He crossed the room also and stood before her, his hands thrust into his pockets. "This is your room," he repeated. "It's easy enough to recognize it. It looks just like you. I've been uncomfortable about you downstairs, whenever I had to leave you. You'll be safe here, with every window wide open."
She looked up at him, mutely smiling, but something in her eyes told him that all was not yet said. Red Pepper leaned still lower and kissed her.
"It will be easy enough to have an extension of the telephone brought up here," he added—and found her arms about his neck. But she shook her head. "Don't settle it so quickly," she urged.
"You said there was another guest-room," he reminded her presently. "The bachelor's room. Is it next door?"
They went together to look at the bachelor's room. Burns surveyed it with satisfaction.
"The jolliest room for the purpose I ever saw," he confessed. "And I know the bachelor who will sleep in it. He's downstairs now, in the small room out of ours."
"Bob? Why, Red—"
"We'll have a door cut through. The telephones shall be in there, then they won't disturb you. They won't bother Bob a minute. And when I come in at 2 a.m. I can slip in here, shove the boy over against the wall, and be asleep in two minutes."
"Red! All my preparations for the bachelor! The desk—the reading-light by the bed—"
"They suit me admirably. I never saw a better arrangement. The two rooms together make a perfect suite—when the door is cut through."
"And where will you put our guests? There's only one more room on this floor, of any size."
"Let's go and see."
Catching up a brass candlestick from the bachelor's desk, Burns lit it and proceeded to explore, Ellen following. There were dancing lights in her eyes as she watched him.
"Here's your fourth room," said he, throwing open a door at the back of the hall.
"This box? It can't be made a really comfortable room, even if I do my best with it. Your bachelor will not stay long."
"Best not make him too comfortable. Nobody wants him to stay long." And Red Pepper closed the door again, with an air of having settled the matter to his entire satisfaction. "Besides," he added, "if he's really a desirable chap, and we want him around more than a day or two, he can bunk in my old room downstairs. When he's not there I'll use it for an annex to my offices. Somebody's always needing to be put to bed for an hour or two. Amy Mathewson will revel in that extra space. Her long suit is making people comfortable, and smoothing the upper sheet under their chins."
"Redfield Pepper, please consider this carefully," said his wife, as they returned to the gray-and-rose room. "Remember how long you have had that downstairs room—you are attached to it, perhaps, more than you think. You have been a bachelor yourself a good while—"
"And am supposed to be old and set in my ways," interpolated her listener. He stood before her with folded arms, a judicial expression on his brow. Beneath his coppery hair his black eyebrows drew together a little above a pair of hazel eyes which sparkled with a whimsical light which somewhat impaired the gravity of the expression.
"You are wonted to your ways—naturally," Ellen pursued. "It will not be so convenient for you, having your rooms up here. I am quite contented there, with you, and not in the least afraid with Cynthia sleeping down there too—and the little bachelor. Think twice, Red, before you decide on this arrangement."
He glanced at the wall between the two rooms. "Where would be a good place to have the door cut through? What's behind that curtain? A clothes-press?"
He advanced to the curtain and swept it aside. It hung in a doorway, and was of a heavy gray material, with an applied border of the gray-and-rose chintz. As he moved it light burst through from the other side of the wall, and Burns found himself looking into the "bachelor's room" next door.
He turned, with a shout of laughter. "You witch!" he cried, and returning to his wife laid a hand on either richly colouring cheek, gently forcing her face upward, so that he could look directly into it. "You meant it, all the while!"
"Don't be too sure of that. If this room looks like me, the one downstairs certainly looks like you. I don't want to take you out of your proper environment."
"My environment!" he repeated, and laughed. "What is it, now, do you think? Not bachelor apartments, still?"
But she persisted, gently. "Keep the downstairs room, dear, just as it is. Don't make it a public room, except for necessity. Sometimes you'll be glad to take refuge there, just as you're used to doing. Leave those three pictures on your walls, and look at them often, as you've always done. And be sure of this, Red: I shall never be hurt when you show me that you want to fight something out alone, there. It must be your own and private place, just as if I hadn't come."
Sober now, he stood looking straight down into her eyes, which gave him back his look as straightly. After a minute he spoke with feeling:
"Thank you, dearest. And bless you for understanding so well. At the same time I'm confident you understand one thing more: That by leaving a man his liberty you surely hold him tightest!"
CHAPTER III
BURNS DOES HIS DUTY
"Excuse me for coming in on you at breakfast," Martha Macauley, Ellen's sister and next-door neighbour, apologized, one morning in late May. "But I wanted to catch Red before he got away, and I saw, for a wonder, that there was no vehicle before the door."
"Come in, come in," urged Burns, while Ellen smiled a greeting at her sister, a round-faced, fair-haired, energetic young woman, as different as possible from Ellen's own type. "Have a chair." He rose to get it for her, napkin in hand. "Will you sit down and try one of Cynthia's magnificent muffins?"
"No, thank you. And I'll plunge into my errand, for I know at any minute you may jump up and run away. You may, anyway, when you hear what I want! Promise me, Red, that you won't go until you've heard me out."
"What a reputation I have for speed at escape!" But Burns glanced at his watch as he spoke. "Fire away, Martha. Five minutes you shall have—and I'm afraid no more. I'm due at the hospital in half an hour."
"Well, I want to give a reception for you." Martha took the plunge. "I know you hate them, but Ellen doesn't—at least, she knows such things are necessary, no matter how much you may wish they weren't. I don't mean a formal reception, of course. I know how you both feel about trying to ape city society customs, in a little suburban village like this. But I do think, since you had such a quiet wedding, you ought to give people a chance to come in and greet you, as a newly married pair."
Burns's eyes met his wife's across the table. There was a comical look of dismay in his face. "I thought," said he, "you and I agreed to cut out all that sort of thing. As for being a newly married pair—we aren't. We've
