“Who should you say was the very last man on earth to do me the honour of trusting me in a serious emergency?”

She turned away her head, gazing down at a fragrant border of mignonette, while he watched her, a smile on his lips.  She looked up again.  “I can’t think, Red.  It seems to me everybody trusts you.”

“Not by a long shot, or the rest of the profession would stand idle.  But there’s one man who I should have said, to use a time-honoured phrase, wouldn’t let me operate on a sick cat.  And he’s the man who is going to put his life in my hands Wednesday morning at ten o’clock.  Len, if I am ever on my mettle to do a perfect job, it’ll be then!”

“Of course.  But who—­”

“I should think the name would leap to your lips.  Who’s mine ancient enemy, the man who has fought me by politely sneering at me, and circumventing me when he could, ever since I began practice, and whom I’ve fought back in my way?  Why, Len—­”

Her dark eyes grew wide.  “Red!  Not—­Doctor Van Horn?”

“Even so.”

“Oh, Red!  That is a compliment—­and more than a compliment.  But I should never have thought of him somehow because, I suppose—­”

“Because nobody ever thinks of a doctor’s being sick or needing an operation.  But doctors do—­sometimes—­and usually pretty badly, too, before they will submit to it.  Van Horn’s in dreadful shape, and has been keeping it dark—­until it’s got the upper hand of him completely.  Mighty plucky the way he’s been going on with his work, with trouble gnawing at his vitals.”

“How did he come to call you?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.  But call me he did, yesterday, and I’ve seen him twice since.  And when I told him what had to be done he took it like a soldier without wincing.  But when he said he wanted me to do the trick you could have knocked me down with a lead pencil.  My word, Len, I have been doing Van an injustice all these years!  The real stuff is in him, after all, and plenty of it, too.”

“It is he who has done you the injustice,” Ellen said with a little lift of the head.

“I know I have given you reason to think so—­the times I’ve come home raving mad at some cut of his.  But, Len, that’s all past and he wipes it out by trusting me now.  The biggest thing I’ve had against him was not his knifing me but his apparent toadying to the rich and influential.  But there’s another side to that and I see it now.  Some people have to be coddled, and though it goes against my grain to do it, I don’t know why a man who can be diplomatic and winning, like Van Horn, hasn’t his place just as much as a rough rider like me.  Anyhow, the thing now is to pull him through his operation, and if I can do it—­well, Van and I will be on a new basis, and a mighty comfortable one it will be.”

His voice was eager and his wife understood just how his pulses were thrilling, as do those of the born surgeon, at the approach of a great opportunity.