Leaver turned, laughing, to Ellen.  “One would think I had been the most solemn fellow known to history,” said he.

In two minutes he had bestowed his guests in a small but luxuriously appointed closed car, had given the word to his chauffeur, and had taken his place facing them.  Burns examined the landau’s interior with interest.

“The evidence of a slight but unmistakable odour tells me that this is the jewel-box in which Baltimore’s gem of a surgeon keeps his appointments,” said he.  “Well, the Green Imp’s beginning to show traces of her age, but her successor will be no aristocrat of this type.  I’d rather drive myself and freeze my face to a granite image than be transported in cotton-wool, like this.”

Leaver and Ellen laughed at his expression.

“Of course you would,” Leaver agreed.  “And equally of course every friend and patient of yours would grieve to see you shut up behind glass windows with another hand on the steering-wheel.  It’s unthinkable and out of the question for you, but for me—­it’s rather practical.”

Burns nodded.  “Saves time—­and carries prestige.  I understand.  You city fellows have to play to the galleries a bit, particularly when you’ve reached the top-notch and people demand that you live up to it.  It’s all right.  But I should feel smothered.  And as for letting any young man in a livery manage my spark and throttle,—­well, not for mine, as I have already remarked.”

Leaver looked at him as one man looks at another when he loves him better than a brother.  Then he put a question to Red Pepper’s wife:  “Can any one wonder that there seems something missing in America when he spends the winter in Germany?”

She shook her head.  “I never mean to find out what America is like when he is out of it,” said she.

Burns regarded them both.  “And I suppose you think you and Mrs. John Leaver are just such another pair?” he said then, to his friend.

“Just such another,” was the decided answer.

The car came to a standstill before a stately stone house, its walls heavy with English ivy.  In another minute the entrance doors were open, and the party were inside.  A radiant figure in white was clasping Ellen Burns in eager arms, while a blithe voice cried: 

“Oh, my dear, this is so good, so good of you!  We couldn’t be entirely satisfied until we had seen you here!”

“Seeing you here,” declared Burns, shaking hands vigorously, when his turn came, and regarding Charlotte with approving eyes, “reminds me of one of Jack Leaver’s favourite old maxims, which he used unsparingly while he was chumming with me:  ’A place for everything and everything in its place.’  The demonstration of that, raised to the nth power, is certainly what I now see before me!”

Charlotte’s glowing eyes met her husband’s fixed upon her.  She gave him back his smile before she answered Burns: 

“Thank you, Dr. Red Pepper.  Your approval was all that was lacking.”