impending orphan asylum, and now the happy ward of a guardianship as kind as an adoption. She had been somewhat anxious over the child's future status with her employer's wife, but was now quite satisfied that he was not to be kept at arm's length.
"Some would have put him off with me," she said to herself, as she returned to her kitchen, "though I didn't really think it of her that took so much notice of him before. She's a real lady, Mrs. Burns is—and prettier than ever since she married the Doctor, as why shouldn't she be, with him to look pretty for?"
Left alone Ellen looked about her. Yes, this was the room in which he had lived the sleeping portion of his bachelor's life, so long. It gave her an odd sense of what a change it was for him, this having a woman come into his life, share his privacy—he had so little privacy in his busy days and nights—and occupy this room of his, this big, square, old-fashioned room with its open windows, the one spot which had been his unassailable place of retreat. She felt almost as if she ought to go and find some other room at once, ought not to take even temporary possession of this, or strew about it her feminine belongings.
The room was somewhat sparsely furnished, containing but the necessary furniture; no draperies at the open windows, few articles on the high old mahogany bureau, an inadequate number of nearly threadbare rugs on the waxed floor, and but three pictures on the walls. She studied these pictures, one after another. One was a little framed photograph of Burns's father and mother, taken sitting together on their vine-covered porch. One was a colour drawing of a scene in Edinburgh, showing a view of Princes Street and the Castle—one which must have become familiar to him from a residence of some length during the period of his studies abroad. The third picture—it surprised and touched her not a little to find it here—was a fine copy of a famous painting, showing the Christ bending above the couch of a sick man and extending to him his healing touch. The face was one of the best modern conceptions of the Divine personality. She realized that the picture might have meant much to him.
She could hear his voice, as she set about her dressing. He was in his private office, talking with a patient whose deafness caused him to raise his own tones considerably; the closed door between could not keep out all the sound. She felt her invasion of his life more keenly than ever as she realized afresh how close to him her own life was to be lived. Marrying a village doctor, whose home contained also his place of business, was a very different matter from marrying a city physician with a downtown office and a home into which only the telephone ever brought the voice of a patient. It was to be a new and strange experience for them both.
She sat before the dressing-table, having slipped into a little lilac and white negligée. The half-curling masses of her black hair covered her shoulders as she brushed them out—slowly, because she was thinking so busily about it all, and had forgotten to make haste. Suddenly the door leading into the office flew open—and closed as quickly. Steps behind her, pausing, made her turn, to meet her husband's eyes.
He came close. An unmistakably "doctorish" odour accompanied him—an odour not disagreeable but associated with modern means for securing perfect cleanliness. He wore his white jacket, fresh from Cynthia's painstaking hands. His eyes were very bright, his lips were smiling.
His arms came about her from behind, his head against hers gently forced it back to face the mirror. In it the two pairs of eyes met again, hazel and black.
"To think that I should see that reflected from my old glass!" whispered Red Pepper Burns.
CHAPTER II
THE WAY TO ATTAIN AN END
Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns stood in the doorway of her living-room and studied it with a critical eye. Within the room, on either side, stood her sister Martha, Mrs. James Macauley, and her friend Winifred, Mrs. Arthur Chester. In precisely these same relative positions were they also her neighbours as to their own homes. Their husbands were Red Pepper's best friends, outside those of his own profession. It was appropriate that they should have stood by her during the period of fitting and furnishing that part of the old house which her husband had termed her "quarters."
"It's the loveliest room in this town," declared Winifred Chester, "and I'm going to have all I can do not to be envious."
"I doubt if very many people in this little town will think it the loveliest," said Ellen's sister. "Its browns and blues will be too dull for them, and Ellen's old Turkey carpet too different from their polished floors and 'antique' rugs. By the way, Ellen, how old do you suppose that carpet is, anyhow?"
"It's been on Aunt Lucy's floors since before the Civil War. Isn't it beautifully faded?—it furnishes the keynote of the whole room. Isn't it fortunate that the room should be so long and low, instead of high and square? Is it a restful room, girls? That's what I'm after."
"Restful!" Mrs. Chester clasped her hands in a speaking gesture. "Red will forget every care, the minute he steps into it. When are you going to show it to him?"
"To-night, when the fire is lighted and evening office-hours are over. If he hadn't been so busy it would have been hard to keep him away, but he hasn't had an hour to spare even for guessing what I've been doing."
"I hope he'll have an hour to spare, to stay in it with you. How you both will hate the sound of the office-bell and the telephones!"
"I'm going to try hard not to, but I suppose I shall dread them, in spite of myself," Ellen owned.
"This great couch, facing the fire, with all these lovely blue silk pillows, is certainly the most comfortable looking thing I ever saw," sighed Winifred Chester, casting her plump little figure into the davenport's roomy depths and clasping her hands under her head in an attitude of repose.
"If Red doesn't send out word that he's not at home and can't be found, when a call finds him stretched out here, he's a stronger character than I think him."
"Now let's go up and look at the guest-rooms." Ellen led the way, an engaging figure in a fresh white morning dress, her cheeks glowing with colour like a girl's.
"If you didn't know, would you ever dream she had been wife and widow, and had lost her little son?" murmured Winifred in Martha's ear.
Martha Macauley shook her head. "She seems to have gone back and begun all over again. Yet there's a look—"
Winifred nodded. "Of course there is—a look she wouldn't have had if she hadn't gone through so much. It's given her such a rich sort of bloom."
The guest-rooms were airy, attractive, chintz-hung rooms, one large, one somewhat smaller, but both wearing a hospitable look of readiness.
"I like the gray-and-rose room best," announced Winifred, after a critical survey, as if she were inspecting both rooms for the first time instead of the fortieth. She had made the gray-and-rose chintz hangings herself, delighting in each exquisite yard of the fine imported material.
"I prefer the green-leaf pattern, it looks so cool and fresh." Martha eyed details admiringly. "This is your bachelor's room, you say, Ellen? Oh, you've put a desk in it! The bachelor will want to stay forever. Who do you suppose he will be?"
"The first friend of Red's who comes. He says he's
