"They might easily be mother and son," was the thought forced upon the spectator. His own cheek suddenly burned, in the shadow of the wistaria vines.

He listened abstractedly to the conclusion of the story: it must have been a charming tale, for the boy's cry of regret when it ended was eloquent. But the eavesdropper heard with full appreciation the richness of the low voice and could not wonder at Bob's delight in it. He watched with absorbed eyes the embrace exchanged between the two and, forgetting to be cautious, allowed his shifted foot to crunch the gravel under the window.

Quicker than thought the light went out. Burns made for the office door, consumed with eagerness to catch her before she could get away. But when he set foot upon the threshold of his room only the little figure, pulling itself again erect in the bed, met his eyes in the dim light issuing from the office, and otherwise the room was empty.

"n.o.body heard me cryin' but her," explained Bob to his questioning guardian. "Cynthia was all goned away and I heard the fiddles and they made me cry. She comed in and told me stories. I love her. But she wented awful quick out that way." He pointed toward a French window opening like a door upon the lawn. "I wish she didn't go so quick. She looked awful pretty, all white and shiny. She loves me, I think, don't you?"

"Of course, old man. That's your particular good luck--eh? Now lie down and go to sleep and tell me all about it in the morning."

"Aren't you going back to the party?" queried Bob anxiously.

"Hardly." Burns glanced humorously down at his attire. "But I'm not going to bed just yet, so shut your eyes. I'll not be far away."

The child obeyed. Exchanging the claw-hammer for his office coat, Burns went out by way of the French window to the rear of the house.

An hour afterward Arthur Chester, putting out lights, discovered from a back window a familiar figure at a familiar occupation. But at this hour of the night the sight struck him as so extraordinary that, curiosity afire, he hurriedly let himself out of the side door he had just locked, and crossed the lawn.

"In the name of all lunatics, Red, why sawing wood? It can't be ill temper at missing the show?"

In the August moonlight the figure straightened itself and laid down the saw. "Go to bed, and don't bother your addle pate about your neighbours.

Can't a man cut up a few sticks without your coming to investigate?"

"Saw a few more. You haven't got the full dose necessary yet," advised Chester, his hands in his pockets. "Want me to sit up with you till you work it all off?"

"It's beginning to look as if it wouldn't work off," muttered R. P.

Burns.

"Must be a worse attack than usual. How long have you been at it?"

"Don't know."

"Sawed that whole heap at the side there?"

"Suppose so."

"Lost a patient?"

"No."

"Blow out a tire?"

"No."

"Bad news of any sort?"

"No. Go to bed."

"I feel I oughtn't to leave you," persisted Chester. "Don't you think it might ease your mind to tell me about it?"

Burns came at him with the saw, and Chester fled. Burns went back to his woodpile, marshalled the sawed sticks into orderly ranks, then stood still once more and once more looked up at the stars.

"If an hour of that on a night like this won't take the nonsense out of me," he solemnly explained to a bright particular planet now low in the heavens, "I must be past help. But I'll be--drawn and quartered if I'll give in. Haven't I had knockouts enough to be able to keep my head this time? Red Pepper Burns, 'Remember the Maine' Now, go to bed yourself!"

CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH HE IS UNREASONABLY PREOCCUPIED

"Red Pepper Burns, put down that stuff and come over. It's nine o'clock, and Pauline goes tomorrow, as you very well know. And not only Paul, but Mrs. Lessing. Paul's persuaded her to start when she does, though she wasn't expecting to go for three days longer."

R. P. Burns looked up abstractedly. "Can't come now. I'm busy," he replied, and immediately became reabsorbed in the big book he was studying.

Chester gazed at him amazedly. He sat at the desk in the inner office, surrounded by books, medical magazines, foreign reviews in both French and German, as Chester discovered on approaching more closely, by loose anatomical plates, by sheets of paper covered with rough sketches of something it looked more like a snake in convulsions than anything else.

Evidently Burns was deep in some sort of professional research.

It was not that the sight was an unaccustomed one. There could be no question that R. P. Burns, M.D., was a close student; this was not the first nor the fortieth time that his friend had thus discovered him.

The view to be had from the point where Chester stood, of the small laboratory opening from this office, was also a familiar one. He could see steam arising from the sterilizer: he knew surgical instruments were boiling merrily away there. A table was littered with objects suggesting careful examination: a fine microscope in position; a centrifuge, Bunsen burners, test-tubes; elsewhere other apparatus of a description to make the uninitiated actively sympathetic with the presumable coming victim.

The point of the situation to Chester was that astonishing fact that Burns could hear unmoved of the immediate departure of Ellen Lessing.

He made up his mind that this scientific enthusiast could not have a.s.similated the dreadful news; he would try again.

"Red! Do you hear? She's going to-morrow--tomorrow!"

"Let her go. Don't bother me."

"I don't mean Pauline. Ellen's going, too."

Burns put up one sinewy hand and thrust it through his hair, which already stood on end. His collar was off and he wore a laboratory ap.r.o.n: his appearance was not prepossessing. He pulled a piece of paper toward him and began to make rapid lines. It was the snake again, in worse convulsions than before. Evidently he had not heard. Chester approached the desk.

"Red!" he shouted. "The patient isn't on the table yet: he won't die if you listen to me one minute. I want you to take this thing in. Mrs.

Lessing--"

Knocking the sketch to one side and precipitating three books and a ma.s.s of papers to the floor, Red stood up. He towered above his shrinking fiend, wrath in his eye. His lips moved. If it had been three months earlier Chester would have expected to hear language of a lurid description. As it was, the first syllable or two did slip out, but no more followed. Only speech--good, vigorous Saxon, not to be misunderstood.

"Will you try to get it into your brain that I don't care a hang who goes or where, so long as I figure out a way to do this trick? The other fellows all say it can't be done. Not one of 'em'll do it, not even Van Horn. I say it can, and I'm going to do it to-morrow morning at nine o'clock, if I can work out a tool to do it with and make it. And I can do that if idiots like you will get out and keep out."

He sat down and was instantly lost again in his effort at invention.

Chester looked at him in silence for a minute more, then he walked quietly out. Offended? Not he. He had not listened to invective from that Celtic tongue for eight years not to know that high tension over a coming critical operation almost invariably meant brilliant success.

But even he had never seen Red Pepper keyed up quite so taut as this. It must be a tremendous risk he meant to take. Success to him--the queer, fine old boy!

"He may be over later when he gets that confounded snake of an instrument figured out." Chester offered this to the group upon his porch as consolation.

"And if he doesn't get it figured out before we break up, he won't be over," prophesied Macauley. "Ten to one he forgets to come and say good-bye before he starts for the hospital in the morning."

"I'm going to be standing beside the driveway when he goes," vowed Pauline. "And if he doesn't notice me I'll climb on the car."

"Ellen, don't go to-morrow," whispered Martha Macauley to her sister.

"Don't let it end this way. When he comes to, you'll be gone, and that's such a pity just now."