Mrs. Red Pepper Part 26

"I'm delighted to ride, Dr. Burns," replied Charlotte Ruston.

"Captivating roadside views enticed me much farther than I intended, and the camera weighs twice what it did when I started."

"Jump in, then, and let me give you a piece of good news I'm bursting with," and Burns held out his hand for the camera. "You're getting a beautiful sunburn on that right cheek," he commented.

"I'll burn the left to match it, if you won't drive too fast. You'll have to go a little slower while you talk. I've noticed you're always silent when you're scorching along the road."

"So I am, I believe. Well, I'm not going to be silent now. I've just come from seeing Jamie Ferguson put on the road to future health and happiness, the good Lord willing--and I've a notion He is."

"Jamie--the little cripple who lies on his back?"

"The same. He'll lie on his back some time longer and then, I think, he'll get up."

"You operated on him to-day? How glad I am!"

"No, I didn't operate. It took a better man than I. I've never done this particular stunt, and Jamie was not a patient for experiment. Jack Leaver did the trick, and a finished trick it was, too. I'm so full of enthusiasm over his performance that I'm bursting with it, as I warned you."

Charlotte Ruston had turned suddenly to face him. As he looked at her, with this announcement, he had a view of lovely, startled eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked, wondering. He had to look ahead at the road, but he cut down on the Imp's speed, so that he could spare a glance at his companion again. "You look as if I'd given you bad news instead of good."

"Oh, no!--oh, no!" she said, in odd, short breaths. "It's great--wonderful! Poor little fellow! I'm very glad. You said--Dr.

Leaver did it? I was simply--surprised."

"Did it brilliantly. But there's no occasion for surprise about that.

Having been in Baltimore as much as you have, you must know his position there. There's n.o.body with a bigger reputation."

"But I thought he had been--ill?"

"Tired out. Small wonder, at the pace he was going--the working pace, I mean. He never let up on himself. I got him here to rest up. He would have been off long ago if I would have given him leave, but I had his promise to keep away from work till he was thoroughly fit for it, so I've made the most of my chance. I shall never get another. If I know him he'll be back in his office before the week ends. Once give a chap like him a taste of work after idleness, and there's no use trying to hold him."

"You think him fully fit, now?"

"Never so fit in his life, if I'm any judge. I've seen him at work many a time, and I never saw finer methods than his to-day, his own or any man's--and I've watched some pretty smooth things. By the way, I understand you had met Dr. Leaver before you met him here?"

"Yes, I had met him."

Burns was not possessed of more than the ordinary amount of curiosity concerning other people's affairs, but he was accustomed to observe human nature and note its signs, and it struck him now rather suddenly that both John Leaver and Charlotte Ruston had seemed rather more than necessarily non-committal concerning an acquaintance which both admitted.

He saw no reason why he should not ask a question or two. Asking questions was a part of his profession.

"I hope you've managed to coax him before your camera. He's looking so well now, I'd like a picture of him before he goes back and works himself down again."

"You might suggest it to him," said Miss Ruston. She was looking straight ahead. She wore a hat of white linen, of a picturesque shape, such as are in vogue in the country in warm weather, and it drooped more or less about her face. Burns could not see her eyes when she looked forward, but he could see her mouth. It was an expressive mouth, and it looked particularly expressive just now. The trouble was that he could not tell just what it expressed.

"I'll do it, this afternoon, and keep it as a reminder of a patient of whom I think a heap. No, I can't do it this afternoon, either, for he won't leave Jamie till he can leave him comfortably over the first stage.

But by to-morrow afternoon, perhaps. We'll have to catch him on the fly, for I'm confident he'll be off the minute the youngster is out of danger.

Well, I hope you know my friend well enough to appreciate that he's about the finest there is anywhere?"

"I'm beginning to know _you_ well enough, Dr. Burns, to see that you care more to have your friends appreciated than to win praise yourself."

"No, no--oh, Cesar, no! I've not reached such a sublime height of altruism as that. To tell you the honest truth--which is supposed to be good for the soul--I'm horribly envious of Jack Leaver for having done that stunt this morning."

"Envious? Of course you are. At the same time would you have taken it away from him and have done it yourself, if you had had the chance?"

"Trust a woman to confront a man with the unthinkable, and then expect him to take credit for not having been guilty of it! Would I have s.n.a.t.c.hed a juicy bone away from a starving lion? That's what Leaver has been all these months. It's what any man gets to be when his job is taken away from him and he doesn't know when he will get another. No--at the same time that I'm envious I'm genuinely happy that the lion got his bone. He needed it. It's going to make a well lion of him; he is one now.

You're glad, too, aren't you?"

He gave her one of his quick, discerning glances.

"Of course I am." She spoke quite heartily enough to satisfy him.

"Good! Then, if I can wheedle him before the camera, you'll be interested in making a picture of him that Ellen and I shall want to frame and look at every day?"

"I will give you my amateur's best, certainly, Dr. Burns."

"Prunes and prisms!" he exclaimed, and broke into a laugh. "I didn't expect that, from a girl like you. I should have expected you to--well, never mind. I was on the verge of being impertinent, I'm afraid. Forgive me, will you, for what I might have said? I'll bring him over at the first opportunity."

CHAPTER XIV

BEFORE THE LENS

"Red, this is certainly the unkindest cut of all! I haven't minded your other prescriptions, but to insist on giving a well man the worst dose of his experience to take--"

"Stuff and nonsense! A bad prescription--to go across the street and let the prettiest photographer in the United States take a sun picture of you before you leave town? Besides, you owe it to us. I haven't the smallest kind of a likeness of you. I want a nice big one, to use in my advertis.e.m.e.nts. I only wish I had a picture of you 'as you were,' to put beside the 'as you are.' It would be telling. 'The great Burns's greatest cure. The celebrated Leaver of Baltimore as he was when Burns finished with him.' I'll send you a dozen copies of the paper."

"Please, Dr. Leaver." Mrs. Red Pepper Burns added her plea. "Red really wants it very much, and so do I. You admit you have no photograph to send us, and we know quite well you won't go and have one made by Mr. Brant, as you should. So please let Miss Ruston try her art. We think you owe it to us."

Leaver looked at her, and his determined lips relaxed into a smile.

"I admit that argument tells, Mrs. Burns," he said. "I suppose it is ungracious of me, but, to tell the truth, I've always preferred to be able to say I had no portraits of myself."

"Oh, I see," Burns broke in. "We're not considering, Ellen, the urgent demands for a popular bachelor surgeon's photograph. It's precisely like Jack not to hand them out to the ladies, or to the newspaper men. All right, old chap. Give us what we want and we'll have the plate smashed.

Now will you be good? Come, let's go over. If you really mean to leave to-night this is our last chance."

The two men crossed the street, in the mellow September suns.h.i.+ne. Burns preceded Leaver and knocked at the door.

"Will you take a shot at my friend before he goes?" Burns asked Charlotte. "He hates standing up to be shot at, but I have him primed for the ordeal."

"Must it be a shot, or may I make a portrait?" asked the photographer, in her professional manner.

"I want a portrait," replied Burns, promptly. "Your best indoor work--Brant and the Misses Kendall put on their mettle to rival it."

While Charlotte was absent, making ready her plates, her visitors waited in the little living-room and looked about it. Its walls were now possessed of many interesting photographs of people in the village, among them several of Burns himself, at which he gazed with a quizzical expression.

"She certainly succeeds in making a hero of me, doesn't she?" he observed. "Red hair turns dusky before the camera, luckily for me. I look as if there wasn't much of anything I couldn't do, including playing leading man in a melodrama--eh?"

"She has caught the personality, cleverly enough," Leaver commented, looking over Burns's shoulder.