Red Peppers Patients | Page 7

that would have
been brutal indeed in Coolidge's unhappy circumstances.
At the train Coolidge turned suddenly to his physician. "You haven't
given me anything for my sleeplessness," he said.

"Think you must have a prescription?" Burns inquired, getting out his
blank and pen.
"It will take some time for your advice to work out, if it ever does,"
Coolidge said. "Meanwhile, the more good sleep I get the fitter I shall
be for the effort."
"True enough. All right, you shall have the prescription."
Burns wrote rapidly, resting the small leather-bound book on his knee,
his foot on an iron rail of the fence which kept passengers from
crowding. He read over what he had written, his face sober, his eyes
intent. He scrawled a nearly indecipherable "Burns" at the bottom,
folded the slip and handed it to his friend. "Put it away till you're ready
to get it filled," he advised.
The two shook hands, gripping tightly and looking straight into each
other's eyes.
"Thank you, Red, for it all," said Gardner Coolidge. "There have been
minutes when I felt differently, but I understand you better now. And I
see why your waiting room is full of patients even on a stormy day."
"No, you don't," denied Red Pepper Burns stoutly. "If you saw me take
their heads off you'd wonder that they ever came again. Plenty of them
don't--and I don't blame them--when I've cooled off."
Coolidge smiled. "You never lie awake thinking over what you've said
or done, do you, Red? Bygones are bygones with a man like you. You
couldn't do your work if they weren't!"
A peculiar look leaped into Burns's eyes. "That's what the outsiders
always think," he answered briefly.
"Isn't it true?"
"You may as well go on thinking it is--and so may the rest. What's the
use of explaining oneself, or trying to? Better to go on looking

unsympathetic--and suffering, sometimes, more than all one's patients
put together!"
Coolidge stared at the other man. His face showed suddenly certain
grim lines which Coolidge had not noticed there before--lines written
by endurance, nothing less. But even as the patient looked the
physician's expression changed again. His sternly set lips relaxed into a
smile, he pointed to a motioning porter.
"Time to be off, Cooly," he said. "Mind you let me know how--you are.
Good luck--the best of it!"
* * * * *
In the train Coolidge had no sooner settled himself than he read Burns's
prescription. He had a feeling that it would be different from other
prescriptions, and so it proved:
Rx
Walk five miles every evening.
Drink no sort of stimulant, except one cup of coffee at breakfast.
Begin to make plans for the cottage. Don't let it turn out a palace.
Ask the good Lord every night to keep you from being a proud fool.
BURNS.
CHAPTER II
LITTLE HUNGARY
"Not hungry, Red? After all that cold drive to-day? Would you like to
have Cynthia make you something special, dear?"
R.P. Burns, M.D., shook his head. "No, thanks." He straightened in his
chair, where he sat at the dinner table opposite his wife. He took up his

knife and fork again and ate valiantly a mouthful or two of the tempting
food upon his plate, then he laid the implements down decisively. He
put his elbow on the table and leaned his head upon his hand. "I'm just
too blamed tired to eat, that's all," he said.
"Then don't try. I'm quite through, too. Come in the living room and lie
down a little. It's such a stormy night there may be nobody in."
Ellen slipped her hand through his arm and led the way to the big blue
couch facing the fireplace. He dropped upon it with a sigh of fatigue.
His wife sat down beside him and began to pass her fingers lightly
through his heavy hair, with the touch which usually soothed him into
slumber if no interruptions came to summon him. But to-night her
ministrations seemed to have little effect, for he lay staring at a certain
picture on the wall with eyes which evidently saw beyond it into some
trying memory.
"Is the whole world lying heavy on your shoulders to-night, Red?"
Ellen asked presently, knowing that sometimes speech proved a relief
from thought.
He nodded. "The whole world--millions of tons of it. It's just because
I'm tired. There's no real reason why I should take this day's work
harder than usual--except that I lost the Anderson case this morning.
Poor start for the day, eh?"
"But you knew you must lose it. Nobody could have saved that poor
creature."
"I suppose not. But I wanted to save him just the same. You see, he
particularly wanted to live, and he had pinned his whole faith to