Red Peppers Patients | Page 8

me. He
wouldn't give it up that I could do the miracle. It hurts to disappoint a
faith like that."
"Of course it does," she said gently. "But you must try to forget now,
Red, because of to-morrow. There will be people to-morrow who need
you as much as he did."

"That's just what I'd like to forget," he murmured. "Everything's gone
wrong to-day--it'll go worse to-morrow."
She knew it was small use to try to combat this mood, so unlike his
usual optimism, but frequent enough of occurrence to make her
understand that there is no depression like that of the habitually
buoyant, once it takes firm hold. She left him presently and went to sit
by the reading lamp, looking through current magazines in hope of
finding some article sufficiently attractive to capture his interest, and
divert his heavy thoughts. His eyes rested absently on her as she sat
there, a charming, comradely 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