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Page 42
"If you are thinking of bringing _this_ old lady here," said he,
emphatically, his eyes on the picture again, "you must let me look the
place over thoroughly for you first."
"But I've engaged it!" cried his wife's friend, in dismay.
"That doesn't matter. You will call it all off again, if I don't find
the place can be made fit," said he. "Old ladies like this shall not
be risked in doubtful places, no matter how quaint and artistic the
background, not while I am on hand to prevent."
Miss Ruston looked at Mrs. Burns. "_Is_ this what he is like?" said she,
in dismay. "I didn't reckon with him!"
"You will have to reckon with me now," said Red Pepper Burns, with
coolness.
"But the owner says it can be made perfectly tight. And I have to go back
to-night!"
"The owner of a sieve would say it could be made perfectly tight--if
it was wanted for a dishpan. And you are at liberty to go back
to-night--much as we shall dislike to lose you. I will take time
to go over, right now, and make sure of this thing for you."
He rose as he spoke.
"Well, of all the positive gentlemen! Will you stay to look at one more?
It may soften that austere mood."
Miss Ruston gave him a third print. It was of a very beautiful woman
standing beside a window, the attitude apparently unstudied, the lighting
unusual and picturesque, the whole effect challenging all conventional
laws of photography.
"It's very nice--very nice," said Burns, indifferently. "But it's not in
it with the old lady by the fire. I'll run across and make sure of her
quarters, if you please."
"That will be wonderfully good of you," and the guest looked after her
host, dubiously, as he went out.
"Does one have to do everything he says, in these parts?" she inquired,
glancing from Mrs. Burns to Miss Mathewson, both of whom were smiling.
Her own expression was an odd mixture of interest and rebellion.
Miss Mathewson spoke first. "I have been his surgical assistant for more
than nine years," said she. "When I have ventured to depart from the line
he laid out for me I have--been very sorry, afterward."
"Did you ever venture to depart very far?"
"Do I look so meek?"
"You don't look meek at all, but you do look--conscientious." Miss Ruston
gave her a daring look.
Amy spoke with more spirit than the others had expected. "If I were not
conscientious I couldn't work for Dr. Burns."
"He doesn't look conscientious, to me," declared Miss Ruston. "He looks
adventurous, audacious, unexpected."
"Perhaps he is. But he doesn't expect his assistant nurse to be
adventurous, audacious, or unexpected!"
"Good for you!" Miss Ruston was laughing, and looking with newly roused
interest at this young woman, whom she had perhaps taken to be of a
more commonplace type than her words now indicated. "As for my friend,
Mrs. Burns--he is her husband, and she must have known what he was like,
since I, in one short hour, have already discovered two or three of his
characteristics! Well, here's hoping he's on my side, when he comes back.
If he's not--"
But when he came back he was on her side, reluctantly convinced by a
painstaking examination of the possibilities in the old cottage, and by a
man-to-man talk with its owner as to his good faith in promising to carry
out the lessee's requirements.
"Though what in the name of time possesses a stunning girl like that to
come here and shut herself up in Aunt Selina's old rookery, I can't make
out," the landlord, Burns's neighbour, had confessed.
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