Red Pepper's Patients Part 14

He gazed at them approvingly. "They're the jolliest I ever saw; the youngsters will be crazy over them. For a convalescent it strikes me Miss Linton has been the busiest known to the hospital."

"You, yourself, have kept me rather busy, Mr. King," the girl observed.

"So I have. I'm wondering what I'm to do when you are at Doctor Burns's and I at home."

She smiled. "I shall be there only a week if I keep on gaining as fast as I am now."

"A fortnight," interpolated Mrs. Burns, "is the earliest possible date of your leaving us. And not then unless we think you fit."

"Did you ever know of such kindness?" Anne Linton asked softly of King.

"To a perfect stranger?"

He nodded. "Nothing you could tell me of their kindness could surprise me. About that fortnight--would it be asking a great deal of you to keep on sending me that daily note?"

"Isn't there a telephone in your own room at home?" she asked.

"Yes--how did you know?"

"I guessed it. Wouldn't a little telephone talk do quite as well--or better--than a letter?"

"It would be very nice," admitted King. "But I should hate to do without the letter. The days are each a month long at present, you know, and each hour is equal to twenty-four. Make it a letter, too, will you, please?"

Miss Linton looked at Mrs. Burns. "Do you think circ.u.mstances still alter cases?" she inquired.

Her profile, as King caught it again, struck him as a perfect outline.

To think of this girl starting out again, travelling alone, selling books from door to door!

"I think you will be quite warranted in being very good to Mr.

King--while his hours drag as he describes," Ellen a.s.sented cordially.

"As soon as I can sit up at any sort of decent angle I can do a lot of work on paper," King a.s.serted. "Then I'll make the time fly.

Meanwhile--it's all right."

They talked together for a little, then King sent for Franz, who came and played superbly, his eager eyes oftenest on Jordan King, like those of an adoring and highly intelligent dog. Anne watched Franz, and King watched Anne. Mrs. Burns, seeming to watch n.o.body, noted with affectionate and somewhat concerned interest the apparent trend of the whole situation. She could not help thinking, rather dubiously, of Mrs.

Alexander King, Jordan's mother.

And, as things happen, it was just as Franz laid down his bow, after a brilliant rendering of a great concerto, that Mrs. Alexander King came in. She entered noiselessly, a slender, tall, black-veiled figure, as scrupulously attired in her conventional deep mourning as if it were not hot June weather, when some lightening of her sombre garb would have seemed not only rational but kind to those who must observe her.

"Oh, mother!" King exclaimed. "In all this heat? I didn't expect you.

I'm afraid you ought not to have come."

She bent over him. "The heat has nothing to do with my feelings toward my son. I couldn't neglect you, dear."

She greeted Ellen cordially, who presented Miss Linton. King lost nothing of his mother's polite scrutiny of the girl, who bore it without the slightest sign of recognizing it beyond the lowering of her lashes after the first long look of the tall lady had continued a trifle beyond the usual limit. Book agent though she might be, Miss Linton's manner was faultless, a fact King noted with curious pride in his new friend--whom, though he himself was meeting her for but the second time, he somehow wanted to stand any social test which might be put upon her.

And he well knew that his lady mother could apply such tests if anybody could.

In his heart he was saying that it seemed hard luck, he must say good-bye to Anne Linton in that mother's presence. There was small chance to make it a leave-taking of even ordinary good fellowship beneath that dignified, quietly appraising eye, to say nothing of endowing it with a quality which should in some measure compensate for the fact that it might be a parting for a long time to come. However much or little the exchange of notes during these last weeks might have come to mean to Jordan King, aside from the diversion they had offered to one sorely oppressed of mind and body, he resented being now forced to those restrained phrases of farewell which he well knew were the only ones that would commend him to his mother's approval.

Mrs. Burns and Miss Linton rose to go, summoned by Red Pepper himself, who was to take them. In the momentary surge of greeting and small talk which ensued, King surrept.i.tiously beckoned Anne near. He looked up with the direct gaze of the man who intends to make the most of the little that Fate sends him.

"Letters are interesting things, aren't they?" he asked.

"Very. And when they are written by a man lying on his back, who doesn't know when he is down, they are stimulating things," she answered; and there was that in the low tone of her voice and the look of her eyes which was as if she had pinned a medal for gallantry on the breast of the black silk robe.

Mrs. Alexander King looked at her son--and moved nearer. She addressed Anne. "I am more than glad to see, Miss Linton," said she, "that you are fully recovered. Please let me wish you much success in your work. I suppose we shall not see you again after you leave Mrs. Burns."

"No, Mrs. King," responded Anne's voice composedly. "Thank you for that very kind wish."

She turned to the prostrate one once more. She put her hand in his, and he held it fast for an instant, and, in spite of his mother's gaze, it was an appreciable instant longer than formality called for.

"I shall hope to see you again," he said distinctly, and the usual phrase acquired a meaning it does not always possess.

Then they were gone, and he had only the remembrance of Anne's parting look, veiled and maidenly, but the comprehending look of a real friend none the less.

"My dear boy, you must be quite worn out with all this company in this exhausting weather," murmured Mrs. King, laying a cool hand on a decidedly hot brow.

The brow moved beneath her hand, on account of a contraction of the smooth forehead, as if with pain. "I really hadn't noticed the weather, mother," replied her son's voice with some constraint in it.

"You must rest now, dear. People who are perfectly well themselves are often most inconsiderate of an invalid, quite without intention, of course."

"If I never receive any less consideration than I have had here, I shall do very well for the rest of my life."

"I know; they have all been very kind. But I shall be so relieved when I can have you at home, where you will not feel obliged to have other patients on your mind. In your condition it is too much to expect."

Jordan King was a good son, and he loved his mother deeply. But there were moments when, as now, if he could have laid a kind but firm hand upon her handsome, emotional mouth, he would have been delighted to do so.

CHAPTER VIII

EXPERT DIAGNOSIS

"What would you give for a drive with me this morning?" Burns surveyed his patient, now dressed and downstairs upon a pillared rear porch, wistfulness in his eyes but determination on his lips.

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes. We may as well try what that back will stand. Most of the drive will be sitting still in front of houses, anyhow, and in your plaster jacket you're pretty safe from injury."

"Thank heaven!" murmured Jordan King fervently.

Two minutes later he was beside Burns in the Doctor's car, staring eagerly ahead, lifting his hat now and then as some one gave him interested greeting from pa.s.sing motor. More than once Burns was obliged to bring his car to a short standstill, so that some delighted friend might grasp King's hand and tell him how good it seemed to see him out.

With one and all the young man was very blithe, though he let them do most of the talking. They all told him heartily that he was looking wonderfully well, while they ignored with the understanding of the intelligent certain signs which spoke of physical and mental strain.

"Your friends," Burns remarked as they went on after one particularly pleasant encounter, "seem to belong to the cla.s.s who possess brains. I wish it were a larger cla.s.s. Every day I find some patient suffering from depression caused by fool comments from some well-meaning acquaintance."

"I've had a few of those, too," King acknowledged.