner. But his extended arm kept his wife away from him. "Let me go
and refresh," he begged. "I can't bear to touch you after handling that
unwashed lumberjack. Just five minutes and I'll be back."
He was as good as his word. In five minutes he was no longer a busy
professional man, but a gentleman of leisure, with hands cleaner than
those of any fastidious clubman, and clothes which carried no hint of
past usage in other places less chaste than his wife's private
living-rooms.
"Now I'm ready for you," he announced, returning. "And I'll be hanged
if I'll see another interloper to-night. A man has some rights, if he is a
doctor. Morgan, up the street there, is the new man in town, and he has
a display of electric lights in front of his office which fairly yells 'come
here!' Let 'em go there! I stay here."
He took his wife in his arms and kissed her hungrily, then stood
holding her close, his cheek against her hair, in absolute contentment.
He seemed to see nothing of the new quarters, though he was now just
outside the living-room door, in the hall which ran between the two
parts of the house. Presently she drew him into the room.
"Look about you," said she. "Have you no curiosity?"
"Not much, while I have you. Still--by George! Well!"
He stood staring about him, his eyes wide open enough now. From one
detail to another his quick, keen-eyed glance roved, lingering an instant

on certain points where artful touches of colour relieved the more
subdued general tone of the furnishings. The room suggested, above all
things, quiet and repose, yet there was a soft and mellow cheer about it
which made it anything but sombre. Its browns and blues and ivories
wrought out an exquisite harmony. The furniture was simple but solid,
the roomy high-backed davenport luxurious with its many pillows. The
walls showed a few good pictures--how good, it might not be that Red
Pepper fully understood. But he did understand, with every sense, that
it was such a room as a man might look upon and be proud to call his
home.
But he was silent so long that Ellen looked up at him, to