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Page 72
"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
snatched 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
advertisements. 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 sunshine. 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."
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