CHAPTER

I. Wholly Given Over to Sentiment

   II.  The Way to Attain an End

  III.  Burns Does His Duty

   IV.  A Red Head

    V. More Than One Opinion

   VI.  Broken Steel Wires

  VII.  Points of View

 VIII.  Under the Apple Tree

   IX.  A Practical Artist

    X. A Runaway Road

   XI.  After Dinner

  XII.  A Challenge

 XIII.  A Crisis

  XIV.  Before the Lens

   XV.  Flashlights

  XVI.  In February

 XVII.  From the Beginning

XVIII.  The Country Surgeon

MRS. RED PEPPER

CHAPTER I

WHOLLY GIVEN OVER TO SENTIMENT

The Green Imp, long, low and powerful, carrying besides its two passengers a motor trunk, a number of bulky parcels, and a full share of mud, drew to one side of the road.  The fifth April shower of the afternoon was on, although it was barely three o’clock.

Redfield Pepper Burns, physician and surgeon, descended from the car, a brawny figure in an enveloping gray motoring coat.  He wore no hat upon his heavy crop of coppery red hair—­somewhere under the seat his cap was abandoned, as usual.  His face was brown with tan—­a strong, fine face, with dark-lashed hazel eyes alight under thick, dark eyebrows.  From head to foot he was a rather striking personality.

“This time,” said he, firmly, “I’m going to leave the top up.  It’s putting temptation in the way of something very weak to keep lowering the top.  We’ll leave it up.  There’ll be one advantage.”  He looked round the corner of the top into the face of his companion, as his hands adjusted the straps.

“When we get to the fifty-miles-from-the-office stone, which we’re going to do in about five minutes, I can take leave of my bride without having to observe the landscape except from the front.”

“So you’re going to take leave of her,” observed his passenger.  She did not seem at all disturbed.  As the car moved on she drew back her veil from its position over her face, leaving her head covered only by a close-fitting motoring bonnet of dark green, from within which her face, vivid with the colouring born of many days driving with and without veils, met without flinching the spatter of rain the fitful April wind sent drifting in under the edge of the top.  Her black eyelashes caught the drops and held them.

“Yes, I’m going to say good-bye to her at that stone,” repeated Burns.  “She’s been the joy of my life for two weeks, and I’ll never forget her.  But she couldn’t stand for the change of conditions we’re going to find the minute we strike the old place.  It’s only my wife who can face those.”

“If the bride is to be left behind, I suppose the bridegroom will stay with her?  Together, they’ll not be badly off.”