Red Peppers Patients | Page 8

figure in her simple home dinner attire, with the light on her dark hair and the exquisite curve of her cheek.
It was a fireside scene of alluring comfort, the two central figures of such opposite characteristics, yet so congenial. The night outside was very cold, the wind blowing stormily in great gusts which now and then howled down the chimney, making the warmth and cheer within all the more appealing.
Suddenly Ellen, hunting vainly for the page she sought, lifted her head, to see her husband lift his at the same instant.
"Music?" she questioned. "Where can it come from? Not outside on such a night as this?"
"Did you hear it, too? I've been thinking it my imagination."
"It must be the wind, but--no, it is music!"
She rose and went to the window, pushing aside draperies and setting her face to the frosty pane. The next instant she called in a startled way:
"Oh, Red--come here!"
He came slowly, but the moment he caught sight of the figure in the storm outside his langour vanished.
"Good heavens! The poor beggar! We must have him in."
He ran to the hall and the outer door, and Ellen heard his shout above the howling of the wind.
"Come in--come in!"
She reached the door into the hall as the slender young figure stumbled up the steps, a violin clutched tight in fingers purple with cold. She saw the stiff lips break into a frozen smile as her husband laid his hand upon the thinly clad shoulder and drew the youth where he could close the door.
"Why didn't you come to the door and ring, instead of fiddling out there in the cold!" demanded Burns. "Do you think we're heathen, to shut anybody out on a night like this?"
The boy shook his head. He was a boy in size, though the maturity of his thin face suggested that he was at least nineteen or twenty years old. His dark eyes gleamed out of hollow sockets, and his black hair, curling thickly, was rough with neglect. But he had snatched off his ragged soft hat even before he was inside the door, and for all the stiffness of his chilled limbs his attitude, as he stood before his hosts, had the unconscious grace of the foreigner.
"Where do you come from?" Burns asked.
Again the stranger shook his head.
"He can't speak English," said Ellen.
"Probably not--though he may be bluffing. We must warm and feed him, anyhow. Will you have him in here, or shall I take him in the office?"
Ellen glanced again at the shivering youth, noted that the purple hands were clean, even to the nails, and led the way unhesitatingly into the living room with all its beckoning warmth and beauty.
"Good little sport--I knew you would," murmured Burns, as he beckoned the boy after him.
Ellen left the two alone together by the fire, while she went to prepare a tray with Cynthia in the kitchen, filling it with the hearty food Burns himself had left untouched. Big slices of juicy roast beef, two hurriedly warmed sweet potatoes which had been browned in syrup in the Southern style, crisp buttered rolls, and a pot of steaming coffee were on the large tray which Cynthia insisted on carrying to the living-room door for her mistress. Burns, jumping up at sight of her, took the tray, while Ellen cleared a small table, drew up a chair, and summoned the young stranger.
The low bow he made her before he took the chair proclaimed his breeding, as well as the smile of joy which showed the flash of his even white teeth in the firelight. He made a little gesture of gratitude toward both Burns and Ellen, pressing his hands over his heart and then extending them, the expression on his face touching in its starved restraint. Then he fell upon the food, and even though he was plainly ravenous he ate as manneredly as any gentleman. Only by the way he finished each tiniest crumb could they know his extremity.
"By Jove, that beats eating it myself, if I were hungry as a faster on the third day!" Burns exclaimed, as he sat turned away from the beneficiary, his eyes apparently upon the fire. Ellen, from behind the boy, smiled at her husband, noting how completely his air of fatigue had fallen from him. Often before she had observed how any call upon R.P. Burns's sympathies rode down his own need of commiseration.
"Hungarian, I think, don't you?" Burns remarked, as the meal was finished, and the youth rose to bow his thanks once more. This time there was a response. He nodded violently, smiling and throwing out his hands.
"Ungahree!" he said, and smiled and nodded again, and said again, "Ungahree!"
"He knows that word all right," said Burns, smiling back. "It's a land of musicians. The fiddle's a good