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Page 99
"How well, how splendidly well, he looks!" Ellen agreed.
Then they were shaking hands with Dr. John Leaver and listening to his
hearty greeting:
"This is great of you two--great. We certainly appreciate it. Come, I'll
have you at home before you know it. Charlotte is waiting with the
warmest welcome you will find on this side of the Atlantic!"
He hurried them away, but not so fast that Red Pepper Burns did not find
time to chuckle: "The power of association is beginning to tell already,
Jack. That was the most impetuous speech I ever heard from your lips. I
don't call such language really restrained--not from you."
Leaver turned, laughing, to Ellen. "One would think I had been the most
solemn fellow known to history," said he.
In two minutes he had bestowed his guests in a small but luxuriously
appointed closed car, had given the word to his chauffeur, and had taken
his place facing them. Burns examined the landau's interior with
interest.
"The evidence of a slight but unmistakable odour tells me that this
is the jewel-box in which Baltimore's gem of a surgeon keeps his
appointments," said he. "Well, the Green Imp's beginning to show traces
of her age, but her successor will be no aristocrat of this type. I'd
rather drive myself and freeze my face to a granite image than be
transported in cotton-wool, like this."
Leaver and Ellen laughed at his expression.
"Of course you would," Leaver agreed. "And equally of course every friend
and patient of yours would grieve to see you shut up behind glass windows
with another hand on the steering-wheel. It's unthinkable and out of the
question for you, but for me--it's rather practical."
Burns nodded. "Saves time--and carries prestige. I understand. You city
fellows have to play to the galleries a bit, particularly when you've
reached the top-notch and people demand that you live up to it. It's all
right. But I should feel smothered. And as for letting any young man in
a livery manage my spark and throttle,--well, not for mine, as I have
already remarked."
Leaver looked at him as one man looks at another when he loves him better
than a brother. Then he put a question to Red Pepper's wife: "Can any one
wonder that there seems something missing in America when he spends the
winter in Germany?"
She shook her head. "I never mean to find out what America is like when
he is out of it," said she.
Burns regarded them both. "And I suppose you think you and Mrs. John
Leaver are just such another pair?" he said then, to his friend.
"Just such another," was the decided answer.
The car came to a standstill before a stately stone house, its walls
heavy with English ivy. In another minute the entrance doors were open,
and the party were inside. A radiant figure in white was clasping Ellen
Burns in eager arms, while a blithe voice cried:
"Oh, my dear, this is so good, so good of you! We couldn't be entirely
satisfied until we had seen you here!"
"Seeing _you_ here," declared Burns, shaking hands vigorously, when his
turn came, and regarding Charlotte with approving eyes, "reminds me of
one of Jack Leaver's favourite old maxims, which he used unsparingly
while he was chumming with me: 'A place for everything and everything in
its place.' The demonstration of that, raised to the nth power, is
certainly what I now see before me!"
Charlotte's glowing eyes met her husband's fixed upon her. She gave him
back his smile before she answered Burns:
"Thank you, Dr. Red Pepper. Your approval was all that was lacking."
"Didn't I cable my approval with a reckless disregard of expense?"
"Indeed you did. But you couldn't cable the italics that are in your
face--and it was the italics that we wanted!"
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