Red Pepper's Patients Part 7

"She'll walk out--but that and the walk in will be the last she'll take for some time. Talk as much as you like; it'll help her to forget that she's alone in the world at present except for us. Go out to your car; I'll send her out with Miss Mathewson."

Burns turned to his desk, and King obediently went out. Five minutes later, as he stood waiting beside his car, a fine but hard-used roadster of impressive lines and plenty of power, the office nurse and her patient emerged. King noted in some surprise the slender young figure, the interest-compelling face with its too vivid colour in cheeks that looked as if ordinarily they were white, the apparel which indicated lack of means, though the bearing of the wearer unmistakably suggested social training.

"I thought she'd be an elderly one somehow," he said in congratulation of himself. "Jolly, what hair! Poor little girl; she does look sick--but plucky. Hope I can get her in all right."

Outwardly he was the picture of respectful attention as Miss Mathewson presented him, calling the girl "Miss Linton," and bidding him wrap her warmly against the spring wind.

"I'll take the best care of her I know," he promised with a friendly smile. He tucked a warm rug around her, taking special pains with her small feet, whose well-chosen covering he did not fail to note. "All right?" he asked as he finished.

"Very comfortable, thank you. It's ever so kind of you."

"Glad to do anything for Doctor Burns," King responded, taking his place beside her. "Now shall we go fast or slow?"

"Just as you like, please. I don't feel very ill just now, and this air is so good on my face."

CHAPTER IV

TWO RED HEADS

Jordan King set his own speed in the powerful roadster, reflecting that Miss Linton, to judge from her worn black clothes, was probably not accustomed to motoring and so making the pace a moderate one. Fast or slow, it would not take long to cover the twelve miles over the macadamized road to the hospital in the city, and if it was to be her last bath in the good outdoors for some time, as the doctor had said--King drew a long breath, filling his own st.u.r.dy lungs with the balmy yet potent April air, feeling very sorry for the unknown little person by his side.

"Would you rather I didn't talk?" he inquired when a mile or two had been covered in silence.

She lifted her eyes to his, and for the first time he got a good look into them. They were very wonderful eyes, and none the less wonderful because of the fever which made them almost uncannily brilliant between their dark lashes.

"Oh, I wish you would talk, if you don't mind!" she answered--and he noted as he had at first how warmly pleasant were the tones of her voice, which was a bit deeper than one would have expected. "I've heard n.o.body talk for days--except to say they didn't care to buy my book."

"Your book? Have you written a book?"

"I'm selling one." This astonished him, but he did not let it show. It was certainly enough to make any girl ill to have to go about selling books. He wondered how it happened. She opened her handbag and took out the small book. "I don't want to sell you one," she said. "You wouldn't have any use for it. It's a little set of stories for children."

"But I do want to buy one," he protested. "I've a lot of nieces and nephews always coming at me for stories."

She shook her head. "You can't buy one. I'd like to give you one if you would take it, to show you how I appreciate this beautiful drive."

"Of course I'll take it," he said quickly, "and delighted at the chance." He slipped the book into his pocket. "As for the drive, it's much jollier not to be covering the ground alone. I wish, though--" and he stopped, feeling that he was probably going to say the wrong thing.

She seemed to know what it would have been. "You're sorry to be taking me to the hospital?" she suggested. "You needn't be. I didn't want to go, just at first, but then--I felt I could trust the Doctor. He was so kind, and his hair was so like mine, he seemed like a sort of big older brother."

"Red Pepper Burns seems like that to a lot of people, including myself.

I don't look like much of a candidate for illness, but I've had an accident or two, and he's pulled me through in great shape. You're right in trusting him and you can keep right on, to the last ditch--" He stopped short again, with an inward thrust at himself for being so blundering in his suggestions to this girl, who, for all he knew, might be on her way to that "last ditch" from which not even Burns could save her.

But the girl herself seemed to have paused at his first phrase. "What did you call the Doctor?" she asked, turning her eyes upon him again.

"What did I--oh! 'Red Pepper.' Yes--I've no business to call him that, of course, and I don't to his face, though his friends who are a bit older than I usually do, and people speak of him that way. It's his hair, of course--and--well, he has rather a quick temper. People with that coloured hair--But you're wrong in saying yours is like his," he added quickly.

For the first time he saw a smile touch her lips. "So he has a quick temper," she mused. "I'm glad of that--I have one myself. It goes with the hair surely enough."

"It goes with some other things," ventured Jordan King, determined, if he made any more mistakes, to make them on the side of encouragement.

"Pluck, and endurance, and keeping jolly when you don't feel so--if you don't mind my saying it."

"One has to have a few of those things to start out into the world with," said Miss Linton slowly, looking straight ahead again.

"One certainly does. Doctor Burns understands that as well as any man I know. And he likes to find those things in other people." Then with tales of some of the Doctor's experiences which young King had heard he beguiled the way; and by the time he had told Miss Linton a story or two about certain experiences of his own in the Rockies, the car was approaching the city. Presently they were drawing up before the group of wide-porched, long buildings, not unattractive in aspect, which formed the hospital known as the Good Samaritan.

"It's a pretty good place," announced King in a matter-of-fact way, though inwardly he was suffering a decided pang of sympathy for the young stranger he was to leave within its walls. "And the Doctor said he'd have some one meet us who knew all about you, so there'd be no fuss."

He leaped out and came around to her side. She began to thank him once more, but he cut her short. "I'm going in with you, if I may," he said.

"Something might go wrong about their understanding, and I could save you a bit of bother."

She made no objection, and he helped her out. He kept his hand under her arm as they went up the steps, and did not let her go until they were in a small reception room, where they were asked to wait for a minute. He realized now more than he had done before her weakness and the sense of loneliness that was upon her. He stood beside her, hat in hand, wishing he had some right to let her know more definitely than he had ventured to do how sorry he was for her, and how she could count on his thinking about her as a brother might while she was within these walls.

But Burns's message evidently had taken effect, as his messages usually did, for after a very brief wait two figures in uniform appeared, one showing the commanding presence of a person in authority, the other wearing the pleasantly efficient aspect of the active nurse. Miss Linton was to be taken to her room at once, the necessary procedure for admittance being attended to later.

Miss Linton seemed to know something about hospitals, for she offered instant remonstrance. "It's a mistake, I think," she said, lifting her head as if it were very heavy, but speaking firmly. "I prefer not to have a room. Please put me in your least expensive ward."

The person in authority smiled. "Doctor Burns said room," she returned.

"n.o.body here is accustomed to dispute Doctor Burns's orders."

"But I must dispute them," persisted the girl. "I am not--willing--to take a room."

"Don't concern yourself about that now," said the other. "You can settle it with the Doctor when he comes by and by."

Jordan King inwardly chuckled. "I wonder if it's going to be a case of two red heads," he said to himself. "I'll bet on R.P."

The nurse put her arm through Miss Linton's. "Come," she said gently.

"You ought not to be standing."

The girl turned to King, and put out her small hand in its mended glove.

He grasped it and dared to give it a strong pressure, and to say in a low tone: "It'll be all right, you know. Keep a stiff upper lip. We're not going to forget you." He very nearly said "I."

"Good-bye," she said. "I shall not forget how kind you've been."

Then she was gone through the big door, the tall nurse beside her supporting steps which seemed suddenly to falter, and King was staring after her, feeling his heart contract with sympathy.

Four hours later Anne Linton opened her eyes, after an interval of unconsciousness which had seemed to the nurse who looked in now and then less like a sleep than a stupor, to find a pair of broad shoulders within her immediate horizon, and to feel the same lightly firm pressure on her wrist that she had felt before that afternoon. She looked up slowly into Burns's eyes.

"Not so bad, is it?" said his low and rea.s.suring voice. "Bed more comfortable than doctor's office chairs? Won't mind if you don't ring any door bells to-morrow? Just let everything go and don't worry--and you'll be all right."

"This room--" began the weary young voice--she was really much more weary now that she had stopped trying to keep up than seemed at all reasonable--"I can't possibly--"

"It's just the place for you. Don't do any thinking on that point. You know you agreed to take my orders, and this is one of them."