blacks. Ain't used to comin' to the station at two o'clock in the mornin'. Your ma's been worryin' about your pa for a consid'able spell, and now that she's took down so severe herself he's gone to pieces some. Miss Ellen'll be glad to see you.”
The blacks covered the mile from the station as they had never covered it before, and Burns was in the house five minutes before they had expected him.
“Mother, here's your big boy.—Dad, here I am—here's Red. Bless your hearts—you wanted me, didn't you?”
They could hardly tell him how they had wanted him, but he saw it in their faces.
“I've got to take the four o'clock back—worse luck!—for some operations I can't postpone. But between now and then I'm going to look you over and set you straight, and I'll be back again in two days if you need me. Now for it. Mother first. Come here, Aunt Ellen, and tell me all about her.”
R. P. Burns, M.D., had never been quicker nor more thorough at examination of a pair of patients than with these. He went straight at them both, each in the presence of the other, Miss Mathewson capably assisting. With his most professional air he asked his questions, applied his trained senses to the searching tests made of special organs, and gave directions for future treatment. Then he sat back and looked at them.
“Do I appear worried about her, Dad?”
“Why, you don't seem to, Red.”
“Miss Mathewson, should you gather from my appearance that I am consumed with anxiety?”
“I think you seem very much relieved, Doctor Burns.”
“Mother, as you look at Dad over on the couch there, does he strike you as appearing like a frightfully sick man?”
Mrs. Burns smiled faintly in the direction of the couch, but her eyes came immediately back to her son's. “He seems a good deal better since you came, Redfield.”
“There's not a thing the matter with either of you except what can be fixed up in a week. You've got scared to death about each other, and that's pulled you both down. What you need more than anything else is to go to a circus—and, by George!—Since I didn't observe any tents in the darkness as we drove along, you shall have one come to you. Look here! Did you know I'd kept up my old athletic stunts these nine years since I left college?”
He pulled off his coat, waistcoat, collar, shoes, rolled his shirt-sleeves as high as they would go, and turned a series of handsprings across the wide room. Then he stood on his head; he balanced chairs on his chin; he seized his father's hickory stick and went through a set of military evolutions. Then he put on his shoes, eyeing his patients with satisfaction. His mother had lifted her head to watch him, and Miss Mathewson had tucked an extra pillow under it. His father had drawn himself up to a half-sitting posture and was regarding his son with pride.
“I never thought so well of those doings before,” he was saying. “If they've kept you as supple as a willow, in spite of your weight, I should say you'd better keep 'em up.”
“You bet I will!—See here, Aunt Ellen—you used to play the 'Irish Washerwoman: Mind playing it now? Miss Mathewson and I are going to do a cakewalk.”
He glanced, laughing, at his office nurse. She was staring at him wide-eyed. He threw back his head, showing a splendid array of white teeth as he roared at her expression.
“Forget 'Doctor Burns,' please,” said he, in answer to the expression. “He's discharged this case as not serious enough for him, and left it to Red Pepper to administer a few gentle stimulants on the quack order. Come! You can do a cake walk! Forget you're a graduate of any training school but the vaudeville show!”
He caught her hand. Flushing so that her plain face became almost pretty, she yielded—for the hand was insistent. Miss Ellen leaned bewildered against the door which led to the sitting-room where the old piano stood. Her nephew looked at her again, with the eyes which the Chesters' guest had somewhat incoherently described as “Irish-Scotch-barbarian.” He said, “Please, Aunt Ellen, there's a good fellow,” at which Mr. Burns, Senior, chuckled under his breath; for anything less like that of a “good fellow” was never seen than Sister Ellen's prim little personality. Miss Ellen went protestingly to the piano. Was it right, her manner said, to be performing in this idiotic manner at this unholy hour of three o'clock in the morning—in a sick-room?
It mattered little whether Miss Mathewson could or could not dance the “Irish Washerwoman,” or any other antic dance improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance was immediately and effectively produced. At the height of it, a door across the sitting-room, which commanded a strip of the bedroom beyond, opened cautiously and Zeke Crandall's eye glued itself to the aperture, an eye astonished beyond belief.
“If that there Red ain't a-cuttin' up jest exactly as he used to when he was a boy—and his pa and ma sick a-bed! If 'twas anybody but Red I'd say he was crazy.”
Then he caught the sound of a laugh from lips he had not heard laugh like that for a year—a chuckling, delighted laugh, only slightly asthmatic and wholly unrestrained. He began to laugh himself.
“If folks round here could see Red Burns now they'd never believe the stories about his gettin' to be such a darned successful man at his business,” he reflected. “Of all the goin's on! Look at him now! An' that nurse! An' Miss Ellen a-playin' for 'em! Oh, my eye!”
Songs followed—college songs, popular airs, opera bits—all delivered in' a resounding barytone and accompanied by thumping chords improvised by the performer. Out through the open windows they floated, and one astonished villages driving by to take the early train caught the exultant strains:
“Oh, see dat watermillion a-smilin' fro' de fence,
How I wish dat watermillion it was mine.
Oh, de white folks must be foolish,
Dey need a heap of sense,
Or dye'd nebber leave it dar upon de vine!
Oh, de ham-bone am sweet,
An' de bacon am good,
An' de 'possum fat am berry, berry fine;
But gib me, yes, gib me,
Oh, how I wish you would,
Dat watermillion growin' on de vine!”
Before they knew it the early morning light was creeping in at the small-paned windows. Burns consulted his watch.
“If you'll give us a cup of coffee, Aunt Ellen, we'll be off in fifteen minutes. Miss Mathewson”—his glance mirthfully surveyed her—“Aunt Ellen will take you upstairs and give you a chance to put that magnificent brown hair into a condition where it will not shock the natives at the station. As for mine—”
When Aunt Ellen and Miss Mathewson, each in her own way feeling as if she had passed through an extraordinary experience likely never to occur again, had hurried away, Burns applied himself to a process of reconstruction. When every rebellious red hair had been reduced to its usual order and his thick locks lay with the little wave in them as his mother had begun to brush them years ago; when collar and cravat rose sedately above the gray tweed coat, and a
