Ellen stood looking at the pair—­her brawny husband, himself “completely done” an hour before, now sitting on the edge of the couch with his new patient’s hand in his, his face wearing an expression of keen interest, not a sign of fatigue in his manner; the exhausted young foreigner in his ragged clothing lying on the luxurious couch, his pale face standing out like a fine cameo against the blue velvet of the pillow under his dark head.  If a thought of possible contamination for her home’s belongings entered her mind it found no lodgment there, so pitiful was her heart.

“Is the room ready upstairs?” Burns asked presently, when he had again noted the feeble action of the pulse under his fingers.  “What he needs is rest and sleep, and plenty of both.  Like the most of us he’s kept up while he had to, and now he’s gone to pieces absolutely.  To-morrow we can send him to the hospital, perhaps, but for to-night—­”

“The room is ready.  I sent Cynthia up at once.”

“Bless you, you never fail me, do you?  Well—­we may as well be on our way.  He’s nearly asleep now.”

Burns stood up, throwing off his coat.  But Ellen remonstrated.

“Dear, you are so tired to-night.  Let me call Jim over to help you carry him up.”

A derisive laugh answered her.  “Great Caesar, Len!  The chap’s a mere bag of bones—­and if he were twice as heavy he’d be no weight for me.  Jim Macauley would howl at the idea, and no wonder.  Go ahead and open the doors, please, and I’ll have him up in a jiffy.”

He stooped over the couch, swung the slender figure up into his powerful arms, speaking reassuringly to the eyes which slowly opened in half-stupefied alarm.  “It’s all right, little Hungary.  We’re going to put you to bed, like the small lost boy you are.  Bring his fiddle, Len—­he won’t want that out of his sight.”

He strode away with his burden, and marched up the stairs as if he were carrying his own two-year-old son.  Arrived in the small, comfortable little room at the back of the house he laid his charge on the bed, and stood looking down at him.

“Len, I’ll have to go the whole figure,” he said—­and said it not as if the task he was about to impose upon himself were one that irked him.  “Get me hot water and soap and towels, will you?  And an old pair of pajamas.  I can’t put him to bed in his rags.”

“Shall I send for Amy?” questioned his wife, quite as if she understood the uselessness of remonstrance.

“Not much.  Amy’s making out bills for me to-night, we’ll not interrupt the good work.  Put some bath-ammonia in the water, please—­and have it hot.”

Half an hour later he called her in to see the work of his hands.  She had brought him one of his surgical aprons with the bath equipment.  With his sleeves rolled up, his apron well splashed, his coppery hair more or less in disarray from the occasional thrustings of a soapy hand, and his face flushed and eager like a healthy boy’s, Red Pepper Burns stood grinning down at his patient.  Little Hungary lay in the clean white bed, his pale face shining with soap and happiness, his arms upon the coverlet encased in the blue and white sleeves of Burns’s pajamas, the sleeves neatly turned back to accommodate the shortness of his arms.  The workman turned to Ellen as she came in.