Red Pepper's Patients Part 8

"But I can't possibly--"

"I said they were my orders," repeated Burns. "But that was a misstatement. They're the orders of some one else, more powerful than I am under this roof--and that's saying something, I a.s.sure you. I think you'll have to meet my wife. She's come on purpose to see you. She was away when you were at the office."

He beckoned, and another figure moved quietly into range of the brown eyes which were smoldering with the first advances of the fever. This figure came around to the other side of the narrow high bed and sat down beside it. Miss Linton looked into the face, as it seemed to her, of one of the most attractive women she had ever seen. It was a face which looked down at her with the sweetest sympathy in its expression, and yet with that same high cheer which was in the face of the man on the other side of the bed.

"My dear little girl," said a low, rich voice, "this is my room, and I often have the pleasure of seeing my special friends use it. And I come to see them here. When you are getting well, as you will be by and by, I can have much nicer talks with you than if you were in a ward. Now that you understand, you will let me have my way?".

The burning brown eyes looked into the soft black ones for a full minute, then, with a long-drawn breath, the tense expression in the stranger's relaxed. "I see," said the weary voice. "You are used to having your way--just as he is. I'll have to let you because I haven't any strength left to fight with. You are wonderfully kind. But--I'm not a little girl."

Ellen Burns smiled. "We'll play you are, for a while," she said. "And--I want you to know that, little or big, you are my friend. So now you have both Doctor Burns and me, and you are not alone any more."

The heavy lashes closed over the brown eyes, and the lids were held tightly shut as if to keep tears back. Seeing this, Ellen rose.

"Red," she said, "are you going to let us have Miss Arden?"

"Won't anybody else do?"

"Do you need her badly somewhere else?"

"If there were ten of her I could use them all!" declared her husband emphatically.

"Nevertheless--"

Red Pepper Burns got up. He summoned a nurse waiting just outside the door. "Please send Miss Arden here for a minute," he requested. Then he turned back. "Are you satisfied with your power?" he asked his wife.

She nodded. "Quite. But I think you feel, as I do, that this is one of the ten places where she will be better than another."

"She's a wonder, all right."

The patient in the bed presently was bidden to look at her new nurse, one who was to take care of her much of the time. She lifted her heavy eyes unwillingly, then she drew another deep breath of relief. "I would rather have you," she murmured to the serene brow, the kind eyes, the gently smiling lips of the girl who stood beside her.

"There's a tribute," laughed Burns softly. "They all feel like that when they look at you, Selina. And what Mrs. Burns wants she usually gets.

You may special this case to-night, if you are ready to begin night duty again."

"I am quite ready," said Miss Arden.

Burns turned to the bed again. "You are in the best hands we have to give you," he said. "You are to trust everything to those hands.

Good-night. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good-night, dear," whispered Mrs. Burns, bending for an instant over the bed.

"Oh you angels!" murmured the girl as they left her, her eyes following them.

It was ten days later, in the middle of a wonderful night in early May, that Miss Arden, beginning to be sure that the case which had interested her so much was going to give her a hard time before it should be through, listened to words which roused in her deeper wonder than she had yet felt for the most unusual patient she had had in a long time.

Although there was as yet nothing that could be called real delirium, a tendency to talk in a light-headed sort of way was becoming noticeable.

Sitting by the window, the one light in the room deeply shaded, she heard the voice suddenly say:

"This evens things up a little, doesn't it? I know a little more about it now--you must realize that, if you are keeping track of me--and I know you are--you would--even from another world. Things aren't fair--they aren't. That you should have to suffer all you did, to bring you to that pa.s.s--while I--But I know a good deal about it now--really I do. And I'm going to know more. I didn't sell a single book to-day. You had lots of such days, didn't you?

Poor--pale--tired--heartsick--heartbroken girl!"

A little mirthless laugh sounded from the bed. "I wonder how many people ever let a person who is selling something at the door get into the house. And if they let her in, do they ever, _ever_ ask her to sit down?

The places where I've stood, telling them about the book, while they were telling me they didn't want it--stood and stood--and stood--with great easy chairs in sight! Oh, that chair in my doctor's office--it was the first chair I'd sat in that whole morning. I went to sleep in it, I think."

There followed a long silence, as if the thought of sleep had brought it on. But then the rambling talk began again.

"His hair is red--red, like mine. I think that's why his heart is so warm. Yet her heart is warm, too, and her hair is almost black. The other man's hair was pretty dark, too, and his heart seemed--well, not exactly cold. Did he send me some daffodils the other day? I can't seem to remember. It seems as if I had seen some--pretty things--lovely, springy things.

Perhaps Mrs.--the red-headed doctor's wife--queer I can't think of their names--perhaps she sent them. It would be like her."

The nurse's glance wandered, in the faint light, to where a great jar of daffodils stood upon the farther window sill, their heads nodding faintly in the night breeze. Jordan King's card, which had come with them, was tucked away in a drawer near by with two other cards, bearing the same name, which had accompanied other flowers. Miss Arden doubted if her patient realized who had sent any of them. Afterward--if there was to be an afterward--she would show the cards to her. Miss Arden, like many other people, knew Jordan King by reputation, for the family was an old and established one in the city, and the early success of the youngest son in a line not often taken up by the sons of such families was noteworthy. Also he was good to look at, and Miss Arden, experienced nurse though she was and devoted to her profession, had not lost her appreciation of youth and health and good looks in those who were not her patients.

Unexpectedly, at this hour of the night--it was well toward one o'clock--the door suddenly opened very quietly and a familiar big figure entered. Springing up to meet Doctor Burns, Miss Arden showed no surprise. It was a common thing for this man, summoned to the hospital at unholy hours for some critical case, to take time to look in on another patient not technically in need of him.

The head on the pillow turned at the slight sound beside it. Two wide eyes stared up at Burns. "You've made a mistake, I think," said the patient's voice, politely yet firmly. "My doctor has red hair. I know him by that. Your hair is black."

"I presume it is, in this light," responded Burns, sitting down by the bed. "It's pretty red, though, by daylight. In that case will you let me stay a minute?" His fingers pressed the pulse. Then his hand closed over hers with a quieting touch. "Since you're awake," he said, "you may as well have one extra bath to send you back to sleep."

The head on the pillow signified unwillingness. "I'd take one to please my red-headed doctor, but not you."

"You'd do anything for him, eh?" questioned Burns, his eyes on the chart which the nurse had brought him and upon which she was throwing the light of a small flash. "Well, you see he wants you to have this bath; he told me so."

"Very well, then," she said with a sigh. "But I don't like them. They make me s.h.i.+ver."

"I know it. But they're good for you. They keep your red-headed doctor master of the situation. You want him to be that, don't you?"

"He'd be that anyway," said she confidently.

Burns smiled, but the smile faded quickly. He gave a few brief directions, then slipped away as quietly as he had come.

It was well into the next week when one morning he encountered Jordan King, who had been out of town for several days. King came up to him eagerly. Since this meeting occurred just outside the hospital, where Burns's car had been standing in its accustomed place for the last hour, it might not have been a wholly accidental encounter.

King made no attempt to maneuver for information. Maneuvering with Red Pepper Burns, as the young man was well aware, seldom served any purpose but to subject the artful one to a straight exposure. He asked his question abruptly.

"I want to hear how Miss Linton is doing. I'm just back from Was.h.i.+ngton--haven't heard for a week."

Burns frowned. No physician likes to be questioned about his cases, particularly if they are not progressing to suit him. But he answered, in a sort of growl: "She's not doing."

King looked startled. "You mean--not doing well?"

"She's fighting for existence--and--slipping."

"But--you haven't given her up?"

Burns exploded with instant wrath. King might have known that question would make him explode. "Given her up! Don't you know a red-headed fiend like me better than that?"